’T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.

The present moment carries its own explanation if you look at it long enough. How things are arranged now shows what must have happened to arrange them, and what the same forces will produce if nothing interrupts. People go looking for hidden information when most of what they need is visible and unexamined.

Take a situation you find puzzling and describe it in detail without theorising: who does what, who benefits, what is rewarded. The history usually becomes obvious as you write, and so does the direction. Careful description is underrated as a way of predicting anything.