Task of the Educational Reformer vii
and Thebes — as those with which the student of world-history is most concerned. The merest tyro can arrange them in proper time' sequence — they, almost arrange themselves — the confusion of ideas alluded to above is impossible. In this volume the division of history into these three parts is definitely advocated.
All that I hope for is to stimulate others to work at this great task — the discovery of that irreducible minimum of history from which its practical lessons can be learnt. Two notable object-lessons of the importance of the subject have recently been (one might indeed say still are) before the public. The Colonial Conference has met and broken up; it is an event which may be big with fate for the British Empire: it may involve issues no less momentous than those of national existence. Has an intelligent attempt been made to utilize the lessons of history? Have the experts been even called upon for their opinions? Have we not here a problem similar to that which confronted Pericles, Epaminondas, and Isocrates, and the failure to solve which involved the ruin of Hellas?
Again, without attempting to claim any credit for the prophecy of coming trouble in India in the last volume (which all of us who knew something of the East foresaw), I will merely say, Has any attempt been made to apply the teaching of history to the problem? I have devoted a number of chapters to India, in the hope that they may be of use. to visitors to that 'wonderland' of ours, where the lessons of history can be learned from living books — books in which the great message of the East to the West is always to be read. Those books (to continue the metaphor) are located in a museum or library to the adornment of
