We need intimate knowledge of the past

Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past.   . . .   [W]e cannot study the future, and . . . need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.  A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his age.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, “Learning in War-Time,” para. 10-11, quoted in The Quotable Lewis, p. 179.