My particular line of country has always been generalization and synthesis. I dislike isolated events and disconnected details. I hate statements, views, prejudices, and beliefs that jump at you out of midair. I like my world as coherent and consistent as possible. That is why I have spent a few score thousand hours making outlines of history, short histories of the world, general accounts of the science of life, attempts to bring economic, financial, and social life into one conspectus, and to estimate the consequences of this or that set of causes upon the future of mankind.

In the…