 The historical consciousness of the finitude of every historical phenomenon, every human or social state, of the relativity of every sort of belief, is the last step toward the liberation of man. With it, man attains the sovereign power to wring from every experience its content, to surrender wholly to it without prepossession…. Every beauty, every sanctity, every sacrifice, re-lived and expounded, opens up perspectives which disclose a reality…. And, in contrast with the relativity, the continuity of the creative force makes itself feel as the central historical fact. (quoted in Hodges 1944: 33–34).