The Lessons of History

By Will and Ariel Durant

04 January 2024 - 4 mins read time
Tags: Books History

History and Earth

“When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing.” - Pascal

Life is competition.
- We cooperate in out group–our family, community, club, curch, party, “race”, or nation–in order to strengthen our group in its competition with other groups.
Life is selection.
- If we knew our fellow men thoroughly we could select thirty percent of them whose combined ability would equal all the rest.
- Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way.

Pugnacity, brutality, greed and sexual readiness were advantages in the struggle for existence. Probably every vice was once a virtue.
Morals from agriculture:
- Children were economic assets, birth control was made immoral.
- On the farm the family was the unit of production under the discipline of the father and the seasons, and paternal authority had a firm economic base.
- Each normal son matured soon in mind and self-support; as fifteen he understood the physical tasks of life as well as he would understand them at forty; all that he needed was land, a plow and a willing arm.
- So he married early, almost as soon as nature wished; he did not fret long under the restraints placed upon premarital restriction by the new order of permanent settlements and homes.

There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

Concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution.
In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.

Any revolution against inequality will produce a society that will eventually breed inequality. The only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionist are philosophers and saints.
Every advancement in the complexity of the economy puts and added premium upon superior ability, and intensifies the concentration of wealth, responsibility, and political power.

It is pitiful (says the general) that so many young men die in battle, but more of them die in automobile accidents than in war, and many of them riot and rot for lack of discipline; they need an outlet for their combativeness, their adventurousness, their weariness with prosaic routine; if they must die sooner or later why not let them die for their country in the anesthesia of battle and the aura of glory? Even a philosopher, if he knows is history, will admit that a long peace may fatally weaken the martial muscles of a nation.
Why not commit to a world of peace? If we loose in the historic gamble, the results could not be worse than those that we may expect from a continuation of traditional policies. If you and we succeed, we shall merit a place for centuries to come in the grateful memory of mankind.
- The general smiles. “You have forgotten all the lessons of history”, he says, “and all that nature of man which you described. Some conflicts are too fundamental to be resolved by negotiations and during the prolonged negotiations (if history may be our guide), subversion would go on. A world order will come not by a gentle men’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 Augstus to Aurelius. Such interludes of widespread peace are unnatural and exceptional; they will soon be ended by changes in the distribution of military power.