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Prophet_051-100.indd 79 3/2/12 10:28 PM II The Revolution and the Role ofHistory l HISTORY AS A WEAPON OF COUNTER- REVOLUTION We have examined at the beginning of chapter I the prevailing eighteenth-century view of history. Some further general considerations on the subject are necessary at this point, however, since it is especially at the time of the Revolution in France that history's traditional role as the scientifically validating factor of all political speculation is seriously questioned. Of course, with the conservatives, this traditional view of history 's function still largely prevails, and, in fact, becomes, if anything , more intense. History shows us the stable facts of human nature. It represents, in a hard physical sense, the unchanging "nature of things." It has a certain Newtonian order to its predictably cyclical patterns of unfolding. True enough, events in one century may differ from events in another: that is because of particular variations which characterize each nation and each century. One does not, therefore, become a helpless prisoner of the "science" of history; it does not repeat itselfexactly. But history's essential aspect is its constant sim79 ...

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