A Little History of the World

While his history details many events that were intentionally set in motion, Gombrich pays equal attention to the uncontrollable force of change. Often, he describes the power and enormity of change by comparing it to nature. In Chapter 18, “The Storm,” he uses the sensation of encroaching weather as a metaphor for change. Like a thunderstorm, one anticipates its arrival, but cannot affect it: “We have already heard its rumblings […] but now the storm had come” (105). Extending his metaphor, he describes the so-called Dark Ages as a “starry night” and the Renaissance as a dawn. The inevitability, beauty, and power of natural phenomena create a useful analogy for the overarching changes in a seemingly stable world.

Gombrich also emphasizes the futility of attempting to suppress change. He particularly focuses on the ideas of the Enlightenment and the attempts of those in power to stamp them out. Of Galileo’s forced recanting of his theories, for example, he notes that these ideas and discoveries spread despite all attempts otherwise. After the violence of the French Revolution, European powers blamed the Enlightenment philosophy that had inspired the uprising and attempted to revert to a world without these ideas.