We Learn From History That We Do

Everybody Allows That To Know Any Other Science You Must Have First Studied It, And That You Can Only Claim To Express A Judgment Upon It In Virtue Of Such Knowledge. Everybody Allows That To Make A Shoe You Must Have Learned And Practised The Craft Of The Shoemaker, Though Every Man Has A Model In His Own Foot, And Possesses In His Hands The Natural Endowments For The Operations Required. For Philosophy Alone, It Seems To Be Imagined, Such Study, Care, And Application Are Not In The Least Requisite

To Make Abstractions Hold In Reality Is To Destroy Reality.

The People Will Learn To Feel The Dignity Of Man. They Will Not Merely Demand Their Rights, Which Have Been Trampled In The Dust, But Themselves Will Take Them - Make Them Their Own.

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, Are Wont To Be Emphatically Commended To The Teaching Which Experience Offers In History. But What Experience And History Teach Is This - That People And Governments Never Have Learned Anything From History, Or Acted On Principles Deduced From It. Each Period Is Involved In Such Peculiar Circumstances, Exhibits A Condition Of Things So Strictly Idiosyncratic, That Its Conduct Must Be Regulated By Considerations Connected With Itself, And Itself Alone.

The Beginning Of Religion, More Precisely Its Content, Is The Concept Of Religion Itself, That God Is The Absolute Truth, The Truth Of All Things, And Subjectively That Religion Alone Is The Absolutely True Knoweldge.