read Juvenal, Petronius, Lucian, or Apuleius, we are astounded at the
likeness of those times to these. Even in minute details, they
correspond with a marvellous exactness. And hence there seems a strange
force in the statement that history repeats itself, and that the wisdom
learnt from the past can be applied to the present and the future.

But all this, though it is doubtless true, is in reality only half the
truth; and as used in the arguments of the day, it amounts practically
to a profound falsehood. History in a certain sense, of course, does
repeat itself; and the thing that has been is in a certain sense the
thing that shall be. But there is a deeper and a wider sense in which,
this is not so. Let us take the life of an individual man, for instance.
A man of fifty will retain very likely many of the tastes and tricks
that were his, when a boy of ten: and people who have known him long
will often exclaim that he is just the same as he always was. But in
spite of this, they will know that he is very different. His hopes will
have dwindled down; the glow, the colour, and the bright haze will have
gone from them; things that once amused him will amuse him no more:
things he once thought important, he will consider weary trifles; and if
he thinks anything serious at all, they will not be things he thought
serious when a boy. The same thing is true of the year, and its changing
seasons. The history of a single year may be, in one sense, said to
repeat itself every day. There is the same recurrence of light and
darkness, of sunrise and of sunset: and a man who had lived only for a
month or two, might fancy that this recurrence was complete. But let him
live a little longer, and he will come to see that this is not so.
Slowly through the summer he will begin to discern a change; until at
last he can contrast the days and nights of winter with the days and
nights of summer, and see how flowers that once opened fresh every
morning, now never open or close at all. Then he will see that the two