FOREWORD TO THE FIRST SERIES 



/T is not our purpose to justify the plan of our first Section 

 taken as a whole ; it arose of itself. We shall preface 

 each Series with such explanations as seem useful. 



With regard to the first volume, we may observe that its object 

 is not merely to give a resume of all we know concerning human 

 origins carried back as far as possible into the past. It is as 

 much an introduction to history itself as to the problems of 

 History. 



The justification for its inclusion is that it connects History 

 in the strict and accepted sense of the word with History as 

 understood in its broader sense of linking the evolution of 

 Humanity with the evolution of Life on the Earth and with the 

 evolution of our planet in the Universe. It enables us to find 

 a proper " place " for humanity so that its destiny does not seem 

 like a mere adventure or an unrelated episode. To attain this 

 it was above all essential to exhibit the great natural forces and 

 the permanent factors, which in explaining the Earth and 

 Life will explain, at the same time, the evolution of Man and 

 of Society. 



We shall thus see how the " milieu " of our history was formed 

 in the stellar system : in this milieu, detached from the Sun 

 though still dependent on it, we shall perceive life arising — 

 apparently through the action of the Sun itself. We shall see 

 its first tentative advances in all directions and its experiments 

 with the most diverse forms. We shall see it subjected to the 

 complex influences of different habitats, of innumerable vicissitudes 

 and of its own inner properties : to heredity, that conservative 

 principle which may also become an agent of change, and to 

 tendency, an active principle expressing itself in the faculty of 

 assimilation and of association more efficiently than in struggle : 

 and realizing every sort of improvement, until finally, with the 

 human form, we reach that decisive advance — the development of 

 the brain. 



