Cyclopedia Universal History e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Within the present century the motives for writing History have been greatly intensified. First of all, the vision of the historian has been considerably widened by the enlargement of geographical knowledge and the establishment of the hitherto uncertain limits of cities and states. By this means not a few of the puzzling and contradictory aspects of the old-time annals have been brought into clearer light and truer proportion. More particularly in Ancient History has accurate geographical information contributed to the completeness and perspicuity of the narrative.<br><br>The rectification of Chronology, also, has gone forward with rapid strides, and the result has been no less than the writing anew of whole paragraphs in the earlier chapters of human history. If to this we add the splendid achievements in the department of Archaeology, in deciphering the hitherto mute records of antiquity, and in interpreting the significance of the architectural monuments so abundant in most of the countries where civilization has flourished, we shall find a large, even an imperative, motive for reviewing and re-writing the records of the Ancient World.<br><br>It is, however, most of all, the Scientific spirit of the nineteenth century which has demanded, at the hands of the historian, an additional guaranty for the accuracy of his work. This spirit is abroad in all the world, and prevails most, of all in the highest departments of human thought and activity. It has not hesitated to demand that History shall become a science. It has challenged or rejected the value of all historical writings that are not pervaded with the scientific method and modeled on the inductive plan. All this is well; the historian must scrutinize the foundations of his work and the validity of his structure.<br>It is to motives such as these that the great historical works of our century owe their origin. But for such reasons, Wilkinson, Ebers, Rawlinson, Duncker, and Curtius