A line in Simon Jenkins’s book ‘A short history of Europe’ reads: “Those who cannot speak history to each other has nothing meaningful to say.” It is quite wasteful and arrogant of anyone to go about living without knowing anything about the past, whether that of their immediate surrounding and family or of the general world as a whole. Besides, at some point all our histories come together to paint a full yet still developing picture of mankind.
Despite the courage that one would need to even convince himself to open the pages of history in this day and age of constant distractions and folly pleasures, he, like myself, would find himself overwhelmed by the question: ‘where to start from?’. There is so much to know, both in nearer proximity and afar. Yet always, there’s with everyone a compass to heed them, called instinct. Should one be able to quiet down the debilitating noises of suggestions and confusions in one’s head, the impressions of outward trends and the pressure of populism, then one shall find a rather timid but promising voice of one’s own interest and curiosity.
Suffering, in forms of confusion, frustration, and disappointment, nonetheless remains a precondition to finding that which you desire.
For me, the calling came from my curiosity for philosophy, for wisdom and understanding life, from having heard of big names like Socrates and Plato, and Greek and Roman empires. That calling, after much trial and error, led me to Will Durant’s book ‘The Story of Philosophy’. Despite my earnestness for reading it, I dragged myself for months to finish the book and learned almost nothing out of it. I was not ready – yet. In couple of months, I will be rereading that book again, and I know I am ready this time; for I retain the same excitement for reading it and this time I’m familiar with the philosophers that I wasn’t then.
Written along with his wife, Ariel, ‘The Lessons of History’ is Durant’s third book that I’ve read now, and just like his previous book that I read last year ‘Fallen Leaves’, this too is a book of not only life-long wisdom, but of epochs-long wisdom! Jenkins in his book emphasized on the coherency of history, Durant goes even further by extracting the key lessons from it.
With these thirteen essays that are based upon their life-long works on history and philosophy, the Durants have done an incredibly grand and serviceable task of illuminating our minds on our collective history and the lessons we can learn from each of its components.
This book starts humbly with doubts about whether studying history is worthwhile at all, but ends with a provenly powerful positive. In the first essays, history is told with respect to Earth and Biology, and how vulnerable we are to our environment. Following, the essays of Race and Character tell how one group is inherently different from the other yet how greatness can be achieved despite our differences. Next, essays on Morals and Religion show the interdependency of one on the other, and how today’s world has come to be deprived of them both. Then, the essays on Economics, Socialism, and Government show history in terms of production and exchange and the systems that were used to carry them out, and the different forms of states that ruled over the masses.
The latter essays on War and Growth & Decay respectively proves how wars have been history’s constant, and that growth and decay are intertwined and occurs simultaneously often so. The final essay on Progress summarizes the story of mankind so far in a bitter-sweet duality; where the Durants first despair at the modern condition of man with his all-time highest potential and all-time lowest sense of purpose and direction, yet immediately after cheers up the mood by looking at history as the ‘a remembrance of generative souls, a celestial city, and a spacious country of the mind’, and encourages us to pass on the torch of light and wisdom down the ages.
Ratings: 5/5 ***** July 29, 2021_