One ought not to discuss the usefulness of history, for everybody can see and feel it; but as some are not accustomed to see things clearly and discuss them in detail, and often through their perverted understanding make the useful to appear as harmful and the harmful as useful, and consequently transgress in their acts and deeds (as indeed I have heard such people, to my disgust, talk loud of the uselessness of history), I deemed it proper to give a short review of it. To begin with, history is nothing else than the recounting of past acts and occurrences, good and bad; for all that we have experienced in recent or long-passed days through our senses of hearing, seeing and feeling, or that we reproduce by our memory, is really history, and it teaches us, whether through our acts or those of others, to emulate the good and beware of the evil. For example, when I recollect that I saw yesterday a fisherman who had been catching fish and had had a certain success in it, I naturally receive in my mind an impulse to do likewise; or if I saw yesterday a thief or some other criminal, who had been sentenced to a severe punishment or death, terror will naturally keep me from committing such an act as would cause my utter ruin. All the histories we read act upon us in the same manner: the deeds of ancient days are represented to us so vividly that we seem to have seen and felt them ourselves. For this reason we may say that no man, no condition of life, no profession, science, nor government, much less a single individual, can be perfect, wise and useful without a knowledge of the same. For example, let us take the sciences. The first and greatest of them all is theology, that is, the science of God, His all-wisdom, almightiness, which alone leads us to future bliss, and so forth. Now, no theologian can be called wise who does not know the ancient divine acts which have been revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures, and when, with whom and why there have been disputes about certain dogmas and articles of faith, or when and why this has been established and that discarded; why certain statutes and orders of the ancient Church have been changed, discontinued, and new ones introduced; consequently he must know divine and church history, as well as civil history, as Huet, the famous French theologian, has sufficiently pointed out. The second science is jurisprudence, which teaches proper conduct and our duties to God, ourselves and our neighbours, in order to acquire peace of body and soul. No jurist can be called wise who does not know former interpretations and discussions of natural and civil laws. And how can a judge pass right judgment if he does not know the origin and application of old and new laws? Indeed, he must know the history of the laws.