John Clark Ridpath

What was the Method — the manner, the process, or processes — by which man came into conscious being on our planet, rising into rationality, asserting his sway as the principal inhabitant of the earth, and discovering in himself the …

The religious instinct is found to have been deeply implanted in nearly or quite all the peoples of the world. This was true in the dawn and morning of history, and it is still true at the high noon of nationality, power, and greatness.

At length...man...emerges into the domain of the higher arts. Here he becomes truly ideal. Here he adorns as well as constructs. Here by the use of color and form he gives outline and substance to the things perceived in vision and dream.

Ethnic history...regards the human being as a maker—a maker of houses first, and of all things afterwards.

Man is a speaking animal. No other characteristic of his nature is more universal or prevailing. Speech is the invariable index of the intellectual and moral condition of the human kind.

The author...does not flatter himself that he has greatly enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge, but claims rather to have cleared somewhat the horizon in this part and in that, to have visited in thought and reflection some …

Ethnic history is especially rich in the suggestions which it offers for illustration. It seems to call loudly for drawings and type-pictures and charts, to the end of a clearer and more vivid apprehension of the subject under …

We are now at the beginning of a vast and varied scholarship devoted to an exposition of the human family, and of the various parts into which our race has differentiated.