Toynbee distinguishes between history as something that happens and history as an intellectual activity. In the first sense, history is the continuing process by which societies, institutions and circumstances change over time. In the second, history is the attempt to understand those transformations by asking how one situation developed into another and what forces caused the change.

The quotation therefore places explanation, rather than simple chronology, at the centre of historical study. Recording that one event followed another is not sufficient; the historian must examine relationships between conditions, decisions, pressures and consequences. Toynbee also presents change itself as fundamental to history: a situation becomes historically significant through its development into something different. The statement reflects a view of history as both an objective sequence of transformations and a disciplined effort to interpret the causes and processes behind them.

Full quotation

“It will be seen that Man’s social and cultural heritage is the field of history. History, in the objective meaning of the word, is the process of change; in the subjective meaning, it is the study of how and why one situation changes into another. History is the ’living garment’ that the Time-Spirit is always weaving for mankind on the ’humming loom of Time’. At the social and cultural level of human life, time spells change, whether deliberate or involuntary.”