The Use of History
There are two ways of (thinking) of history. There is, first, history regarded as a way of looking at other things, really the temporal aspect of anything, from the universe to this nib with which I am writing. Everything has its history. There is the history of the (universe, if only we knew it－and we know something of it, if we do not know much. Nor is the contrast so great, when) you come to think of it, between the universe and this pen-nib. A mere pen-nib has quite a considerable history. There is, to begin with, what has been written with it, and that might be something quite (important). After all it was probably only one quill-pen or a couple that wrote Hamlet. Whatever has been written with the pen-nib is part of its history. In addition to that there is the history of its (manufacture): this particular nib is a 'Relief' nib, No. 314, made by R. Esterbrook and Co. in England, who supply the Midland Bank with pen-nibs, from whom I got it—a gift, I may say, but behind this nib there is the whole process of manufacture. In fact a pen nib implies of universe, and the history of it implies its history. We may (regard) this way of looking at it—history as the time-aspect of all things: a (pen-nib), the universe, the fiddled before me as I write, as a relative (conception) of history. There is, secondly, what we mat call a substantive conception of history, what we usually mean by it, history (proper) as a subject of study in itself.
