The most recent of all the great German world histories, the Oncken series, just referred to, is a work built essentially upon the plan of Dr. Lardner’s series of the early part of the century. Each volume of the Oncken series is written virtually as an independent work by an authority, and there is no close bond between the various component parts of the structure, though doubtless an attempt was made on the part of the editor to have the various authors conform somewhat to the same scheme of treatment. The work comprises about fifty very large octavo volumes, being therefore the bulkiest, as it is the most recent, of world histories.
CHAPTER V
THE PRESENT HISTORY
It is a singular fact that since the publication of Dr. Lardner’s series in the first half of the nineteenth century, no satisfactory attempt has been made to bring the entire story of the world’s history to the attention of the English reader in a single work. While the presses of Germany have sent out their never ending stream of world histories, the English-speaking world has remained utterly inactive, so that until now there has been no work in English less than half a century old that could pretend to compete with any one of the numerous German productions. Buckle’s work would, to some extent, have supplied the deficit had he lived to complete it, yet even his effort was aimed rather at philosophical generalisations regarding human evolution, than at a narrative of historical events.
If we attempt to explain this paucity of literature in so fascinating a field as that of world history, the solution is not far to seek: it is found in the very magnitude of the task. This is the age of specialists, and just in proportion as one appreciates the full meaning of special knowledge of any subject in its modern interpretation, must he feel the hopelessness of attempting to gain more than a general knowledge in a variety of fields. Yet something approaching the knowledge of the specialist should be brought to bear upon each period of history by any one who attempts to write a comprehensive history of the world. It is an appreciation of this fact that has led to the production of such a symposium as the Oncken series, just referred to, and contrariwise, it is the appreciation of the same fact that has led to the relative neglect of so admirable a work as that of Weber. The modern critic is disposed to feel that the writing of a really comprehensive world history in this age is a task beyond the capacity of any single man. When one considers the vast amount of research work in hitherto unexplored fields that is being carried on in every department of history, it becomes patent that no single mind can hope to cope at first hand with the ever increasing flood of special literature. In almost every department of history special bibliographies have been published of late years which are utterly bewildering, even to the specialist, in the wealth of material which they reveal.
To cite but a single instance, the bibliography of early English history, down to about the year 1485, as recently collated by Professor Gross, comprises a large volume of small type. It would be the work of a lifetime for any specialist to deal, even in a cursory way, with each and every one of the works cited in this list; yet this is only one little corner of the field which the world historian must cover. Obviously, then, the world historian, if he attempt personally to construct a narrative of the entire subject, must content himself with a more or less superficial glance at each field; his reading may indeed be wide, but it cannot by any possibility be exhaustive. Moreover, in the nature of the case, he must often read merely to gather material for the day’s task of writing, and no matter what his memory, he will inevitably forget the greater part of the multitudinous details that he has dealt with. In the case of a man of such wide scholarship and such tenacity of purpose as Dr. Weber, it must be freely admitted that a view of the entire range of world history may be attained, which it would be rank injustice to pronounce really superficial. Yet even such a worker as Weber must have depended very largely upon second-hand epitomes for his facts. He cannot have read at first hand more than a fraction of the authors upon whom he is obliged explicitly or inferentially to pass judgment. In a word, great as is the value of works of the class of which Weber’s is the finest example, such works must, in the very nature of the case, be content to be ranked as more or less successful compilations, lacking the authority which the modern critic is unwilling to vouchsafe to anything but strictly original work,—original work, that is, in the sense of work based upon a first-hand examination of the most remote authorities, the only sense in which the word “original” can properly be applied to any form of historical composition.
If we turn from world histories of the one-man type to those produced by a symposium of specialists, we are met with a quite different, but none the less insistent, series of inherent defects.
In the first place, the intrinsic defect of the one-man treatment is not altogether overcome, since specialism has nowadays been carried to such a stage that few men feel altogether at home outside a comparatively limited period, even of the history of a single nation. If, then, one man is asked to write the entire history of, let us say, the Greeks, he necessarily passes over ground that his special studies have not covered uniformly, and in certain periods he must feel himself more or less in the position of the general historian. It would, of course, be possible to meet this objection by having a sufficient number of writers, so that each limited period should be covered by a true specialist; but the great difficulty in such a scheme as this is the entire lack of harmony of view that must pertain to such a work.
A glance at the Oncken series will convince any one how very difficult it is to attain even approximately to a true perspective of world history under the symposial plan. Thus one finds in this series, to cite but a single illustration of disproportionate treatment, that various relatively insignificant periods of modern German history are allowed to fill bulky volumes where a true perspective would have relegated them to mere chapters. It is only from a very prejudiced modern standpoint that the history of Frederick II can be thought worth greater space than the entire history of the Greek world. Where such inconsistencies are permitted there is a danger that the alleged world history will become rather the history of a single nation in its relations to other nations, past and present, than an impartial presentation of the history of nations as a whole.
In the present work an attempt has been made to avoid the pitfalls of one-man treatment on the one hand, and of ill-adjusted specialist treatment on the other. We have made sure of presenting special knowledge by drawing upon the specialists of every field, and letting them present their information in their own words; but, at the same time, we have attempted to avoid the prejudiced view from which the specialist is least of all men free, by presenting the counter views of various students wherever there is failure of agreement among those best competent to judge.
The authorities on whom historial compositions are necessarily based, and who in other works are merely cited by name, or at most by volume and page reference, are here quoted in detail in their own words wherever practicable, always with full credit to the author, and with exact reference to the work from which the excerpt is taken. Such authorities are quoted, not merely from histories in English, but from the entire range of historical writings of all ages. It is hoped that few important names are overlooked. The aggregate number of different works thus quoted (not merely cited) will be about one thousand. These quotations vary in length from illuminative paragraphs to excerpts of many pages, averaging perhaps about two thousand words each. Some fifteen hundred of such extensive quotations are made from foreign languages, and by far the greater number of these have been translated from the originals expressly for the present work, thus representing matter never before accessible to the reader of English. The languages represented in this list of important historical works of foreign origin include practically all the tongues of civilised nations, ancient and modern,—Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and the entire range of European languages from Greek, Latin, and Russian to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian. From all of these the original words of the various authors have been translated into the most literal English consistent with our idiom. It is speaking well within bounds to assert that seldom before has so varied an exposition of cosmopolitan thought been collected in a single work.