Excerpt from Ridpath's History of the World, Vol. 1 of 5: Being an Account of the Principal Events in the Career of the Human Race From the Beginnings of Civilization to the Present Time; Comprising the Development of Social Institutions and the Story of All Nations, From Recent and Authentic Sources

It is, however, most of all, the Scientific spirit of the nineteenth century which has demanded, at the hands of the historian, an additional guaranty for the accuracy of his work. This spirit is abroad in all the world, and prevails most of all in the highest depart ments of human thought and activity. It has not hesitated to demand that History shall become a science. It has challenged or rejected the value of all historical writings that are not pervaded with the scientific method and modeled on the inductive plan. All this is well; the historian must scrutinize the foundations of his work and the validity of his structure.

It is to motives such as these that the great historical works of our century owe their ori gin. But for such reasons, Wilkinson, Ebers, Rawlinson, Duncker, and Curtius had never written; and the world would still be blindly following the unsifted stories of old. Thus much may be said, then, as to the general reasons for writing History.

The more particular motive which the Au thor of the present work has to offer to the pub lic for undertaking the composition of a book so comprehensive as the title indicates, is this: A desire to bring within the reach of the aver age reader a concise and accurate summary of the principal events in the career of the human race. The historical works produced in our century have nearly all been in the nature of_ Special studies, limited in their scope to a particular epoch. The result has been that the works in question are so elaborate in detail and so recondite in method, that the common reader has neither courage to undertake nor time to complete them. Be fore a single topic can be mastered, he finds himself lost in a labyrinth. The synthesis of different periods, treated by different authors, seems impossible; he turns in discouragement from the task; and to him the history of the past remains a sealed fountain.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.