history to science. excess to degeneration.

History, so far as it serves life serves an unhistorical power. While so subordinated it will and ought never, therefore, become a pure science, like, say, mathematics. But the question to what degree life requires the service of history at all is one of the highest questions and concerns affecting the health of a man, a people, a culture. For with a certain excess of history life crumbles and degenerates, and finally, because of this degeneration, history itself degenerates as well.