After turning over tens of thousands of leaves in Latin, French, Italian, German, English, Spanish and Dutch print, one is left with an accumulation of observed phenomena - religious, cultural, literary, psychological - which the mind is forced to coordinate into some sort of general conclusions. As the author has stated in some of the pages which follow this preface, The author was profoundly averse to formulating 'philosophies of history', and though he felt impelled to put in order the impression whihc much reading and pondering have left with him, the author did not pretend to link these impressions into any theory of evolution. There are as many 'ifs' in history as 'therefores'. The phenomena are always interesting, often contradictory, like the strands of thought and behaviour in an individual human being. The author sets down his conclusions for what they are worth - though perhaps, as the Preacher remarks, 'of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh'. But the sixteenth century was a wonderful time.