Humanity has always lived in the shadow of history.
This shadow is neither a gift from God nor the work of some deity. It comes from the defining trait that sets humans apart from animals: memory.
History's shadow stretches far and near. At a distance lie the faint footprints of our primitive ancestors on their path to civilization; closer at hand are things that happened only yesterday. The river of time flows on, day and night, carrying away not only what has already happened, but also everything happening now and everything yet to come, absorbing it all into history's shadow.
The first to recognize the value of this shadow was none other than Confucius, whose influence has shaped Chinese civilization for two thousand years. His words, "Review the old and learn the new," are plain enough, yet they strike like a sudden revelation.
History is not only the destination of human activity, but also a source of wisdom for facing the future.
On the relationship between history and the present, the British writer George Orwell put it even more bluntly: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
(Excerpted from the preface to Revisiting the Past, Volume One, with minor changes.)
