“ IT is not perhaps commonly realized that a general Encyclopaedia is more than a mere store house of facts. In reality it is also a systematic survey of all departments of knowledge But the alphabetical system of arrangement, with its obvious advantages, necessarily results in the separation from one another of articles dealing with any particular subject. Consequently the student who desires to make a complete study of a given topic must exercise his imagination if he seeks to exhaust the articles in which that topic is treated. ”

“ The classification of so great a mass of material must necessarily be to some extent arbitrary. Too minute a subdivision might easily confuse the reader and decrease the practical usefulness of the Table. The principle adopted has been to classify articles under as few general headings as possible, and those the most natural and obvious—e.g. Art, Geography, History, &c.
In order to keep the Table within reasonable compass the duplicating of articles in several sections has been as far as possible avoided. ”

“ It was, however, decided to group together under the heading “Franks” all articles relating to the Frankish Empire up to the period when it lost its unity, and with these the article “Charlemagne” was naturally included. Similarly the article “Electricity Supply” might have been placed in any one or all of the sections Engineering, Industries and Commerce, Law, Sociology. It was felt, however, that its proper place was beside the other articles which appear in the subsection Electricity under the general heading Physics. ”