ABSTRACT
In the prologue, this book was compared to a walking tour. As a walk preferably has an aim, having arrived at this epilogue, I would like to think I have reached a new point of view. Looking back, it seems that this journey through the past has resulted in questions for the present, and thus for the future. When the English historian Robin Collingwood was asked what purpose was served by the study of history, he replied: to bring man to knowledge of himself, and added, ‘the only indication of what man can do, is what man has done;…the value of history lies in that it teaches what man has done and, thus, who he is.’2 Indeed, in my view, in their exploration of the past historians ultimately not only depart from questions which fascinate them in the present, but also want to return to a point in that present, even if it has not been fixed beforehand. For that reason, historians’ stories can, at most, only boast to a limited extent of general validity. That is also true of the questions and opinions with which this story ends.
