In estimating distant historical events, one is often the victim of
an error of perspective; that is, one is disposed to consider as the
outcome of a pre-established plan of human wisdom what is the final
result, quite unforeseen, of causes that acted beyond the foresight of
contemporaries. At the distance of centuries, turning back to consider
the past, we can easily find out that the efforts of one or two
generations have produced certain effects on the actual condition of
the world; and then we conclude that those generations meant to
reach that result. On the contrary, men almost always face the future
proposing to themselves impossible ends; notwithstanding which, their
efforts, accumulating, destroying, interweaving, bring into being
consequences that no one had foreseen or planned, the novelty or
importance of which often only future generations realise. Columbus,
who, fixed in the idea of reaching India by sailing west, finds
America on his way and does not recognise it at once but is persuaded
that he has landed in India, symbolises the lot of man in history.

Of this phenomenon, which is to me a fundamental law of history,
there is a classic example in the story of Rome: the conquest of Gaul.
Without doubt, one of the greatest works of Rome was the conquest and
Romanisation of Gaul: indeed that conquest and Romanisation of Gaul
is the beginning of European civilisation; for before the Græco-Latin
civilisation reached the Rhine over the ways opened by the Roman
sword, the continent of Europe had centres of civilisation on
the coast or in its projecting extremities, like Italy, Bætica,
Narbonensis; but the interior was still entirely in the power of a
turbulent and restless barbarism, like the African continent to-day.
Moreover, what Rome created in Asia and Africa was almost entirely
destroyed by ages following; on the contrary, Rome yet lives in
France, to which it gave its language, its spirit, and the traditions