A Guildsman's Interpretation of History

The primary object of this history is to relate the social problem to the experience of the past and so to help bring about a clearer comprehension of its nature. "The reason," says the author of Erewhon, "why we cannot see the future as plainly as the past is because we know too little of the actual past and the actual present. The future depends upon the present, and the present depends upon the past, and the past is unalterable." It is by studying the past in the light of the experience of the present and the present in the light of the past that we may attain to a fuller understanding both of the present and the past. Certain aspects of industrialism are new to the world, and the past offers us no ready-made solution for them, but to understand them it is necessary to be familiar with Mediaeval principles, for such Mediaeval problems as those of law and currency, of the State and the Guilds, lie behind industrialism and have determined its peculiar development. If we were more familiar with history we should see the problems of industrialism in a truer perspective and would have less disposition to evolve social theories from our inner consciousness. This neglect of the experience of the past is no new thing; it is as old as civilization itself. Thus in criticizing some of the fantastic proposals of Plato for the reorganization of Greek society, Aristotle says: "Let us remember that we should not disregard the experience of the ages; in the multitude of years, these things, if they were good, would certainly not have been unknown; for almost everything has been found out, although sometimes they are not put together; in other cases men do not use the knowledge that they have." From the Preface]