On the Changing Nature of Histories

“Each generation abandons the ideas of its

predecessors like stranded ships.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A goodly number of works which were famous half a century ago are now absolutely inaccessible to the would-be purchaser… A few copies of these works are still extant in private collections and public libraries, but the fate of these is assured. Libraries are constructed to be burned. Some day a lick of flame will wipe out the last copy of any work issued only in a single edition, and the author will become thenceforth merely a name and a memory…”

Excerpted from: The Historians' History of the World: Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia edited by Henry Smith Williams, Volume 1, 1907. (26)