Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/7

 PREFACE HISTORY is apt to present itself, not only to the youthful mind, as a haphazard collection of events grouped round a few interesting personalities, the groups of events being unconnected. A stage in advance of this is reached when we realise that English or Roman or Greek history is the story of the progress of a nation in which interesting personalities play only a part. At a third stage we dis- cover that all history is the story of the progress of the human race, in which individual nations play only a part ; that the separate histories are not isolated, but act on and are acted on by others ; that the history of one period is the outcome of the preceding ages, as the history of the future will be the outcome of the history of the present. This conception of the unity of history as a whole is needful to the right understanding of our own or any other specific history ; and an acquaintance, sound so far as it goes, with the ground plan of general history is exceedingly helpful to the conception. The aim of this work is to present such a ground-plan ' sound so far as it goes,' which may enlarge the horizon of the student with- out such a multiplication of details as will 'prevent him from seeing the wood for the trees.' A. D. I. Gerrard's Cross. Nov. 1910.