Note: Like many of you, I have been troubled recently by some of the things we see going on in our society; and so have been searching for any information, historical and otherwise, to help increase my understanding and broaden my perspective. A while back I asked a knowledgeable friend, himself a historian, for some assistance, and he referred me to a quote from American historian and philosopher Will Durant[1] on the importance of education. I started reading more on Durant and ran into this essay he wrote on the nature of civilization. I think it is intensely relevant to our current situation and I was very impressed by it. I am sharing it with you now; I hope you find it enlightening. Here is “What is Civilization” by Will Durant: MA

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“Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

“Physical and biological conditions are only prerequisites to civilization; they do not constitute or generate it. Subtle psychological factors must enter into play. There must be political order, even if it be so near to chaos as in Renaissance Florence or Rome; men must feel, by and large, that they need not look for death or taxes at every turn. There must be some unity of language to serve as medium of mental exchange. Through church, or family, or school, or otherwise, there must be a unifying moral code, some rules of the game of life acknowledged even by those who violate them, and giving to conduct some order and regularity, some direction and stimulus. Perhaps there must also be some unity of basic belief, some faith — supernatural or utopian — that lifts morality from calculation to devotion, and gives life nobility and significance despite our mortal brevity. And finally there must be education — some technique, however primitive, for the transmission of culture. Whether through imitation, initiation or instruction, whether through father or mother, teacher or priest, the lore and heritage of the tribe — its language and knowledge, its morals and manners, its technology and arts — must be handed down to the young, as the very instrument through which they are turned from animals into men.

“The disappearance of these conditions — sometimes of even one of them — may destroy a civilization. A geological cataclysm or a profound climatic change; an uncontrolled epidemic like that which wiped out half the population of the Roman Empire under the Antonines, [2]or the Black Death that helped to end the Feudal Age; the exhaustion of the land or the ruin of agriculture through the exploitation of the country by the town, resulting in a precarious dependence upon foreign food supplies; the failure of natural resources, either of fuels or of raw materials; a change in trade routes, leaving a nation off the main line of the world’s commerce; mental or moral decay from the strains, stimuli and contacts of urban life, from the breakdown of traditional sources of social discipline and the inability to replace them; the weakening of the stock by a disorderly sexual life, or by an epicurean, pessimist, or quietist philosophy; the decay of leadership through the infertility of the able, and the relative smallness of the families that might bequeath most fully the cultural inheritance of the race; a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die.

“For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.

“Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own.

“Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.”

Will Durant

[1] William (Will) James Durant (1885-1981) was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for his work The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975.  He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1924), described as “a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy”. Through his works Durant sought to unify and humanize the great body of historical knowledge, to make it more understandable and applicable to our modern world. The Durants were awarded the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for literature for “Rousseau and Revolution”, the 10^th volume of The Story of Civilization, and Will was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

[2] Antonines, the Roman emperors Antoninus Pius (reigned AD 138–161) and his adopted son and heir, Marcus Aurelius (reigned AD 161–180). The term (which derives from Antoninus’s name) is often extended to include Commodus, son of Marcus Aurelius, joint emperor with his father from 176 to Marcus Aurelius’s death in 180 and then sole emperor until his own death in 192. The period of the first two Antonine emperors (138–180) was one of great internal peace and prosperity, when the sense of security and the reconciliation of peoples was at their greatest throughout the Roman Empire.