The Hero Was A Big Man; The

American Civilization, From Its Beginnings, Had Combined A Dogmatic Confidence In The Future With A Naive Puzzlement Over What The Future Might Bring.

No Agnostic Ever Burned Anyone At The Stake Or Tortured A Pagan, A Heretic, Or An Unbeliever.

What Is More Natural In A Democratic Age Than That We Should Begin To Measure The Stature Of A Work Of Art-especially Of A Painting-by How Widely And How Well It Is Reproduced?

In The Twentieth Century Our Highest Praise Is To Call The Bible 'the World's Best Seller.' And It Has Come To Be More And More Difficult To Say Whether We Think It Is A Best Seller Because It Is Great, Or Vice Versa.

Our American Past Always Speaks To Us With Two Voices: The Voice Of The Past, And The Voice Of The Present. We Are Always Asking Two Quite Different Questions. Historians Reading The Words Of John Winthrop Usually Ask, What Did They Mean To Him? Citizens Ask, What Do They Mean To Us? Historians Are Trained To Seek The Original Meaning; All Of Us Want To Know The Present Meaning.