How glad I would be to revoke the whole story of my life! Yet how could I do so by my own exertions when the errors it stemmed from were not only my own? Who, in fact, made the error when the silly joke of my postcard was taken seriously? What was it, then, that was mistaken? History itself? History the divine, the rational? But why call them history‘s errors? They seem so to my human reason, but if history really has its own reason why should that reason care about human understanding, and why should it be as serious as a schoolmarm? What if history plays jokes? (p. 288)