One of the greatest temptations for historians, particularly perhaps for historians studying the history of ideas, is to impose on the past ideas, categories, or values that were simply nonexistent or that did not have the same function or significance during the time being studied. The roots of the problem are obvious: we live in the present; the objects of historical study relate to the past; and as L. P. Hartley famously quipped at the beginning of The Go-Between,