The wisdom of history teaches us not to get perplexed at or carried away by the contingent reversals or deviations from its basic direction, but to realise the deeper continuity or flow, beneath the surface eddies of the human story, in terms of its halting progress towards the consensus ideas. These ideas and values are the fruit of man's collective and cumulative search for the impersonal summum bonum, as distinct from his group or parochial interests and goals. The making of this distinction requires a critical analysis of man's plural value systems, as they have evolved in history. The realization of the deeper continuity of the historical movement, requires the capacity for correctly assessing what shape present conditions and seeming trends are likely to take in the long run, rather than in the immediate future. This foresight or vision into the distant future is sharpened by the study of history. But some individuals may be endowed with historical intuition—the foresight into the contours of the future, on the basis of a 'feel' for the significance of the present.

(4) Illusion and Reality

History teaches us that our greatest heroes, after all, are not entirely without ‘feet of clay’, and that human excellence contains some grey areas. History reveals the ever recurring instances of the shattering of ideals by even the noblest, the struggle for power, the reign of self-interest, the brittleness of man's achievements, the tragedies of life, the shifting of loyalties, the miscarriages of justice, the exploitation of the helpless, the reign of the irrational, the persecution of dissent, the arrogance of power, the pride of race, the imperialism of culture, the grip of prejudice, the retreat of value, the corridors of cultural darkness in space and time, the power of the bribe, the corruption of the priest, the callousness of the baillif, the law's delay, the cunning of the trader. History also reveals, the recurring instances of heroic devotion to duty, unflinching commitment to ideals, drinking the hemlock with smiling lips, eternal love and loyalty of the friend or the spouse, the power of creativity, the strength of faith, the resilience of life, the tenacity of will, the re-emergence of value, the triumph of reason and organization, and the immortality of hope. Such, in short, is the ambivalence of life. And the wisdom of history lies in refraining from passing any one sided judgment, but to be patient and serene in the gathering of evidence and humble in the passing of judgments of probability when the time be ripe. Like great literature, history reveals the complexity, ambiguity and the antinomical structure of man's character. More than any other discipline, it is history, which teaches us that the characters of the human drama are neither white nor black but grey. This insight lifts us from the cave of darkness into clear day light, in which we can survey the human condition free from distortion.

(5) The Oneness of the Human Family History teaches us that mankind is one indivisible family, despite the diversity of race, religion, language and culture, and that there are no chosen races or peoples. History is not subject to our hopes and pious wishes or prayers to an omnipotent God Who is partisan to His chosen people; history is a movement governed by sociological laws. These laws, however, leave ample scope for human creativity and freedom of choice between different existential interpretations and of action.

The realization of the essential oneness of the human family leads to a humanistic sympathy, transcending man's sense of belonging to narrow groups. The rise and fall, achievements and failures, glory and decline of different branches of the human family, at different points of time, appear to the historian as parts of a single story, whose heroes and villains, priests and teachers, soldiers and leaders, gladiators and showmen, poets and bards, harlots and slaves, patricians and plebeians are, after all, the flesh of his flesh and the bone of his bones. The variety and treasures of man's culture—different languages, religions, art forms, political and social patterns—all are seen as the fruit of man's creative response to the essential mystery of the universe, worthy of our respectful attention or study, for enabling us to make our own well informed and free choices, instead of being prisoners of an ethnocentric approach. Every human, thus, learns to rejoice at the achievements of, say, the ancient Chinese, Indians or Greeks, as much as an ethnocentric Englishman would at Clive’s victory at Plassey or Nelson's at Trafalgar, or Shakespeare's literary triumphs, or as an ethnocentric German would rejoice at the achievements of Bismarck or Goethe. Likewise, the tragic disunity of the Greeks, the decline and fall of the Roman empire, the dismemberment of the Mauryan empire into warring districts, the sufferings of the Jews down the ages, the destruction of Baghdad and Cordova, and the present humiliation of the Arab peoples, move the universal man with almost the same historical pathos, since they repeat almost the same story with different characters. The smiles or tears, nobility or sordidness, success or failure, good or evil of the characters is seen as a human phenomenon and not from the perspective of an Arab or Jew, Muslim or Hindu, European or Asian.