All in all, then, one might describe our intention as the desire to dramatise the story of history,—for, again, what is dramatisation but the mimicry of life? Our various books and sections are the settings for the acts and scenes of the play, and it is hoped that, with the aid of the introductions by way of proem, and the pictures to aid the eye, the characters are made to move across the stage before the reader with something like the vividness of living actors. One cannot quite dare promise that there shall be no dull scenes, but it is hoped that, in the main, the play will be found to move lightly on, as with words spoken “trippingly upon the tongue.”
In particular, it is hoped that our dramatisation of history will present the events of the long play in something like a true perspective, the large events looming large in our story, the lesser ones forced into the background. As an aid to this treatment, tables of chronology are everywhere introduced before the curtain rises, if it be permissible to hold to our metaphor. These are virtually the lists of dramatis personæ. Even the minor characters will be named here, though they act only as chorus, or prate a few lines in the play where the chief personages will dominate the situation as they dominated it in real life, and as they dominate it in the memory of posterity. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon—such figures will loom large in our drama of history; yet it will never be forgotten that the play is not a monologue. The minor actors will be given a fair hearing from first to last.
It follows from this that the main story of our history has to do with the deeds of men of action. But here at the very outset an important question may be raised: do the deeds of men of action then, after all, constitute the great events of history? An affirmative answer may be given with much confidence. Great men of action carve out the contour of history. High culture can only rise from soil fertilised by material prosperity. The swords of Leonidas, Themistocles, and Pausanias must prune the tree of civilisation before the flower of Periclesian culture can bloom at Athens. There are no names like Livy, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil in the annals of Rome before the conquests and the carnage of Marius, Sulla, and Cæsar. But let us hasten to add that the deeds of men of action can never be rightly understood unless they are considered in relation to the intellectual and social surroundings in which these men of action moved. In other words, the civilisation and culture of each succeeding period cannot be ignored. It will be found to be as fully treated here in all its phases as the limitations of space permit. It furnishes the atmosphere everywhere for our picture, or, if you prefer, the setting for our stage.
In a word, then, our work becomes, if its intent has been realised in actuality, a Comprehensive History of Human Progress in all departments of action and of thought, told dramatically and picturesquely, yet authoritatively, in the words of the great historical writers of every age. Recurring to our metaphor, it is the book of a veritable Drama of History; our unity of action being Historic Truth; our unity of time, the Age of Man; our stage, the World.
BOOK II. A GLIMPSE INTO THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
A complete world history should, properly speaking, begin with the creation of the world as man’s habitat, and should trace every step of human progress from the time when man first appeared on the globe. Unfortunately, the knowledge of to-day does not permit us to follow this theoretical obligation. We now know that the gaps in the history of human evolution as accessible to us to-day, vastly exceed the recorded chapters; that, in short, the period with which history proper has, at present, to content itself, is a mere moment in comparison with the vast reaches of time which, in recognition of our ignorance, we term “prehistoric.” But this recognition of limitations of our knowledge is a quite recent growth—no older, indeed, than a half century. Prior to 1859 the people of Christendom rested secure in the supposition that the chronology of man’s history was fully known, from the very year of his creation. One has but to turn to the first chapter of Genesis to find in the margin the date 4004 B.C., recorded with all confidence as the year of man’s first appearance on the globe. One finds there, too, a brief but comprehensive account of the manner of his appearance, as well as of the creation of the earth itself, his abiding-place. Until about half a century ago, as has just been said, the peoples of our portion of the globe rested secure in the supposition that this record and this date were a part of our definite knowledge of man’s history. Therefore, one finds the writers of general histories of the earlier days of the nineteenth century beginning their accounts with the creation of man, B.C. 4004, and coming on down to date with a full and seemingly secure chronology.
Our knowledge of the world and of man’s history has come on by leaps and bounds since then, with the curious result that to-day no one thinks of making any reference to the exact date of the beginnings of human history,—unless, indeed, it be to remark that it probably reaches back some hundreds of thousands of years. The historian can speak of dates anterior to 4004 B.C., to be sure. The Egyptologist is disposed to date the building of the Pyramids a full thousand years earlier than that. And the Assyriologist is learning to speak of the state of civilisation in Chaldea some 6000 or 7000 years B.C. with a certain measure of confidence. But he no longer thinks of these dates as standing anywhere near the beginning of history. He knows that man in that age, in the centres of progress, had attained a high stage of civilisation, and he feels sure that there were some thousands of centuries of earlier time, during which man was slowly climbing through savagery and barbarism, of which we have only the most fragmentary record. He does not pretend to know anything, except by inference, of the “dawnings of civilisation.” Whichever way he turns in the centres of progress, such as China, Egypt, Chaldea, India, he finds the earliest accessible records, covering at best a period of only eight or ten thousand years, giving evidence of a civilisation already far advanced. Of the exact origin of any one of the civilisations with which he deals he knows absolutely nothing. “The Creation of Man,” with its fixed chronology, is a chapter that has vanished from our modern histories.
Nevertheless, it is important to a correct understanding of the development of human thought, as well as of personal interest, to bear in mind the attitude of our predecessors in the field of historical writing, regarding this ever interesting problem of cosmogony. It was not alone the ancient Hebrews who thought that they had solved the problem. Indeed, as we shall see, the Hebrews were rather the purveyors than the originators of the story of cosmogony which they made current; and every other nation, when it had reached a certain stage of mental evolution, appears to have originated or borrowed a set of chronicles which, as adapted to the use of each nation, explained the creation of the earth and its human inhabitants in a way very flattering to the self-love of the nation giving the recital. No one to-day takes any of these recitals seriously, as a matter of course; but, on the other hand, they possess an abiding interest as historical documents. If for nothing else, they have interest as illustrating the advance of human knowledge during the comparatively brief period since these strange recitals found currency.