[In the 16th century] one has only the difficulties involved in feeding a baby if the mother’s milk ran dry. —Philippe Aires—
Scientific progress has brought our society to the point where such a disaster as a milkless mother need have no consequences for her or her infant. Clean water, sewage disposal, immunization, and a widely available varied diet ensure relatively good health for millions. Sometimes this tempts us to look at the past as if it were another species. People had the same feelings four hundred years ago as we have today. Life was brutally hard; no families expected that all the children born would survive to maturity; people were old at 35 and often dead at 45.
But they loved, feared, raged and sought spiritual peace as we do. Visiting old cemeteries is a moving experience, and an exercise for the imagination. Here is a man who buried three wives; here is a family that lost four children in four years. We can reconstruct a different world in an hour or two and give ourselves an occasion for gratitude.
Imagine myself into the difficulties of the past can broaden my sympathies for the present.