A work so universal in time and place must engage many minds. Behind it there must be the labour and thought of many lives. The materials for a world-history cannot be amassed by one man, cannot be gathered together in the time that it is possible for one man to devote to them. A moment’s reflection reveals the vastness and complexity of the arrangements for such a work, the reaching-out into far corners of the earth, the ransacking of historical libraries and official archives; the placing of the result of all this research into the hands of a hundred trained historians, the analysing, sifting, and editing of each part as if it were in itself a perfect whole.
A BOOK OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE
All this labour can hardly be measured. And if we add to our reckoning the work of illustrating the world’s history in pictures, the task of finding illustrations where they are rare as precious stones, or of choosing them where their number is bewildering, the labour that a world-history involves is, indeed, incalculable. It can only be accomplished by the co-operation of many minds, working over a long period, drawing upon actual experience in every part of the world.
Especially is this so in the present work. There are histories that can be made up from books, but this is not one of them. The BOOK OF HISTORY is not only a great book of human experience, as every history is; it is the product of experience. It could never have been written if the men who write it had not helped to make the history that they write.
THE MAKERS OF THE BOOK
It is a book of history by writers and makers of history; it is a book of action by men of action; it is a book, that is, by men who know intimately the real life of the world. When Professor Ratzel writes of the making of nations, he writes with perhaps an unequalled knowledge of the conditions that have made for human progress; when Dr. Flinders Petrie writes of Egypt, when Dr. Sayce writes of Assyria, they write with the same authority that Sir Harry Johnston has in writing of those parts of the British Empire that he has helped to govern.
The real rulers of the world are not the princes, and among the makers of this book are men who, though the fierce light that beats upon a throne has not beat upon them, have borne the burden of empire and of ruling men. It is the ideal collaboration, that of the brilliant investigator, the scientific interpreter, and the man of affairs, and it makes possible the achievement of a History which we have claimed to be unique.
THE WORLD YESTERDAY, TO-DAY & TO-MORROW
We have the facts from the pens of the men who have dug them up fresh from the earth itself or who know them from experience; we have them treated by the men who can turn upon them the full light of modern science; we have the world as it moves in our own time described by the men who know it from the centre, and know it therefore best.
This is the story of the world, then, yesterday and to-day. And, as history goes on, as to-day becomes yesterday and to-morrow becomes to-day, we shall find in this book a vision of the things that lie before. Out of the deeps of Time came man. Through the mists of Time he grew. Down the ages of Time he goes. Whence he came we guess; how he lives we know; where he goes the wisdom of History does not tell. But the history of the world is young, and young men shall see visions.