History as Foil to the Present

"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" (C. S. Lewis, "Learning in Wartime" in Weight of Glory, Kindle, 58–59).