vi THE EARTH BEFORE HISTORY 



schichte ". In that home of erudition and adventurous synthesis, 

 where a balance between " micrography " and metaphysics is 

 seldom achieved, the arduous labour of historians and a pre- 

 occupation with world affairs have resulted in the appearance of 

 numerous works, unequal in importance and interest, which 

 endeavoured to satisfy, and at the same time have stimulated, the 

 demand for universal history. Some of these volumes are merely 

 collections of chapters, compilations without unity, others are 

 systematized to an excessive degree ; some are co-operative, and 

 are the result of more or less definite collaboration, others represent 

 the enterprise, rash though it may have been, of one man. Yet all 

 possess merits, whatever be the criticism to which they lend them- 

 selves. But there is room for a new synthesis, for a vast 

 enterprise, on new foundations, which shall include Humanity , 

 from its origins, and the Earth as a whole. 



The work which this introductory volume is to inaugurate 

 will have the following special features : 



It will have a real unity : not merely the unity of its subject — 

 history in its entirety — but unity of plan, firmly binding 

 together all the various parts ; and also unity of the 

 activating ideas. The problem with which we are faced is how 

 to prevent incoherence and yet to avoid the opposite error of 

 over-systematizatiou. In the present state of our knowledge, 

 a single individual cannot accomplish this task alone, and even 

 to organize it he must exercise very great discretion. Certain 

 ideas will run through the whole enterprise, but they will not be 

 dominating theories thrust upon the collaborators, and, through 

 them, upon the facts ; rather will they be experimeyital ideas, 

 hypotheses pervading the whole work, and subjected' to the control 

 of actual facts by unfettered investigation, allowing complete 

 autonomy to the collaborators. Our undertaking is thus something 

 in the nature of a vast experiment, to be gradually undertaken 

 under the eyes of the public to the great profit, as we hope, of 

 historical science ; and the ideas put forward will emerge from 

 the test either confirmed or rectified. 



Within this unity of the whole each part will have its own 

 unity. The series has not been planned in terms of large collective 

 volumes, grouping together more or less unconnected chapters 

 written by various collaborators, but as independent volumes of 

 moderate size. The number of these will, therefore, be considerable, 



