History becomes a celestial city

Present in the photograph above are three of the books written by Will and Ariel Durant, while the inset photograph below shows them late in life. Perhaps the greatest lesson noted by the Durants in their study of history comes in the form of the following words, found in Volume 3 of their 11-volume series, "The Story of Civilization -- Caesar And Christ -- Epilogue: Why Rome fell:"

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars."

The lessons of history often determine survival

Part II

Arriving today is the concluding half of a brief survey of the book, "The Lessons of History," which is a summation of the conclusions, thoughts and beliefs drawn by Will and Ariel Durant after four decades spent studying and writing about civilization as it has evolved since the dawn of history.

This book was written by the Durants after completion of their 11-volume study titled, "The Story of Civilization," and meant to be more-or-less the concluding chapter to their work -- a look back at what history has to say about the nature, the conduct and the future prospects of mankind. Here, then, is the final chapter:

VIII. Economics and History

Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce -- except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy.

Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority of such abilities, in nearly all societies, is gathered in a minority of men. The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history ....

We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution.

IX. Socialism and History

These abuses (price manipulation, business chicanery, and irresponsible wealth) must be hoary with age, for there have been socialistic experiments in a dozen countries and centuries ....

The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.

X. Government and History

Hence most governments have been oligarchies -- ruled by a minority, chosen either by birth, as in aristocracies, or by a religious organization, as in theocracies, or by wealth, as in democracies ....

Does history justify revolutions? .... If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword. If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.

XI. History and War

War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war. [Durant compiled those numbers based upon the year the book first was published, in 1968.] ....

Some conflicts are too fundamental to be resolved by negotiation; and during the prolonged negotiations (if history may be our guide) subversion would go on. A world order will come not by a gentlemen's agreement, but through so decisive a victory by one of the great powers that it will be able to dictate and enforce international law, as Rome did from Augustus to Aurelius.

XII. Growth and Decay

On one point all are agreed: civilizations begin, flourish, decline, and disappear -- or linger on as stagnant pools left by once life-giving steams ....

Life has no inherent claim to eternity, whether in individuals or in states. Death is natural and if it comes in due time it is forgivable and useful, and the mature mind will take no offense from its coming ....

Nations die. Old regions grow arid, or suffer other change. Resilient man picks up his tools and his arts, and moves on, taking his memories with him. If education has deepened and broadened those memories, civilization migrates with him, and builds somewhere another home. In the new land he need not begin entirely anew .... Rome imported Greek civilization and transmitted it to Western Europe; America profited from European civilization and prepares to pass it on, with a technique of transmission never equaled before.

XIII. Is Progress Real?

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again .... We may not have excelled the selected geniuses of antiquity, but we have raised the level and average knowledge beyond any age in history ....

If progress is real despite our whining, it is not because we are born any healthier, better, or wiser than infants were in the past, but because we are born to a richer heritage, born on a higher level of the pedestal which the accumulation of knowledge and art raises as the ground and support of our being. The heritage rises, and man rises in proportion as he receives it.

History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing.

The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.

Lord, what fools these mortals be

Ariel and Will Durant are pictured on the dustcover of their book, "The Lessons of History." This brief, 91-page book summarizes their collective conclusions from a lifetime as students of religion, philosophy and history, and as authors of undoubtedly the most exhaustive account of world history ever written, the 11-volume series, "The Story of Civilization."

The lessons of history are there for all to learn

Part I

There have been more than a few times I have mentioned Will and Ariel Durant here -- as well as in newspaper columns I have written previous to these times -- and how influential their work has been in shaping my own ideas. My estimation of the Durants, for better or for worse, credits them with producing the most significant wisdom offered in book form by mere mortals during the 20th Century.

William "Will" Durant, November 5, 1885 -- November 7, 1981, was prepared to become a Roman Catholic priest until what he learned through his studies drew him away from religion. His next love was socialism, but that, too, turned out to have been only an infatuation as he came to realize the ineffectiveness of it as a political and economic system. For a while, he taught Latin, French and English. All the while, he studied philosophy. His first writing effort was a book still read today and titled, "The Story of Philosophy."

I "met" Will when I was in college and was myself intensely reading religion and philosophy and smoking cigarettes until the room was clouded, very late into most nights. He wrote that he had sought refuge through the study of religion. He had not found it. He said that he next sought it through the study of philosophy. Not there, either. He gradually came to realize that his refuge, his truth, was to be found through the study of history. He hooked me then, and still has me.

