CF's Desk at His Capp Street Studio
Where he was living at the time he read
THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION and
wrote
A MIRACLE OF RARE DEVICE
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Reading the entirety of this prodigious and magnificent eleven-volume history is one of the greatest pleasures I have ever known, and one of the biggest favors I have ever done for myself. I can't recommend it highly enough. Get to work now, you will love every time you sit down with this history. I counted 9,955 pages of actual text, and every page without exception is a supreme pleasure to read. For me, time on the clock spent reading was about four years. Time on the calendar was about ten years; I took some time off a couple of times. I was reading for pleasure, of which there is huge portions, and took notes and made cross references in my library, so if you are just there to read, and go faster than I did, you could take less than my four years of actual reading. I'm not talking about any "retirement project;" I was working full time and keeping up with my compositional effort all the while.
Durant's idea was to write what he called "Integral History," which is basically the history of everything important there is to know about any given era. He explains it early on in the first volume. He wanted to do this for the whole planet's history, and at that level, his view of the world was so clear, and his perspective was accurate enough, to predict more plainly than anyone else of his time that Japan would go to war with America. For that prediction alone, made in book form and available to anyone who would read him, Will Durant belongs among the great historians. Why didn't Washington say, Durant thinks the Japanese will fight us, we'd better staff the lookout better? Karl Popper tells us that the strength of a scientific theory is measured by its predictive power. Therefore, what may be called Will Durant's "Scientific History" showed the most predictive power of any other historian's work: I would like to hear from anybody who can find an equally clear prediction coming from any other historian at any time. Samuel P. Huntington comes to mind, but his book is an effort to prove what would be, on a very particular point; since he was right, he certainly counts as a scientist of history. But he was not making his prediction along the way of a general history.
Modern serious historians ignore Durant and his method at their peril. Will and Ariel Durant deserve their popularity. His sheer wisdom and humanity put his thought right up there with Shakespeare, I mean it.
After publishing the first volume of the proposed history of the world, entitled Our Oriental Heritage, in which he makes the prediction that could have saved millions of lives and vast amounts of suffering, if only it had been taken seriously, Durant realized that he would have to specialize in geographical areas of the world, and he never was able to return to the entire-world effort. After several more volumes he realized that he could really only write a history of Europe. But at every opportunity he included as much non-European material as he could; for example, early Muslim civilization is quite competently, judiciously, even lovingly handled, and when as in the case of this civilization, it measures up better than its contemporary European peer, Durant not only doesn't shy from making this clear, he lets you revel in the reality of it. Now I never let some American ignoramus talk rubbish about early Muslim civilization, about which he knows not a jot. Also, Durant makes the point that Muslim polygamy is often serial - why, isn't that what we actually have?
Durant's project was bigger than he could complete; he never made it to the Twentieth Century, and the political history, which is of course the core of his historical method, only makes it as far as the end of Napoleon's career, to 1815 (though attendant personalities and movements reach completion; there is plenty of time to get in full biographies of Goethe and Beethoven, for example). But that is enough to understand the beginning of the destruction, for better or worse, of monarchism, and that is probably the key fact you need to start a progress up to the present. But you will have to read a lot of different kinds of books to get the perspective Durant would have given us; few people have even tried to present this kind of "integral history." He is probably ignored by modern historians for what they would claim is his very hubris at making the attempt he made, and when he writes about something you know a lot about, such as, for me, when he writes about music history, I am disappointed with some things he says. For example, he calls J.S. Bach "The greatest composer of all time," a more professionally acceptable term would be that he was the "Most Influential" composer of all time. So sometimes Durant's enthusiasm gets the better of him. But you can forgive this if you realize he is here to help you love the world and the far vaster project of uniting it. Overall the vastness of his project is met astonishingly well, and always there is Durant's rueful, world weary but compassionate wisdom.
Here are some of the more choice generalizations, offered in context with dispassionate detail (in my words): America forever duplicates the class war of Seventeenth Century England: the North is the common people, the South is the nobility. Here's another: the English Civil War was a rehearsal for the French Revolution - there was even a "Committee for Public Safety" both times. Durant makes clearer than the American public school system ever does the important position of France in world and European history; an ancient bridge to the Muslim world; with for centuries the most formidable military. But the grandest generalization of all, offered only after all was clear, including that it was time for the nonagenarian and his wife to calmly accept they would complete no more large studies, that eleven would have to do, and offer the wisdom that crowns all: you cannot create a political system that guarantees both freedom and equality. You can plausibly attempt to guarantee one or the other, but not both. So, I conclude, the American Dream will never be realized. A sliding scale between the two is the closest you can ever come. Thank you, Will and Ariel Durant.
Now, here is a wonderful serendipity of reading this Story of Civilization: book shopping will be easier for you from then on. I continually strike authors off my shopping list, now that I know some things better. I personally learned that I detest the Puritans that we are taught in grade school to think so highly of. Now I think the British absolutely did the right thing to boot them out of England, and I will never support another American effort that stinks of their narrow-mindedness and ignorance. The damage they do everywhere they go, right up through the George W. Bush era, makes me wonder whether I should accept even one of them, John Milton, into my catalog of writers. Never again will I hesitate over whether to read Pascal - he's out, T.S. Eliot's involvement is not recommendation enough. Durant didn't have this generalization in mind for me to make - he is much more detached than that. But after reading over and over again about the awful effects of people like the Puritans, I say, they're out for good.
Draw your own conclusions, but don't hesitate to read the whole of this wonderful, beautiful, and unmatched Story of Civilization. You will thank yourself.
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First posted 7/ 21/ 2010
Copyright c 2010 by Christopher Fulkerson.