some of the ambitions and to most of
the plans of my youth.

All writers start with the hope of solving a problem or establishing a
formula, however fragmentary or humble; and many, the most fortunate,
and probably the most useful, continue to work out their program, or at
least to think that they do so. Life to them is but the framework for
work; and that is why they manage to leave a fair amount of work behind
them,--work for other workers to employ or to undo. But with some
persons, life somehow gets the better of work, becomes, whether in the
form of circumstance or of new problems, infinitely the stronger; and
scatters work, tossing about such fragments as itself, in its irregular,
irresistible fashion, has torn into insignificance, or (once in a blue
moon!) shaped into more complete meaning.

As regards my own case, I began by believing I should be an historian
and a philosopher, as most young people have done before me; then,
coming in contact with the concrete miseries of others, called social
and similar problems, I sought to apply some of my historical or
philosophic lore (such as it was) to their removal; and finally, life
having manifested itself as offering problems (unexpected occurrence!)
not merely concerning the Past, nor even the abstract Present, but
respecting my own comfort and discomfort, I have found myself at last
wondering in what manner thoughts and impressions could make the world,
the Past and Present, the near and the remote, more satisfying and
useful to myself. Circumstances of various kinds, and particularly
ill-health, have thus put me, although a writer, into the position of a
reader; and have made me ask myself, as I collected these fragments of
my former studies, what can the study of history, particularly of the
history of art and of other manifestations of past conditions of soul,
do for us in the present?

All knowledge is bound to be useful. Apart from this truism, I believe
that all study of past conditions and activities will eventually result,
if not in the better management of present conditions and activities (as
all partisan historians have hoped, from Machiavelli to Macaulay), at
all events in a greater familiarity with the various kinds of character
expressed in historical events and in the way of looking at them; for
even if we cannot learn to guide and employ such multifold forces as
make, for instance, a French revolution, we may learn to use for the
best the individ