GENERAL INTRODUCTION vii 



since they will correspond to the great problems and the organic 

 divisions of history ; and each, as far as this is possible, will be 

 entrusted to a single scholar of recognized authority. Each will 

 be an independent work, will carry the imprint of one personality , 

 and will be the more interesting in that it will have been written 

 with greater freedom and pleasure. Each volume will have its 

 own life ; so too will a given group of volumes, and they will thus, 

 from different view-points, form a whole within a whole, partial 

 syntheses within a total synthesis. Our task, in short, is to 

 combine the advantages of an historical encyclopedia with those 

 of a continuous history of human evolution. 



Having thus indicated the general characteristics of our 

 enterprise, let us proceed to the principles which will govern the 

 undertaking as a whole, and to the general character of the volumes 

 themselves. 



To unite Science and Life : such is the formula which 

 expresses the ideal we desire to attain. 



This series is to be essentially a work of scholarship. Not 

 only will it offer the most authoritative knowledge, but this 

 knowledge will be amply documented — as we shall shortly explain. 

 Any learned synthesis, which gives results without indicating 

 the sources, presupposes an act of faith, since it does not facilitate 

 verification and must in a way appear to lead to stagnation in 

 research, since it does not provide ihe impetus to proceed further. 

 But if we set forth an inventory of the work accomplished we can 

 not only indicate all that remains to be done but procure the 

 means for accomplishing it. From the standpoint of scholarship , 

 then, our undertaking will at once mark achievement and provide 

 a point of departure for work still to be done. 



But the aim of the series is not merely to be erudite : it is also 

 to be scientific in the full sense of that term. Scholarship may 

 enable us to prepare and assemble materials : it is science alone, 

 however, that brings order into them. Indeed, one of the most 

 subtle problems confronting the human mind is that concerned 

 with the scientific nature of history. To arrange facts in series, 

 in traditional compartments, to recount the lives of individuals 

 or of peoples, this has nothing to do with science — for its proper 

 work is to generalize and to elicit principles of explanation. 



Without claiming that the method of scientific synthesis can 



