History

History is a great and wonderful sentence progressing towards a full stop, they say. But the nature of the full stop, that's where they differ, some of them, and when it is that we get there. But before we go any further, how, you will ask, while they're atop the onward moving sentence, are they to know where the sentence is going? They look at the earlier part of the sentence and devise rules - of syntax or whatever - and say this is where it's headed, its inevitable destination. And who has the temerity to argue with syntax? Except they don't seem quite clear about these syntactical rules, it's complex...well no, it's simple, even a fool could understand these rules, or even devise them. But anyway, in short, economics of movement: that's what it all comes down to.

But back to the nature of the full stop and when it is that we get there. Generally it seems we're somewhere on the way to getting there, and probably about to get there, while every now and then someone claims we're already after getting there - it's just that we didn't notice we'd got there. And now that we're at the full stop what's there to do but go on as before. The full stop has been reached. What's more to be said, more of the same please. Otherwise what kind of full stop could it be?

But after a while it generally turns out not to be quite the same as before, and so it must be that we haven't got there yet after all. How are we to recognise when we have got there? When it is the same as before, reality and syntax as one.