France, Vol. 1 of 8 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from France, Vol. 1 of 8<br><br>Gentlemen,<br><br>You were given to understand that for some years past I have been doing myself the paternal pleasure of telling my grandchildren the History of France, and you ask if I have any intention of publishing these family studies of our country's grand life. I had no such idea at the outset; it was of my grandchildren, and of them alone, that I was thinking. What I had at heart was to make them really comprehend our history, and to interest them in it by doing justice to their understanding and, at the same time, to their imagination, by setting it before them clearly and, at the same time, to the life. Every history, and especially that of France, is one vast, long drama, in which events are linked together according to defined laws, and in which the actors play parts not ready made and learnt by heart, parts depending, in fact, not only upon the accidents of their birth but also upon their own ideas and their own will. There are, in the history of peoples, two sets of causes essentially different and, at the same time, closely connected; the natural causes which are set over the general course of events, and the unrestricted causes which are incidental. Men do not make the whole of history; it has laws of higher origin; but, in history, men are unrestricted agents who produce for it results and exercise over it an influence for which they are responsible. The fated causes and the unrestricted causes, the defined laws of events and the spontaneous actions of man's free agency - herein is the whole of history. And in the faithful reproduction of these two elements consist the truth and the moral of stories from it.<br><br>Never was I more struck with this twofold character of history than in my tales to my grandchildren.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>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.