(1) Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
(2) Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Spanish-born philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, 1863 – 1952  

          In part 1 of this essay we noted the harmony between Santayana’s two statements.  We must be skeptical because     

·        schools give us a survey of history;  that means that we get only a glimpse, and it is dangerous to make a judgment based on a glimpse;

·        history is not made relevant to us when we study it, so we are apt to forget much, if not most, of it;

·        history, as we learn it, is an interpretation, a faith, as somebody chooses the events, reasons for events, and personalities about which and whom we learn.

It seems as if the more time we took to deliberate and the more we learned and remembered from history, the less likely we would be to make costly mistakes these days.

However—with finger raised and a significant pause—there is a contradiction between Santayana’s two statements.  If we accept the conclusion in “How Little We Know, Part 4”, we can never know everything which we need to know to make weighty decisions.  There are so many factors which keep us from having a true understanding and, therefore, true interpretation, of history: 

·        events of consequence never recorded or remembered;

·        events of consequence deliberately misstated to suit some purpose;  we have heard that the victors of a war write the history of that war;  perhaps we have read George Orwell’s 1984;

·        motives which have been covered up or misinterpreted;

·        our anatomical failings:  we see things that never were, we hear things which were never said;  this applies as well to the chroniclers of history;

·        the battle between human recollection and human imagination;  we embellish naturally and, thereby, stray from the facts;

·        we do not have the time to read primary sources, like Lincoln’s letters about slavery and the South;  we rely on others to interpret and summarize for us;  this is a reason why we are in Iraq now;

·        even assuming that we read primary sources, we do not know that those sources would be accurate. 

The disconcerting conclusion is that what we think to be history is a type of faith.  Yes, there is more supposed fact in such faith than in religious faith, but history turns out to be faith nevertheless.  What we teach our youth and use as a justification for our policies and decisions is a secular faith.   

With that in mind, we see the contradiction between Santayana’s two statements.  Yes, we should be skeptical, but in remembering history too well, we might be succumbing to a faith which clouds our judgment and results in bad decisions. 

So, where does that leave history?  We will look at that in part three.