GENERAL INTRODUCTION xiii 



It is difficult to deny the practical efficacy of ideas : we should 

 rather endeavour to determine it. 



In fine, to unravel the complicated skein of causality : to 

 distinguish the "accidental" or the "crude facts" of history, the 

 institutions or the social necessities, the needs or the fundamental 

 causes that flower in the form of ideas within reflective thought : 

 to study the play of these diverse elements — contingent, necessary, 

 and logical — their reciprocal action and what may be called the 

 rearrangement of causes : this should constitute the essential 

 object of this synthesis. We must take care not to promise too 

 much. Universal history — because of its extent, its complication, 

 its lacuna?, and the necessity for co-operation — does not permit 

 a complete solution of these problems. Studies more limited in 

 scope and at the same time more intensive alone can furnish 

 decisive demonstrations. But for special studies to be suitably 

 directed it is useful to have before us the general tendency of 

 history as a whole. That is why we shall try, in the main at 

 any rate, to make our work the opposite of unilateral, to neglect 

 none of the explanatory elements, but yet, by careful arrangement, 

 to give to each its proper part. In distributing the subject-matter 

 and in deciding upon the volumes to be included, certain hypotheses, 

 dictated by the whole scope of the work, were, indeed, paramount. 

 They have been indicated at the outset and will appear at different 

 places in the introductions, but they will serve merely as a bond — 

 and that only discreetly. It would not be wise to rely on it unduly. 

 Let it be remembered that the collaborators are free and that 

 their liberty of action alone can give full value to this enterprise. 

 This is no pre-arranged experiment — merely a simple experiment 

 " to see ", as Claude Bernard said. It is not a question of solving 

 problems at all costs but rather of stating them and of introducing 

 into tmiversal history the leaven of true science. 



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Although profoundly scientific in intention this series will not, 

 for that reason, be any the less alive. It has been supposed, 

 quite erroneously , that the introduction of science into history 

 is opposed to life, that the resurrection of the past is the privilege 

 of art. It is analysis which reduces the past to a dust-heap of 

 facts ; what erudition collects is saved not from death but from 

 oblivion. Synthesis resurrects the past, otherwise than does 

 intuition, and better. Its task as defined by Michelet, " the 



