Social England, Vol. 1: A Record of the Progress of the People in Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Industry, Commerce, Science, Literature and

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Excerpt from Social England, Vol. 1: A Record of the Progress of the People in Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Industry, Commerce, Science, Literature and Manners, From the Earliest Times to the Present Day Such a treatment of the history of a people must obviously follow one or other of two methods. Either their forward movement, from the first rude and simple beginnings of Society to the complexity of modern life, may be viewed throughout as a whole, or the progress made by them in all the various departments of human activity may be examined period by period, in detail. In other words, we may take up a position from which we can survey the entire array of our civilising forces in their wide-winged advance, or we may collect reports from those who have separately followed the onward march of each of the great divisions of which the army is composed. Either method has its advantages, and either its drawbacks. The former undoubtedly presents us with a picture more impressive to the eye, but the latter yields results less bewildering to the mind. What is lost to the imagination through the employment of this method is the gain of the understanding, and perhaps no other justification is needed for its adoption in a work of this kind. For it may at least be claimed for a Social History of England compiled on this principle, that if it will not of itself enable the reader to comprehend the entire subject in all its vast proportions, it is the best preparation which he could have for an attempt to grapple with that formidable task. A powerful imagination, aided by exceptional cleamess of head and tenacity of memory, might possibly attack so many-sided a subject en bloc with some prospect of success, but for the great majority of mankind a patient study of it, detail by detail, must precede any attempt to survey it as a whole. 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.