The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 392

                                
Southwestern Historical Quarterly

for the children, better medical care. They also seek the mobility in
privacy that cars represent; homes of their own with a bit of grass;
the release from labor that gadgetry can provide, and the variety of
food an ice box allows.
Perhaps others can acquire those advantages at less social cost
than we did-and with more grace. But public policy must reflect the
claims of those not yet sated with affluence, as well as those who take
all we have for granted and explore the possibilities beyond. There
is too much unfinished business to justify private retreat, except as
a private option; and those who would destroy what has been built
in the name of a better life will find their professed humane objectives
receding, not coming closer to fulfillment.
Thus, as we historians strive to illuminate the past in new ways,
a certain reserve of modesty and perspective may not be inappropriate
for us both as citizens and as historians. As citizens we know our
problems are new and challenging; but we also know from the sweep of
recorded history that the release of an "unsatiable appetite" for one
public good, at the expense of all others, yields chaos and danger-
not progress. And, somewhere in the back of our minds as historians
we also know that Hegel was right: "Die Wahrheit ist das Ganze"-
the whole is the truth; and no one of us will ever find it. And if that
piece of philosophizing doesn't suffice, we should remember that out
there, in this vast dissident but highly conformist generation now
flooding the graduate schools, are some young men and women who
will shortly be launching still another wave of revisionism.

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