[Reading Note 1] The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson

[Preface]
P.5 If we stop history at a given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition.

How many things and what kinds of a premise block one to understand the "genuine" meaning of as itself. It could be from the one considered as a small facts, in broader sense, to the modern scientific academic system.