And hence there seems a strange force in the statement that history repeats itself, and that the wisdom learnt from the past can be applied to the present and the future.
But all this, though it is doubtless true, is in reality only half the truth; and as used in the arguments of the day, it amounts practically to a profound falsehood.

History in a certain sense, of course, does repeat itself; and the thing that has been is in a certain sense the thing that shall be.

But there is a deeper and a wider sense in which, this is not so.

Let us take the life of an individual man, for instance.
A man of fifty will retain very likely many of the tastes and tricks that were his, when a boy of ten: and people who have known him long will often exclaim that he is just the same as he always was.

But in spite of this, they will know that he is very different.