Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
Is not the history of civilization, in the most extended sense of this word, the history of mankind in a social state, one of the most important of all our studies?
About twenty years ago, consulting less my talents than my zeal, I undertook to retrace this history, and in 1813, I published an introduction, in order to give an idea of the manner in which I thought it should be treated.
This essay received some encouragement, which only convinced me of the necessity of examining more profoundly so important a subject. The history and origin of the sciences occupied a large place in those researches, in which I was engaged, and I was soon convinced that it was impossible to have a just idea of the extent to which the sciences had been carried, among the ancients, without examining the kind of knowledge employed by the founders of those sciences, in working the wonders related in their annals. In the course of this inquiry, I discovered that much information was shut up in the temples, and employed there, during many ages, to excite either wonder or fear; but, in the flight of time, decaying and at last fading altogether away, leaving behind only imperfect traditions, which have since been ranked as fables. The attempts to restore life to these ancient intellectual monuments, accomplished a part of my task which, at the same time, filled up a great period in the history of the human mind. My treatise on this object soon became too ample to form merely a part of the principal work for which it was originally intended. It was easy to detach it, although connected with the object which I had proposed to myself to attain; and thus separated, it forms a whole, susceptible of special interest.
I shall content myself with bearing in remembrance the principle which has guided me in my various researches: that principle which distinguishes two very strongly marked forms of civilization, the fixed form, which formerly governed almost the whole world, and which still subsists in Asia; and-the perfectible form, which more or less reigns throughout Europe, although it is not there fully developed; nor has it as yet, borne all those fruits which its elements permit us to anticipate in its progress to perfection....
