Fisher - A history Europe (complete edition in one

06-07-2015, 2:17
Aukcja w czasie sprawdzania nie była zakończona.

Cena kup teraz: 79.99 zł

Użytkownik condino

numer aukcji: 5487055895

Miejscowość Kraków

Koniec: 06-07-2015 02:41:41

Fisher - A history Europe

Complete edition in

One volume

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stan dobry-

Stron 1301

Okładka płócienna

Wydawnictwo: London Edward Arnold & CO. 1946 (?)

PREFACE

1 begin this book with neolithic man and conclude with Stalin and Mustapha Kemal, Mussolini and Hitler. Between these rough and rugged frontiers there are to be found some prospects flattering to human pride which it is a pleasure to recall to memory, the life-giving inrush of the Aryan peoples, the flowering of Greek genius, the long Roman peace, the cleansing tide of Christian ethics, the slow reconquest of classical learning after the barbaric invasions, the discovery through oceanic travel of the new world, the rationalism of the eighteenth, and the philanthropy and science of the nineteenth centuries. One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one afe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen. This is npt a doctrine of cynicism and despair. The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one generation may be lost by the next. The thoughts of men may flow into the channels which lead to disaster and barbarism.

My opening themes are Greece and Rome, barbarism and Christianity. The discovery and colonization of the new world, the rise of nation states and the full development of the capitalistic system, belong to a later but still, having regard to the six thousand years of civilized life upon the planet, relatively recent period. Steam and electricity are more recent still. It is possible that two thousand years hence these two scientific inventions may be regarded as constituting the " Great Divide " in human history.

Book III describes The Liberal Experiment, using the adjective Liberal in no narrow party sense, but as denoting the system

of civil, political and religious freedom nqw firmly established in Britain and the Dorninionsi as well as among the French, the Dutch, the Scandinavian and American peoples. And if I speak of Liberty in this wider sense as experimental, it is not because I wish to disparage Freedom (for I would as soon disparage Virtue herself), but merely to indicate that after gaining ground through the nineteenth century, the tides of liberty have now suddenly receded over wide tracts of Europe. Yet how can the spread of servitude, by whatever benefits it may have been accompanied, be a matter for congratulation? A healthy man needs no narcotics. Only when the moral spine of a people is broken may plaster of Paris become a necessary evil.

For extended bibliographies the reader is referred to the Cambridge Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Histories, to the authorities cited in J. B. Bury's edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Lavisse's Mistoire de France, Stubbs' Constitutional History of England, and other standard histories. I have confined myself to drawing attention at the end of each chapter to a few illustrative books, choosing by preference" those which are modern and accessible in the English or French languages.

T have to thank my wife, Mr. Leopold Wickham Legg and Mr. David Ogg for their great kindness in reading the proofs; Mr. D. A. Reilly, of All Souls College, for several useful suggestions with respect to the opening chapters; and, for much valuable counsel in the later part of the work, my old friend Sir Richard Lodge, who at eighty years retains > unimpaired his remarkable gifts of historical judgment and information.

H. A. L. FISHER.

January, 1936.