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and if the words seem here and there a little vague, well, one cannot always be precise in the broad matters of human contemplation.

I thank my friends, Mark Barr and Arthur C. McGiffert, President of Union Theological Seminary, for reading parts of the manuscript, and Professors Lawrence J. Henderson, of Harvard, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, of Columbia University, for reading the proof. The criticisms of such men naturally have been of great use to me.

HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR.

NEW YORK, June 1923.

CHAPTER I

CONSIDERATIONS

I

THEME AND METHOD

IN the perturbed and shaken world in which we move to-day, one may steady himself by contemplating the pointings of history. Antecedent courses of events bear upon the present social and political situation, and carry prophecies touching the prospects of mankind. The historical material is complex and voluminous. Its mass would tax encyclopaedias. Its diversity, its mottled hue, its dissidence and contrariety, its way of seething when constrained, and boiling over when compressed, embarrass the attempt to draw its total pertinency within the meshes of an argument. The entire significance of history will not be harnessed to the proof of any definite thesis. The day of such attempts has passed by, or is not yet.

Still I have a theme, if not a thesis. Realizing the insufficiency of my argument and the inconclusiveness of my proofs, I propose to supplement

B

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