Paradoxically enough, Belloc’s contention runs exactly contrary to the first principle of modern Western historical theory. Contemporary historians, regardless of political predilection or religious and philosophical adherence, are united in the common belief that historical truth is dependent on historical “objectivity.” This objectivity is achieved in proportion to the historian’s ability to withdraw from his own cultural antecedents. In so doing, the scholar shakes himself loose from the prejudices and parochialisms of his own civilization, he frees himself, in order that he may view the whole. The story of his people and of his own faith recede until they take their just place within the broader scope of the cosmic movement of historical man through time. It is questionable whether such an objectivity can be more than an ideal projected before the historian—a goal to be forever missed, but always aimed at. But assuming for a moment that it is possible for a single historian to hold before himself the global passage of man through recorded history, assuming that he could find a set of natural principles that would unify this vast procession of phenomena into an intelligible structure—even assuming this ideal of the Toynbee school of thought—it still remains an open question whether this would constitute the possession of historical _truth_. If, on the contrary (assuming Belloc’s hypothesis), historical truth principally means historical _understanding_ of the men who have made history, then this understanding can only follow on a grasp of the spiritual tides that have launched any given culture, that have given it a common destiny, that have been channelled analogically through the members of the community. Historical truth depends then on a subjective, almost intuitive, grasp of this communal spirit; a penetration into historical man, rather than an analytic dissection of a spirit that defies mere logical analysis. Historical understanding escapes the kind of objectivity achieved in the sciences, because it demands a deeper insight: an entering into the subjective engagement of the human person. To understand what has caused me to be the kind of man I am, I must understand what caused the men who made me to be what they were. I possess my past, in Belloc’s eyes, when I am that past to such a degree that I could have acted as did my ancestors. Then, and only then, do I actually know my own fathers from within the depths of my own personality. Outside objectivity versus inside understanding; conscious withdrawal and deliberate cultural alienation for the sake of objectivity, as opposed to conscious cultural immersion and integration for the sake of subjective sympathy: two theories of history that can be resolved finally only by a personal act of choice.