历史学归根到底无非是人类社会一种较为特殊的文化形式 ,故其功能本质上也是一种合精神性、中介性和传播性于一体的文化性功能。它首先表现为文化形态 ,即由史学的文化特性所决定的对人类文化意识领域所具有潜在作用与影响 ,包括促进人类的自我认识和把握 ,进行人类文化知识的保存和增殖 ,提供将历史、现实和未来统一起来的双向思维模式等。在此基础上 ,进而转化为社会表现形态 ,即史学在一定社会条件下所起的具体作用。在史学功能由文化形态向社会表现形态的转化过程中 ,必然要受到社会环境、史学研究者的思想观念和史学受众状况等因素的影响 ,从而出现某种程度上的变异现象 In the final analysis, history is nothing more than a special kind of cultural form of human society. Therefore, its function is essentially a kind of cultural function integrating spirituality, mediation and communication. It first manifests itself in the form of culture, which is determined by the cultural characteristics of historiography and has the potential to affect human cultural awareness. It includes promoting human self-awareness and understanding, preserving and multiplying human cultural knowledge, providing historical, Reality and the future of the two-way unified thinking mode. On this basis, and then transformed into social manifestations, that is, history under certain social conditions played a specific role. In the process of transforming the historiography function from the cultural form to the social representation form, it is bound to be influenced by some factors such as the social environment, the ideological concepts of the historians and the status of the historical audience, so that some degree of variation occurs