NA TURE 



>37 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1920. 



Editorial and Publishitfg Ofieet: 



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A "Tour de Force." 



THERE are three fundamental subjects in 

 education — the history of our race, the world 

 around us, and the conditions of health, happiness, 

 and effective work. They correspond to Le Play's 

 "famille, lieu, travail"; to the biologist's "Organ- 

 ism, Environment, Function." Fundamental they 

 certainly are, but it is generally admitted that most 

 men know little about any of them and understand 

 less. We are perhaps deplorably slow to learn, 

 but we are also very badly taught. Especially in 

 regard to the history of mankind it is difficult to 

 forgive our teachers, for we spent so long over it 

 (the other fundamentals were for the "modern" 

 side) and we know that we were not unappetised. 

 Yet for bread we got stones. W'c find the same 

 disappointment among most of our fellows, the 

 dis.'ippointment of half-educated men who know 

 their deficiencies. There arc wel/-known ways of 

 making the study of history grip — the use of 

 If^raphs and charts, the biographical approach, 

 ^With its calendar of great men, the emotional and 

 ramatic methods so vividly illustrated by Dr. 

 layward, and so on ; but they .seem rarely to be 

 sted in schools or colleges, and widespread 

 Ignorance of a supreme subject prevails. U'e 

 Kcept, of course, those who are by birth histori- 

 Jy minded, who learn in spite of bad methods 

 the absence of any; though even those who 

 low many historical facts .st-t-m often like 

 NO. 2657, VOL. 106] 



students who are familiar with fossils, but un- 

 aware of the aeonic pulse and progress of life. 



These bitter reflections are prompted, of course, 

 by Mr. Wells's "Outline of History,''^ which con- 

 vinces us of sin. For here we find what, in spite 

 of its imperfections, is of the nature of a revela- 

 tion — a sketch of the continuous movement from 

 the nebula that became the earth to the League 

 of Nations, a suggestion of the sweep and surge 

 of civilisation, not in one corner, but all the world 

 over, an attempt to focus attention on the things 

 that have counted in the past and are living on, 

 around us and in us, to-day. We use such words 

 as "sketch," "suggestion," and "attempt," not 

 in any disparaging way, but because no single 

 man could offer anything else. The book is 

 called "The Outline." There are probably big 

 omissions, unconscious misinterpretations, mis- 

 taken accentuations, and so forth, but the point is 

 that Mr. Wells has shown his day and generation 

 the sort of history of the world that every edu- 

 cated man should have as a possession in his 

 mind. It is a fine thing to have achieved what 

 has hitherto been called impossible. We recall 

 two books of many years ago — Haeckel's " Natural 

 History of Creation" and Krause's "Werden und 

 \'ergehen " — which traced the cosmic genesis from 

 nebula to consolidated earth, and the organic evo- 

 lution from Protists to Man, and did this in a 

 vividly picturesque way. They may not have been 

 quite so fine as we thought they were, but, errors 

 and omissions excepted, they were fine books. 



Mr. Wells's "Outline " is another such big gift 

 to education. Perhaps it will be a still bigger gift 

 when someone writes another like it from a 

 different point of view. For out of the mouth of 

 two or more witnesses there is some chance of the 

 truth being stated. But, as the author says, the 

 book is an "experimental contribution to a great 

 and urgently necessary educational reformation, 

 which must ultimately restore universal history, 

 revised, corrected, and brought up to date, to its 

 proper place and u.se as the backbone of a general 

 education. We say 'restore,' because all the 

 great cultures of the world hitherto, Judaism and 

 Christianity in the Bible, Islam in the Koran, have 

 used some sort of cosmogony and world-history as 

 a basis. It may indeed be argued that without 

 such a basis any really binding culture of men is 

 inconceivable. Without it we are a chaos." We 

 would also quote the striking sentence which 

 expresses Mr. Wells's appreciation of what a 



I " Th* Ouilina of Hiitory : R<in« « Ptun HUlory of Ufi ud Mankind. ' 

 Br H. G. Weill. KcviMd anil corr«i«l (ditioii. Pp. k^6si. (Lomlon : 

 CawllaadCo., Lid., 191 .) Trie* ti<. ml. 



