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Excerpt from Larned's History of the World, Vol. 1 I think of History as I do of the life of a man, whose days are but an epitome of its years. They instruct and interest us alike, by showing how that which is has proceeded from that which was, and how things that had been went into the making of things that came to be. The process of evolution is too complex for our understanding of more than some very small part. We can trace but a few of the countless influences from countless sources that stream into the simplest of single lives, and still fewer of the innumerable lines from cause to consequence that run through them all; but there is in every life a certain personal configuration, so to speak, which gives a trend to all the forces acting in it, turning them, more or less, into main channels, mingling their currents or leading them in parallel courses. The true biographer is one who recognizes and represents that trend in the life he depicts, seeing and showing what can be seen and shown of movements in it from birth to death, toward the out-come of character and destiny that appear at the end. This is done very finely sometimes in no more than a biographical sketch. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.