ut apparent contradictions in his point of view, then, can also be discerned as a celebration of the tension that is necessary for a historian who is to maintain the appropriate perspective on events and trends. Thus the trouble with monumental history is that it relies on "the demand for greatness to be eternal" (Nietzsche Use and Abuse 13), when the plain fact is that the romance of past greatness is no guarantee of present greatness. The trouble with antiquarian history is that veneration of the past as such causes the past itself to suffer: "The antiquarian sense of a man, a city, or a nation has always a very limited field . . . For the things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just value" (Nietzsche Use and Abuse 19). The critical historian is a strong alternative, for such a historian has "the strength to break up the past, and apply it, too, in order to live. He must bring the past to the bar of judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, and finally condemn it" (Nietzsche Use and Abuse 21).
...