‘The Sense of the Past ‘All human being are conscious of the past (defined as the period before the events directly recorded in any individual's memory) by virtue of living with people older than themselves. All societies likely to concern the historian have a past for even the most innovatory ‘clones are populated by people who come from some socety with fan already long history. To be a member of any human community isto situate oneself with regard Torones tts) pas, Tony by rejecting it The past 1s therfore a permanent dimension of the_ human S. an inevitable component of the insituiions. values trv nthe paizens of human society. The problem for historians is {j analyse the nature ofthis "ense of the past’ In society and to trace its changes and transformations. For the greater part of history we deal with societies and communitles {or which the past is essenlally the pattern for the present. tally ‘each generation copies and reproduces is predecessor so far as is possible, and considers teelf as falling short of it 0 far as it fails tn this endeavour. Of course a total domination of the past wou chide all legitimate changes and innovations. and i simprob that there s ny human society which recognizes no such innovation Teean take place in two ways. F ats offically defined as th Truhat i remembered oc capable of being remembered. How great the scope of this Tormalized social pas i in any society naturally pends on circumstances, But it wil always have interstices, that i tmaiters which form no part of the system of conscious history int frhich men incorporate, in one way o¢ another. what they consider important about ther socety. Innovation ean occur in thse inters thoes since it does nat automatically affect the system, and therefore does not automaticaly come up agains the barter This snot how things have always been done, It would be Interesting to enqulre hat kinds of actives tend to be thus left relatively flexible. apart om those which appear to be negligible atone time, but may turn fut not to be s0 at later date. One may suggest that. other things feing equal, technology tn the widest sense belongs fo The Hexble secloe socal organization and the ideology or the value system to the inlleBle- However, m the absence of comparative historical ladies the question must be lelt open. Certainly there are numerous texiremely tradition-bound and rittalled societies which have in the past accepted the relatively sudden introduction of new crops, new ‘means of eeomotion (auch as horses among North American Indians) fand new weapons, without any sense of disturbing the patter set by their past On the other hand there ae probably others, insufficiently investigated, which have resstod even such innovation. formalized social past Is clearly more rigid, since It sts the patter Tor the presnt T-Tends to be the court of appeal for present {ispates and uncertainties: law equals custom. age wisdom in iterate focetes: the documents enshrining this past, and which thereby nequire a certain spetual auchorty, do the same I Mera ux patly literate ones. A community of American Indians may base is claim to communal lands on possession from time immemorial, oon the memory of possession in the past (very Ukely systematically passed fn from one generation to the next), or on charters or legal decisions fom the colonial er these being preserved with enormous care: both have value as records ofa past which is consdered the norm This does not exclde a certain fexiblty or even defacto innovation, insolar as the new wine ean be poured tnto what are atleast in frm the old containers. Dealing in second hand cars appears to bea quite taceepiable extension of dealing in horses to gypsies. who still maintain ‘omadism at leas in theory asthe only proper mode of fe. Students The process of ‘modernization’ in twentieth-century India haveInvestigated the ways in which powerful and rigid traditional systems san be stretched or mould, ether consciously or in practice ‘without being oficialy disrupted, thet Is in which innovation can be Feformulated as non-innovation In such soceties conscious and radical innovation is also posible, Suggested that ican be legtimized in only a few ways Te may be disguise ax a return to oF rediscovery of some par of Te past which has been mistakenly forgotten or abandoned, or by the invention of an anthistorical peinciple of superior moral force njining the destruction of the present/past, for example a religious revelation or prophecy. It is not clear whether in such conditions ven anticistorcal principles can lack all appeal to the past, that is whether the ‘new’ principles are normally ~ or always? ~the easser- ‘genre of prophecy. The historians 14 anthropologists’ diflculty is tha al recorded or observed carer of sich prilve Teitimizlion of major social Innovations occu, ton of oi’ prophecies or of ano imost be delnion, when traditional societies are thro conteXT OF Wore oF Tas dase wc cage, that is when the Hh formative framework of the past i strained to breaking-point and ‘may therefore be unable te uncion properly. Though change and nes by imposition and importation from outside Innovation which parently unconnected with internal socal forces, need not in isl alet the system of deus about novelty held within a communi since the problem whether i is legiimate is solved by force majeure fat such Umes even the extreme traditionalist socety must come to Some sort of terms with the surrounding and eneroaching innovation, Te may ofcourse decide to reject itm tto. and withdraw from it. but this solution is rarely wiable for lengthy periods The belie that the present should reproduce the past normally inl w rate of historic change, for otherwise It would nelther be nor seem to be cease. except atthe cost of immense Soctal effort anil the sort of isolation just PTETEY to Tax withthe Amish ad”similar-serlarians in the modern USA). Sa-long as ange ~ demographic. technological or otherwise ~ is suliciently tradual to be absorbed, a it were, by increments, t can be absorbed Ino the formalised socal past in the form of x mythologled and perhaps ritualized history. by a tact modification of the system of beliefs, be ‘stretching’ the framework, or in other ways, Even very drastic single steps of change may be so absorbed, though perhaps at reat psycho-social costs, as with the forced conversion of Indlans to Catholicism after the Spanish conquest, If this were not soit would be impossible forthe very substantial amount ef cumulative historical ‘ange Which every recorded society has undergone to have taken place, without destroying the force of this sort of normative te ‘ionalism, Yet is sll dominated much of ruralsocety in the nineteenth and even twenteth centures, though ‘what we have always done’ must plainly have been very diferent, even among Bulgarian peasarts in 1830 from what it had been in 1150. The belie that ‘radional socety’ i state and unchanging is a myth of valgar socal scence, Nevertheless, up to certain point of change, Kecan remain “traditional the mould ofthe past continues to shape the present, oi supposed to, ‘Admittedly to fh one's eyes upon the traditional peasantry, however reat its numerical importance, is somewhat to bias the argurneat In most spect sac pessantres are often merely one part of more comprehensive scio-conomic or even poltical system within which Somewhere changes take place uninhibited by the peasant version of tradition, or within the framework of traditions allowing for greater Hexiblity, for example urban ones. So long as rapid change somewhere within the system docs not change the-inlemalinsiutions-and relations in ways for which the pist-oroxides-no_gulde,loclld changes can Take place rapidly. They may even be abeorbed back into a stable sysiem of elles, Peasants will shake their heads over ityedwellers, notriously and proverbally ‘always seeking something few’, the respectable city-dwelles over the nobility at court, dixily pursuing an ever changing and immoral fashion. The dominance of the past doesnot imply an image of socal immoblity. Is compatible with eyalcal views of historc change, and certainly with regression And catastrophe (that is fllure t reproduce the past). What itis incompatible with tthe idea of continuous progress, 1 When social change accelerates or transforms the society beyond a ‘ean point, the past must cease to be the pater ofthe present, ‘ani can at best become the model or. “We ought to return to the wwaye of our Torelithers" when we no Tonge tread them automatically or can be expected to. 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