If, as seems highly probable, the conservative estimates
of recent scientists that mankind has inhabited the earth more than
fifty thousand years [Footnote: Professor James Geikie, of the
University of Edinburgh, suggests, in his _Antiquity of Man in
Europe_ (1914), the possible existence of human beings on the earth
more than 500,000 years ago!], are accurate, then the bare five hundred
years which these volumes pass in review constitute, in time, less than
a hundredth part of man's past. Certainly, thousands of years before
our day there were empires and kingdoms and city-states, showing
considerable advancement in those intellectual pursuits which we call
civilization or culture,--that is, in religion, learning, literature,
political organization, and business; and such basic institutions as
the family, the state, and society go back even further, past our
earliest records, until their origins are shrouded in deepest mystery.
Despite its brevity, modern history is of supreme importance. Within
its comparatively brief limits are set greater changes in human life
and action than are to be found in the records of any earlier
millennium.
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