If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing. 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. So our finest contemporary achievement is our unprecedented expenditure of wealth and toil in the provision of higher education for all. Once colleges were luxuries, designed for the male half of the leisure class; today universities are so numerous that he who runs may become a Ph.D. We may not have excelled the selected geniuses of antiquity, but we have raised the level and average of knowledge beyond any age in history.
None but a child will complain that our teachers have not yet eradicated the errors and superstitions of ten thousand years. The great experiment has just begun, and it may yet be defeated by the high birth rate of unwilling or indoctrinated ignorance. But what would be the full fruitage of instruction if every child should be schooled till at least his twentieth year, and should find free access to the universities, libraries, and museums that harbor and offer the intellectual and artistic treasures of the race? Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement of man’s understanding, control, embellishment, and enjoyment of life.
The heritage that we can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before. It is richer than that of Pericles, for it includes all the Greek flowering that followed him; richer than Leonardo’s, for it includes him and the Italian Renaissance; richer than Voltaire’s, for it embraces all the French Enlightenment and its ecumenical dissemination. 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 that 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.
WILL
and
ARIEL DURANT
, after spending over fifty years completing the critically acclaimed series The Story of Civilization, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968. In 1977, the Durants were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Champions of human rights and social reform, the Durants continue to educate and entertain readers the world over. For more information on their work, visit
www.willdurant.com
.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SIMONANDSCHUSTER.COM
THE SOURCE FOR READING GROUPS
COVER ART © AJAX DEFENDING THE GREEK SHIPS AGAINST THE TROJANS, REPRODUCTION OF A GREEK VASE (COLOUR LITHO) BY ENGLISH SCHOOL (20TH CENTURY) PRIVATE COLLECTION/ ANCIENT ART AND ARCHITECTURE COLLECTION LTD./THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY
BY WILL DURANT
The Story of Philosophy
Transition
The Pleasures of Philosophy
Heroes of History
The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time
THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION
I. Our Oriental Heritage
II. The Life of Greece
III. Caesar and Christ
IV. The Age of Faith
V. The Renaissance
VI. The Reformation
ALSO BY WILL AND ARIEL DURANT
VII. The Age of Reason Begins
VIII. The Age of Louis XIV
IX. The Age of Voltaire
X. Rousseau and Revolution
XI. The Age of Napoleon
A Dual Biography
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook.
Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Simon & Schuster.
C LICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
Guide to Books
mentioned in the Notes
ARISTOTLE, Politics. Everyman’s Library.
BAGEHOT, WALTER, Physics and Politics. Boston, 1956.
CARTER, THOMAS F., The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward. New York, 1925.
COXE, WILLIAM, History of the House of Austria, 3V. London, 1847.
DURANT, WILL, The Mansions of Philosophy. New York, 1929.
DURANT, WILL and ARIEL, The Story of Civilization:
I. Our Oriental Heritage. New York, 1935.
II. The Life of Greece. New York, 1939.
III. Caesar and Christ. New York, 1944.
IV. The Age of Faith. New York, 1950.
V. The Renaissance. New York, 1953.
VI. The Reformation. New York, 1957.
VII. The Age of Reason Begins. New York, 1961.
VIII. The Age of Louis XIV. New York, 1963.
IX. The Age of Voltaire. New York, 1965.
X. Rousseau and Revolution. New York, 1967.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1966 edition.
GIBBON, EDWARD, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Milman, 6v. New York: Nottingham Society, n.d.
GOBINEAU, J. A. DE, The Inequality of Human Races. London, 1915.
GOMME, A. W., The Population of Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C. Oxford, 1933.
GOWEN, H. H., AND HALL, JOSEF, Outline History of China. New York, 1927.
GRANET, MARCEL, Chinese Civilization. New York, 1930.
ISOCRATES, Works. Loeb Library.
KAUTSKY, KARL, Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation. London, 1897.
LANE, EDWARD, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 2V. London, 1846.