So say the wise: in the past, now, and forever.

We ought to aim for the bulls eye rather than merely attempting to not hit the wall behind it.  (This is not to say that we should pretend there is no difference between hitting the wall and the target, as this can also lead to problems.  But that’s another issue.)  Once we adopt the mediocrity of mere avoidance as a strategy, we will be less likely to hit the target and more likely to simply say to hell with the whole thing for multiple reasons.  The point is that we hit the target by aiming for the bulls eye.  The likelihood of hitting the bulls eye itself is not particularly great, but it is practically impossible unless you aim for it.  More to the point, by repeatedly aiming for the bulls eye you will, in all likelihood and for the most part, hit the target rather than the wall with enough practice.

Christian moral teachings in the Western world have been mixed with an unfortunate strain in them for a longish while that ignores this truth.  The sometimes blurred focus this strain causes is likely not merely a doctrinal problem, but rather a temptation that is always present whenever moral teachings are taught or laws are promulgated. Regardless, I would argue that the best sorts of people living in the best sorts of times and places could agree that this simple aphorism is simply true, regardless of one’s understanding of religion.

It speaks to the importance of having examples we are striving to emulate, and an understanding of what virtue is.  We have to know what we are aiming for as well as what we wish to avoid.  Obvious?  Yes.  Aphorisms usually are, aren’t they?

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?

Of course, we naturally and reasonably turn to history in order to understand human nature. Yet while we may use what we know of history to assist in our study of human nature and we may use what we know of human nature to assist in our study of history, the latter operation is prior to the former. You have to assume or take something to be true about human nature in order to learn about human nature through history. And you know something about human nature . . . since, well, you are one.

Historians spend much of their time investigating and verifying past thoughts and actions, but when these are examined and analyzed one cannot escape relying on an understanding of human nature in order to explicate the “bones” one has dug up. Of course, even in the pursuit of simply discovering what was, this same understanding of human nature will also guide one’s approach in choosing where and how to dig. It will, in fact, direct the entire historical enterprise in light of the fact that your understanding of human nature is necessarily a crucial element of the purpose for which you are acting as an historian in the first place.

The overarching point gets lost so often its hard to keep a grasp on it. History is about the past thoughts and actions of human beings, and how we understand such thoughts and actions will hinge upon how we answer the question: “What are we?” What is human nature? Do we have a nature? What is nature? When these questions go unanswered and/or are assumed in a facile manner any presentation of history ought to be tainted or suspect.

If we have seriously meditated upon human nature, and the extent to which we are ignorant on this score, I think most people readily understand the notion that history is not a science in the sense that, say, geometry is. Or, at least, not understandable as such a science to any of us humans living life as we know it. There are two extremes in this respect. Although the notion that history is such a science (perhaps even the highest science) is still with us (Progress!), the opposite notion is perhaps more prevalent these days, or at least its influence is rapidly growing. The explicit or implicit rejection of the very possibility of any sort of coherent understanding of history is now commonplace.

The first extreme relies on the explicit or implicit assumption that human beings are gods: functionally speaking or otherwise the highest thing in the universe. The second extreme relies on the explicit or implicit assumption that human beings are animals or worse, inherently worthless, and value-free. The universe in which human beings live in the first extreme is ordered to them, or should be made to. The universe in which human beings live in the second extreme is devoid of order, or functionally so in that we are not able to know one way or the other. Both views are obsessed with human beings flexing their wills for their own self-created purposes, but the variation on human nature betwixt them dictates different notions of history.

Something like that. The last paragraph is a tad too cute. Examples from experience anon.