The beast lives unhistorically; for it ‘goes into’ the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder ... But man is always resisting the great and continually increasing weight of the past; it presses him down and bows his shoulders.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History (Indianapolis, 1949), p. 5.

If the past is ‘dead’, it dances, a lively corpse indeed, on new graves everywhere almost every day in whatever kind of time.

– Harold Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe (Cambridge, MA, 1989), p. 121.

THE past has a social purpose of stressing the virtues of courage, endurance, and sacrifice. Picturesque folkloric characters such as Robin Hood and Nicholas Chauvin become models for selflessness and patriotism. The term chauvinisme, which appeared in France by the 1840s, for instance, did not carry any negative connotations. Instead, it helped the nation-state to inculcate a sense of oneness in its people, who began to say ‘Nouns sommes tous français, Chauvin’. The past, thus, has a double mission. It is both therapeutic and vital political ammunition.