Remarkably few sketches of universal history by one single author have been written. One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade’s _Martyrdom of Man_. This _dates_, as people say, nowadays, and it has a fine gloom of its own, but it is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process. Mr. F. S. Marvin’s _Living Past_ is also an admirable summary of human progress. There is a good _General History of the World_ in one volume by Mr. Oscar Browning. America has recently produced two well-illustrated and up-to-date class books, Breasted’s _Ancient Times_ and Robinson’s _Medieval and Modern Times_, which together give a very good idea of the story of mankind since the beginning of human societies. There are, moreover, quite a number of nominally Universal Histories in existence, but they are really not histories at all, they are encyclopædias of history; they lack the unity of presentation attainable only when the whole subject has been passed through one single mind. These universal histories are compilations, assemblies of separate national or regional histories by different hands, the parts being necessarily unequal in merit and authority and disproportionate one to another. Several such universal histories in thirty or forty volumes or so, adorned with allegorical title pages and illustrated by folding maps and plans of Noah’s Ark, Solomon’s Temple, and the Tower of Babel, were produced for the libraries of gentlemen in the eighteenth century. Helmolt’s _World History_, in eight massive volumes, is a modern compilation of the same sort, very useful for reference and richly illustrated, but far better in its parts than as a whole. Another such collection is the _Historians’ History of the World_ in 25 volumes. _The Encyclopædia Britannica_ contains, of course, a complete encyclopædia of history within itself, and is the most modern of all such collections.[1] F. Ratzel’s _History of Mankind_, in spite of the promise of its title, is mainly a natural history of man, though it is rich with suggestions upon the nature and development of civilization. That publication and Miss Ellen Churchill Semple’s _Influence of Geographical Environment_, based on Ratzel’s work, are quoted in this _Outline_, and have had considerable influence upon its plan. F. Ratzel would indeed have been the ideal author for such a book as our present one. Unfortunately neither he nor any other ideal author was available.[2]