Die taak van die historikus

Inaugural lecture--Department of History, Rand Afrikaans University, 18 February 1970@@The task of the historian will always be to explain man's past to him, because without this knowledge man is unable to comprehend the present circumstances. The necessity and need of man to know his past is one of the features of the process of civilization because the future must be built on what has been achieved in the past. The task to explain the past places on the historian certain duties. He must always try to give a truthful account of the events of the past. He must broaden his mind by obtaining a comprehensive knowledge of the different sciences which also deal with the past, e.g. archaeology, anthropology, palaeology, biology and geology. The historian can never divest himself from what in German is called the "Zeitgeist". That means that the historian always sees the past in a certain light. From this it follows that history can never be final. Every generation interprets the events of the past in the light of certain views which are prevalent at a certain moment.