Tue Ovruxe or History. Vol. I. By H. G. Wells. George Newnes. 22s.
6d, net.
The critic of this plain history of life and mankind is divided between two sentiments—amazement at the audacity of Mr, Wells in attempting "such a task, and admiration of the manner in which he has carried it half way through. Where Isaac Casaubon failed with his key to all. the mythologies, where Buckle left only a fragment of his "Civilization," Mr. Wells, commanding the fuller knowledge of a later age, has been commendably successful. With the advice and editorial help, we ought to add, of Mr. Ernest Baker, Sir H. H. Johnston, Sir E. Ray Lankester, and Professor Gilbert Murray! Mr. Wells has discarded the dry-as-dust kind of history-writing that is only a record of fighting among the ces of mankind. The Great War will probably be dismissed as a street-corner scuffle. Nor does he concern himself with reigns and pedigrees and campaigns—his purpose is with the procession and progress of the human race through the ages.
Before man appeared the earth had to be ready for him, and so we get a plain but thrilling story of the slow creeping up of life upon the land from its first beginnings in the shallow sea. Over the chasm of millions of years Man shows in his clewentary form—the Neanderthal man who cracked mar-vow-bones in his cave; the Qro-Magnon man, who may claim to have established the Royal Aca-the Azilian man, with his terious painted pebbles. Mr.
lays stress on all these—and the virtue of his record is this that the Neanderthal man (so: is never a skull in acmuseum onl but a living human entity. having passions like our own, and as much alive to the alien peril or the need for an indemnity from the enemy as we are to-day.
Tre CompreneNsive Sw might be complained that too much is said of these early ances. tors of man, but considering the technicality, on the one hand, and the lopsidedness, on the other, of many books professing to treat of prehistoric man, one can only be grateful to an author who has taken a comprehensive sweep, and has been bold enough to sacrifice details by the million so that his picture may be well proportioned. He gives us, too, an outline story of the early Empires—Assyria and ancient Egypt, Nineveh and Babylon, Greece, Persia, and Rome; all definitely linked together, all showing, despite the lapse of centuries, that each was the natural successor of the other.
My, Wells's study of each form of religion that has played an im portant part in forwarding civil. ization, while it may not be profound, is at least sympathetic. In the treatment of Gautama Buddha, and other religious teach ers whose precepts are not woven
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.