“The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.”

—  Georg Brandes

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 18-19

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Georg Brandes40
Danish literature critic and scholar 1842–1927

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