And the scientist will come into our History whenever and wherever science has any light to throw upon its problems. To the creators of this work the world is not merely an aggregation of countries under more or less settled governments, nor is a country merely the seat of a political system. They conceive the earth as a part of the universe, as one world among many; and this is the story of a huge ball flying in space, on which men and women live and move, on which mighty nations rise and rule and pass away, on which great empires crumble into dust. It is the entrancing book of man and the universe, the life-story of all nations. It begins with the beginning; it regards the universe, as modern science has taught us to regard it, as a vast unit, in which the life of man is the ultimate consummation. A history of the world cannot be written in a day. It is like an institution--it must be allowed to grow. It would be a purposeless sacrifice in an undertaking of such magnitude to reject any work of building-up that is available, and this History has a rare privilege in being able to utilise the result of the matchless research, the tireless industry, the unequalled knowledge of Dr. Hans Helmolt and the distinguished staff of scholars and investigators who have been engaged with him for many years in preparing a history of the world on precisely the lines laid down in this work. THE MATERIAL FOR A WORLD HISTORY It would be impossible to exaggerate the value of the elaborate research made for Dr. Helmolt by such of his eminent collaborators as Professor Johannes Ranke, Professor Ratzel, Professor Joseph Kohler, and others whose names stand for foremost authority wherever the value of learning is understood, and it is one of the chief claims of this work to recognition that it has behind it all the material collected by Dr. Helmolt’s staff, with all the judgment and skill of Dr. Helmolt himself in co-ordinating the labour of his assistants. A work so universal in time and place must engage many minds. Behind it there must be the labour and thought of many lives. The materials for a world-history cannot be amassed by one man, cannot be gathered together in the time that it is possible for one man to devote to them. A moment’s reflection reveals the vastness and complexity of the arrangements for such a work, the reaching-out into far corners of the earth, the ransacking of historical libraries and official archives; the placing of the result of all this research into the hands of a hundred trained historians, the analysing, sifting, and editing of each part as if it were in itself a perfect whole. A BOOK OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE