A thought on history

The point of history is surely, still, to discover what actually happened but the past can only be understood if we know what actually didn’t happen. People’s actions, their understandings of the world, can only be understood in the light of what they expected from it; though these expectations were almost certainly wrong, and, in after life shaming and embarrassing, they have to be reconstructed if we are to understand human history. Short form: all hopes, all fears, entail false beliefs.