Writing history is an old and honorable profession with distinctive standards and purposes. The historian’s goals are accuracy, analysis, and objectivity in the reconstruction of the past. But history is more than an academic discipline up there in the stratosphere. It also has its own role in the future of nations.

书写历史是一种古老而又令人尊敬的职业，有鲜明的标准和目的。历史家所追求达到的目标是：在重现往事时，保持准确、客观、条理清晰。但就最高层次的意义而言，历史不仅是一个学科，它还在各民族的未来发展中发挥着本身的独特作用。

For history is to the nation rather as memory is to the individual. As an individual deprived of memory becomes disoriented and lost, not knowing where he has been or where he is going, so a nation denied a conception of its past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. As the means of defining national identity, history becomes a means of shaping history. The writing of history then turns from a meditation into a weapon. “Who controls the past controls the future”, runs the Party slogan in George Orwell’s 1984”: “Who controls the present controls the past.”

这是因为历史对于一个民族来说，其重要性如同记忆之于个人。一个人如果失去了记忆就会处于一种精神恍惚、迷失方向的境地，，不知道他来自何方、去往何处。一个民族如果对它的过去没有一种认识，那么它就无力去处理现实和应对未来，因此，历史作为确定每个民族特性的工具，从而也就成为铸造各民族历史的工具。书写历史于是从沉思默想变成了铸造武器。所以，英国作家乔治·奥威尔（1903-1950）在他的最后一部讽刺小说《一九八四》中，把下面这句话作为一个政党的口号：“谁控制了过去，就能控制未来；谁控制了现在，就能控制过去。”

[From The Disuntting of America, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. W.W.W. Norton, 1992]