ABSTRACT
All histories appear as unbroken chains of events, occurrences, mores, institutions: they appear as a ‘flow’. The organization of historical material requires ‘cutting out’ certain loops of the chain in order to enlarge them. Different historiographical works use different (stronger or weaker) magnifying glasses, but all use some. The loops not magnified are the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ of the subject matter of a historiographical work. ‘Before’ and ‘after’ are taken into considera tion in proportion to their ‘size’: the stronger the magnifying glass is, the less relative importance is assigned to them.
