Modern Man and "The Old Days"

I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about history. ... To us the present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. In his mind the present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called "the old days"—a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armor, etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond the old days comes a picture of "primitive man." He is "science," not "history," and is therefore felt to be much more real than the old days. In other words, the prehistoric is much more believed in than the historic.

C.S. Lewis, Christian Apologetics essay

This still rings true which does account for the rising inability to understand "context" of people's writings and actions in "The Old Days" which do not conform to modern thinking. On only one action deemed inappropriate may great men and women be judged to be evil. All because they are not in the days we live in ourselves.