Chaya Kaufman, who later became Ariel Durant, May 10, 1898 -- October 25, 1981, was born in the Ukraine and arrived in America as an infant. She was a student of Will's, who was nearly 13 years her senior. She married him when she was 15-years-old. She used her roller skates to travel the distance from her home to a courthouse for the ceremony. Say and think what you will, but the proof of this union is in its longevity: Their marriage lasted their lifetimes. They died within days of each other. All people should be so lucky. They are buried in Los Angeles, and a pilgrimage to their grave site is on my list of things that I would never forgive myself for should I fail to mutter an agnostic's prayer from the earth above them.

The youthful Ariel preferred the company of artists and poets to that of teachers and philosophers, but something between Will, philosophy and history won her over. The couple grew to become full-fledged intellectual and writing partners, as well as household and bedroom partners, and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

The magnum opus of the Durants, there is no argument, is their 11-volume series, "The Story of Civilization." My own warped opinion is that this group of books should be required reading before the conferral of a bachelor's degree from any legitimate college or university. Oh, well. The dilettantes and the pedantics rule, not the realists. Pass the escargot, dear, and make certain the wine list is appropriate for the meal.

"Captain of our fairy band ….
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

(Sorry, Fram the First says, with a laugh on his lips, for making me, Fram Actual, interrupt with those lines, but you know him. The lines were predestined; Will's original nickname for Ariel was Puck. Fram the First absolutely could not resist tossing this quote from Puck into the fray. But, it just dawned on him. Does he actually have to reference Shakespeare, too, for readers to recognize those lines? He hopes not. But, just in case: "A Midsummer Nights Dream," act 3, scene 2. Anyway, moving right along.)

Should a reader here wish to learn more about the Durants, I will use a phrase I am prone to say: Do your own research. You will be better for the effort and from what you learn through reading them. To read the writing of the Durants truly is an intellectual test to determine a measurement of your own knowledge of history and of civilization's march.

My intent with this post, split roughly in half between today and (probably) Sunday, is to introduce you to Will and Ariel through some quotations from their book, "The Lessons of History." I re-read it during my Memorial-weekend excursion. This is not a book review per se, but meant to be a "taste" of the Durants and their thoughts. There only are 91 pages, not counting notes and guides and contents. It is a very simple reading task to accomplish in a brief amount of time. And, I believe there is more wisdom present in those 91 pages than anywhere else short of Ecclesiastes.

(Here we go again. Fram the First reminds me there may be those among us who do not know that Ecclesiastes is a book in the Old Testament of the Bible. It is hereby so noted.)

Ecclesiastes, by the way, was written by the "preacher," who was said to be on a search for the true meaning of life. It also is worth the time to read, and to think about, for anyone who has not already done so. Now, on to the Durant's "Lessons," chapter by chapter:

I. Hesitations

Obviously historiography cannot be a science. It can only be an industry, an art, and a philosophy -- an industry by ferreting out the facts, an art by establishing a meaningful order in the chaos of materials, a philosophy by seeking perspective and enlightenment.

II. History and the Earth

Geography is the matrix of history, its nourishing mother and disciplining home. Its rivers, lakes, oases, and oceans draw settlers to their shores, for water is the life of organisms and towns, and offers inexpensive roads for transport and trade.

III. Biology and History

So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition .... The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection.

Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and where one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically ....

The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed.

IV. Race and History

A knowledge of history may teach us that civilization is a co-operative product, that nearly all peoples have contributed to it; it is our common heritage and debt; and the civilized soul will reveal itself in treating every man or woman, however lowly, as a representative of one of these creative and contributory groups.

V. Character and History

It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife between the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.

VI. Morals and History

We must remind ourselves again that history as usually written (peccavimus) is quite different from history as usually lived: the historian records the exception because it is interesting -- because it is exceptional .... Behind the red facade of war and politics, misfortune and poverty, adultery and divorce, murder and suicide, were millions of orderly homes, devoted marriages, men and women kindly and affectionate, troubled and happy with children.

VII. Religion and History

Religion does not seem at first to have had any connection with morals. Apparently (for we are merely guessing, or echoing Petronius, who echoed Lucretius) "it was fear that first made the gods" -- fear of hidden forces in the earth, rivers, oceans, trees, winds, and sky.

Hear the appeal of the agnostic Renan in 1866: Let us enjoy the liberty of the sons of God, but let us take care lest we become accomplices in the diminution of virtue which would menace society if Christianity were to grow weak. What should we do without it? ....

If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder.

To be concluded in a day or two ....