Abstract
Historical change occurs at many levels, and the tempo of change is very different at different levels. It is most abrupt at the superficial level of political events, of longest duration in the history of value systems, that is, of culture underlying political, economic, and even social change. For example, all the latter went through great transformation between 1125 and 1275, but the value-system of Abelard's contemporaries, at the earlier date, survived among the contemporaries of Jean de Meung, at the later; and only by reconstructing its continuity can one discern its actual changes of deep structure, toward a new recognition of the relativity of human cultures and away from the contemptus mundi. If the historian can preview the future at all, it cannot be by discovering any law of events which ignores the reality of deep structures.