教甄◆英文科題庫下載題庫

 
(A) We all know that history, by definition, is about the past. But we also know that history, by definition, ___11____ the present. Whether we write about the past, read about the past, or find out about it by watching television, we can never ___12___ the constraints and concerns of the world in which we ourselves actually live. It’s because we are ___13___ in the present that historical writing is not just about the time of which we write, but also reflects the values, preoccupations and characteristics of the time in which we write. 

To that extent, history is not simply something which is over, gone, vanished: it is a continuing dialogue between the past and the present. In the words of one of the oldest clichés in the profession, all history is in the sense ___14___ history. As experts on the past, historians may be the lords of time; but as residents in the present, we are also, like everyone else, its victims and its prisoners. To that extent ___15___, the study of the past is a present-minded endeavor.