It is just the same with history. In the case of the Inquisition it is particularly difficult to make the modern reader understand the affair because all the terms have been, so to speak, transliterated; but I think we can arrive at a fairly satisfactory result if we translate the terms involved into things which the modern man is familiar with. Instead of physical torture, for instance, read cross-examination and public dishonour; instead of the sacrifice of all civic guarantees to the preponderant interest of united religion, read the similar sacrifice of all such guarantees to the preponderant interest of a united nation; instead of clerical officers using every means (or nearly every means) for the preservation of religious unity, read civil officers using _every_ means for the preservation of national unity in time of peril. If you do that, I think the modern man can understand. Had you presented to the early thirteenth century the spectacle of the whole male population medically examined, registered, and forcibly drafted into a life where a chance error might be punished immediately by death or by some other terrible punishment; had you shown him men, doubtful in their loyalty to the nation, condemned to years of perpetual silence, secluded from their fellow beings after being made a spectacle of public dishonour in the Courts; had you even sketched for him our universal spy system whereby a strong modern central Government holds down all its subjects as no Government of antiquity, however tyrannical, ever held them down—could you have shown a man of the thirteenth century all this, he would have felt the same repulsion and horror which most modern men feel on reading of the Inquisition, its objects and its methods. A man who should so explain our modern life to a man of the thirteenth century as to make it _comprehensible_ to him (a difficult task!) in spite of his repulsion and horror at our cruelties, blasphemies, and tyrannies, would be a good historian. The converse also is true.