I just like the way this is worded...

"Since man is a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the earth, a spore of his species. a scion of his race, a composite of body, character, and mind, a member of a family and a community, a believer or douter of a faith, a unit in an economy, perhaps a citizen in a state or a soldier in an army, we may ask under the corresponding heads-astronomy, geology, geography, biology, ethnology, psychology, morality, religion, economics, politics, and war-what history has to say about the nature, conduct, and prospects of man. It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusion. We proceed." - Will and Ariel Durant The Lessons of History.