# “We need intimate knowledge of the past” by C. S. Lewis

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2008/07/11/we-need-intimate-knowledge-of-the-past-by-cs-lewis/
- Published: 2008-07-11T23:46:38-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past
has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something
to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite
different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated
is merely temporary fashion.

A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors
of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some
degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and 
the microphone of his own age.”

–C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in _The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses_(
New York: HarperCollins, 1949/2001), 58-9.

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