Excerpt from A Selection of Scottish Forfeited Estates Papers, 1715, 1745: Edition From the Original Documents, With Introduction and Appendices

The traditional method of dividing history into epochs and centuries, though convenient for purposes of reference, is apt to prove misleading. History is the record of the continuous development of human energy, every successive event being the produce of earlier incidents, and progress cannot be accurately measured by arithmetical divisions of time. The manners and customs which prevail in the concluding years of one century persist for a long time after the succeeding century has begun, and the time-measure when applied to history gives very haphazard results. This may seem a self evident truism when thus baldly stated, yet the fact is often forgotten, and its in¿uence ignored. Only when the student discards the arbitrary division of events into decades and centuries of time can he hope to attain a proper perspective view of human history.

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