THE WORLD'S HISTORY.* Mn. BRYCE in the admirable essay which
serves as introduc- tion to this work remarks that "a Universal History which endeavours to present in a short compass a record of the course of events in all regions and among all peoples is specially exposed to two dangers," these two being, as he proceeds to explain, becoming sketchy and becoming dull. The historian may generalise brilliantly, but yet falsely, chiefly because he neglects significant exceptions. He may keep to well-trodden and safe paths, and be intolerably dull. If he has to choose between these two horns, he will find the first the loss fatal. After all, the first necessity for the historian—as, indeed, for every writer—is to be read. Detail
• The World's History: a Surrey of Man's Record. Edited by Er. H. F. Helmolt. With Introductory Essay by the Right lion. Jame. Bryce, DAL. vols. London; W. Heinemaim. [1.6 net.]
he must sacrifice anyhow, and it is in detail that we have the picturesque. The Cambridge Modern History, which we mention honoris cause, commands double the amount of space which Dr. Helmolt has allotted to himself, and deals with but a fraction of the subject; but it is compelled to pass over striking incidents, great battles, even campaigns, with a few lines
of notice. Turning to Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, we find a. list of some fifteen hundred battles. To give a. page to each —and there are hundreds for which a page would be short measure—would be to occupy something like two-fifths of Dr. Helmolt's eight volumes. The fact is that a "World's
History" must either be expanded to a hundred—we might say a thousand—volumes, or contracted into one ; and the one might very well cost more labour and time than the hundred. Practically, we come to a compromise, which will make the greater demand on the skill and judgment of the historian and his colleagues the nearer it approaches to the smaller limit.
The scheme of the work, we may begin by saying, is mainly geographical. About a third of the first volume is given to a general account of the development of man, to a study of him as a "life phenomenon on the earth," and to a more specialised account of him as he existed in prehistoric times. Chap. 5 is given to America (pp. 180-565) and chap. 6 (thirty-. four pages) to the "Historical Importance of the Pacific Ocean." (These " ocean " chapters recur throughout the work.) The second volume, and something more than a. half of the third, deal with Asia, the remainder of the third being assigned to Africa in the proportion of about two-thirds. to Egypt and one-third to the rest of the continent. It may be observed, however, that Carthage appears in the Asiatie section, as being a Phoenician colony. This is reasonable enough; the geographical method may be advantageously modified by the ethnographical. As a matter of fact, too, the history of Carthage is practically told in the histories of Greece and Rome. The Periplus of Hanno and the more. doubtful story of Himilco are the chief of the few facts which. stand outside these limits. They are mentioned in III., 188,. having ten lines between them. It would be rash to say of this, or indeed of any detail which may find a place in a "World's. History," that the space is adequate. Vols. IV.-VIII. are assigned to Europe. The United Kingdom occupies about a. hundred and forty pages, though it makes, of course, appear- ances elsewhere, as in Vol. VIII., where the events of 1867- 1902 are compressed into three pages. We venture to object to Professor Richard Mayes remark that England "took advan- tage" of Arabi's rebellion to "make herself actual master of the country." The phrase "took advantage" is curiously in- appropriate to the facts of the case. It might apply to Frederick the Great's acquirement of Posen, but not to the chance combination of circumstances which forced us, very much more than half unwilling we might say, into the positioth which we now occupy. Professor Mayr contrives to put a fair amount of anti-English feeling into his three pages. It will be- safer to go back to subjects more remote. In the first volume we may mention with special praise the well-ordered chapter in which Professor Johannes Ranke describes the discoveries of the remains of prehistoric man. Man has been found in the "Drift," a discovery which upset the doctrine of envier, once absolutely dominant in the geological world, that he was not. older than the alluvial period. Whether he cannot be traced still further back is perhaps a question too obscure to be profitably treated, at least for the present, in a work of this kind. Meanwhile we have as good a provisional summary of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages as could be wished.
We pass over Vol. II., which tells us of Japan, China and Korea, Central Asia—n chapter being here interjected on Australia and Oceania—and India, and come to Vol.
"Western Asia," Israel occupying the twelfth of the thirteen sections into which the first chapter is divided. By a curious coincidence, this section has been assigned to Dr. Hugo Winckler, a critic who occupies much the same position as Professor Cheyne, to whom the corresponding division was assigned in the Historians' History. Dr. Winckler is of the advanced school. The "narrative books "—the term "historical" is refused to them—are declared, without reserve, to be of a late period, which practically may be said to coincide with the Exile. That the Jewish people then became "a religious sect" is a very doubtful proposition, and scarcely in accord with what we read elsewhere in world history. That the people learnt much during their Babylonian sojourn may be readily conceded. But if their religious ideas had not had a well-marked consistency before the deportation they would hardly have survived the catastrophe. Israel came back to their laud with a faith broadened and strengthened, but not newly acquired, as Dr. Winckler's language would seem to imply. When we come to the "Beginnings of Israel" we find ourselves in contact with the "North Arabian" theory. The form is slightly different. We are not told of a confusion between Mizraim and Mizrim. The two names are given identically. "This country like Egypt (perhaps as the part of Arabia belonging to Egypt) was called Mussri." All the allusions to a sojourn in Egypt and a deliverance from an oppression there practised are said to be "embellishments." It would be interesting to see what is left when all this has been struck out of history, psalm, and prophecy.
Passing on to Vol. IV., we come to one of the chapters which constitute the most valuable portion of the work, "The Inner Historical Connection of the Nations of the Mediterranean." It is in this line that the "World's Historian" is most profitably employed. The reader who has assimilated these philosophical conclusions as to the general meaning and course of history will go well prepared to whatever special studies he may have chosen. This chapter is the work of Edward Count Wilczek, but has been revised by the editor. As we proceed we come again on Carthage, and find another mention of Hanno and the Periplus,—some repetition is unavoidable in a work of this kind, and it is to the editor's credit that it does not occur more frequently. The mixture of the ethnological and the geographical is, in a way, responsible for this instance. Phoenicia suggested Carthage, and Carthage could not be omitted in a survey of the "Mediterranean Nations." Greece and Rome appear in this volume, occupying together some two hundred and thirty pages. We can but say in the most general terms that the treatment of the subject, as far as we have examined it, seems to be adequate. But it is only less difficult to review a "World's History" than to write it. Generally, we may say of these eight volumes that they are full of original work— originality is one of their special merits—that this work is of a very high average of value, and that it has been skilfully put together and methodised by the editor.
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