Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth,
a spore of his species, a scion of his race, a composite of body, character,
and mind, a member of a family and a community, a believer or doubter of
a faith, a unit in an economy, perhaps a citizen in a state or a soldier in an
army, we may ask under the corresponding heads–astronomy, geology,
geography, biology, ethnology, psychology, morality, religion, economics,
politics, and war–what history has to say about the nature, conduct, and
prospects of man. It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to
compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous
conclusions. We proceed.
