A STUDY OF THE THEORY OF APPRAISAL FOR SELECTION By ...

lives."16 Because the present inescapably provides the vantage
point from which the past is viewed, some have argued that
history "consists essentially in seeing the past through the eyes
of the present and in the light of its problems."17 For this
reason, history can be understood to be "a continuous process of
interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending
dialogue between the present and the past."18
The historical perspective offers a unique vantage point of
knowing the result of an event, which is not apparent to the
participants. Our understanding of the past is formed by the
known results of that event. The starting point for any analysis
is the discrepancy between what people believed they were doing
and what they actually did. The dual aim of the historian is to
derive the meaning the event had for the participants, and then
derive the meaning the event has for posterity in light of the
outcome.19 The essence of historical thinking does not
exclusively belong to the historian's craft, but is also part of
the realm of everyday experience:
It is only by historical thinking that I can
16 Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of
English-Canadian Historical Writing Since 1900, 2nd ed.,
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), ix. Berger's
entire book demonstrates how the writing of history is, itself,
an historical act, for it inevitably reflects the cultural and
intellectual context in which it is written.
17 E.H. Carr, What Is History?, (New York: Vintage Books,
1961), 22.
18 Ibid, 35.
19 Leff, History, 50-51.
18