My sensitiveness to the historic environment is part of living in the time dimension: it is a feeling for our ancestors and through our descendants, a feeling that we are trustees for the whole of human history. We have to hand down what has been handed down to us and see that it is preserved.

Arnold J. Toynbee
"Toynbee On Toynbee-A Conversation Between Arnold J. Toynbee and G. R. Urban",
Oxford University Press, New York, 1974, p.51-52

The 1780s was a golden era in the cultural history of humanity. In China, Emperor Qianlong commissioned The Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature. The work began in 1772 and it took ten years to complete. The Encyclopedia Britannica was first published in or around 1768 in the United Kingdom and L’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, edited by Denis Diderot, was published in France.

The Complete Library includes 3,503 ancient texts, almost 3.2 million pages and approximately 800 million characters. Indeed, it is aptly described as the 'Great Wall' of Chinese culture.

As the voluminous nature of the entire collection makes it difficult to read, Emperor Qianlong requested his advisers to select the best passages from The Complete Library for his personal study. This compilation became The Selections from the Four Branches of Literature. As The Selections include the essence from the pre-Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, it is considered more valuable than The Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature.

The Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature and The Selections from the Four Branches of Literature are both a Chinese cultural heritage and a cultural treasure of the world.