Dawning civilization and evolving standards of decency
Will Durant's awesome accomplishment, THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION, has always seemed more encyclopedic than readable, but slowly, very slowly, I have come to the point of connecting events well enough to read through an entire volume. This first volume of the set uses the word oriental broadly in its title. It could have been entitled "Our Asian Heritage". That still doesn't take into account Egypt, although as the author explains, Egypt is functionally more a part of Asia, being separated from Africa by desert and the cataracts of the Nile.
The author makes no bones about the tenuous nature of our knowledge concerning the beginnings of civilization. I am no expert, but it seems that this limited knowledge can hardly be very much different now than in 1934 when this volume was written. Notable is the fact that the author points out the two greatest revolutions in human history as being the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, and it has only been in the time since this book was written that a third revolution has occurred - the communications revolution. But today as then, it seems unreasonable to expect to find very much incontrovertible fact about what happened so long ago. Take what little we do have from the ancient writings and match it with archeological findings and questions arise.
A common theme among the newly arisen civilizations in both the Near East and Far East is the personification of all phenomenon in the form of deities - gods and goddesses. Humankind was considered to be at the mercy of these deities or spirits, which could be innumerable and affect everything. All unaccountable events from disease to natural calamities were attributable to these animated forces. Human sacrifice at one time became a widely pervasive attempt at an appeasement or a promotion of goodwill. Priestly orders gained political power because they exerted authority as intermediaries. The priests became the only ones who could perform the rituals and sacrifices correctly.
One of the more interesting chapters, which evokes the passage of time so well, concerns ancient Egypt. Here the author takes the reader on a tour down the Nile in a vivid and insightful way. The Greeks were very much influenced by the Egyptians, but Herodotus, the historian who chronicled the Egyptians, doesn't mention the Sphinx, apparently covered during his time by desert sand. Of the Sphinx the author writes: "The lion body passes into a human head with prognathous jaws and cruel eyes; the civilization that built it (ca. 2990 B.C.) had not quite forgotten barbarism." In this chapter, as elsewhere in the book, we get a sense of the ebb and flow of civilization, from stoicism to epicureanism, sometimes on the brink of chaos, sometimes dissolving into brutal conflict; but at the same time evolving, advancing through the use of technology. The author notes that it was an advance in evolving decency when humankind stopped eating each other and merely adopted slavery.
The strongest and probably most in-depth treatment is the chapter called Judea, in which the author gives a synopsis of the Old Testament. Whether the facts here are thoroughly up-to-date does not have to be of foremost concern. The point is that there is a distinction made between the obvious myth-making of the day and what might have actually happened. Out of a polytheism - rampant during those early days (with an exception being the Egyptian Pharoah Ikhnaton) -the Hebrews gradually conceived of Yahveh as their single God, but the willfulness characterizing those early deities still remained. The early Yahveh certainly had at least as many human characteristics as divine - being quite warlike and capricious, quick to vengeance, easily slighted, and visiting on a generation punishment from sins of a distant past. There were many rules put into place by the closed caste of a priestly order, and as a result, sin played an important role because those rules could not help but be broken. As the Old Testament proceeds into the prophets, starting with Isaiah, the warlike conception changes and Yahveh changes to a more loving God. The author shows a reverence for the literature of this part of the Bible and enthusiasm for the voices of Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.
The author surveys India, China, and Japan from the earliest known mythology to modern times. Of particular interest is the philosophy, arts and culture, and how the people lived. The subject matter does get very broad in these sections. Some of the highlights: the author's comparison of Sandhya system of Kapila and Buddhism with western philosophy; an explanation of Indian music - the fact that there is an additional ten microtones added to the regular twelve tones; the life of Gandhi; the fact that Taoism was developed in China as a nature religion and Islam never gained a foothold there.
A GREAT MONUMENT, NOT YET FORGOTTEN
Will Durant's STORY OF CIVILIZATION is such a monumental achievement that, like a monument, it is easy to overlook and underestimate. Its eleven volumes, published from 1935 to 1975, sit on the shelf in many an American home, having been purchased for a few dollars as an introductory offer to some forgotten book club and mostly left unread. Scholars tend to pass the title by, no doubt regarding it as mere popular history. Yet crack open the cover of any one of its heavy tomes and you will find within a narrative written in the high style, with an omnivorous hunger for facts and analysis, a delight in depicting the details of everyday life (the streets, clothes, housing, money, speech, labor and laws of every society), a determination to recover and explain all the main battles and events, a progressive approach to social issues (with special attention to women and the contributions of slaves), a sumptuous pleasure in recounting the attainments of the arts and sciences, a remarkably free handling of the gods and their religions (their social service and rapacity not passing without comment), an enthusiasm for broad philosophical speculations, a heartfelt tribute to each of the great thinkers and doers and the heritage they left us, and through it all an indulgent irony that, given a different turn, would bespeak of a world and a humanity as senseless and doomed, yet ever striving, as the dark horror of Joseph Conrad. I know of nothing else in American arts and letters to match it, and, though dated, it is far from obsolete. Reading it today, one can build a broad foundation of knowledge and perspective for more up-to-date and less grandiose offerings.
How did he do it? It is hard to imagine, but judging by his lists of sources, it would appear that for each historical unit (a period, society or people) he assimilated a half-dozen or more studies, such as the CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY, and used them as guides for the basic exposition, peppering his account with relevant materials drawn from his prior erudition, such as the works of German philosophy or English literature, classical architechture or Christian doctrine. He also visited historical sites and museums so as to see things with his own eyes and acquire a personal touch. Some pages, like those on ancient Egypt, read like reports from a sightseer just returned home. And finally he ran his drafts past renowned scholars, so as to gain their insights and corrections. For many a page, however, where diverse facts, skills and sciences are brought together into a harmonious synthesis, it was plain hard work.
OUR ORIENTAL HERITAGE, the first volume in the series, begins, appropriately enough, with the author's definition of civilization, not essentially different from that of Samuel Huntington and his CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS (1996), and then reconstructs, with a ready admission of fantasy, its probable origins in prehistory. The history proper begins with Sumer in a solid, but somewhat routine account, and moves on to Egypt, only recently opened up to the West at the time of his first publication (1935). As the excavations of great tombs were still fresh in memory, the account here can be read in the spirit of "what we know now." Moving on to Babylonia and the Code of Hammurabi, Durant hits his stride: we begin to see, hear and feel the society in our mind and imagination, as in the "trial by ordeal" or the "lex talionis" (the law of an eye for an eye). With a retelling of the great epics of Ishtar and Gilgamesh we are uplifted, then hear the moan of a proto-Job and the lament of a proto-Ecclesiastes, prior to witnessing the fall of Nebuchadrezzar and the crumbling of Babylon. The chapter on Assyria follows as a stunning masterpiece, not just a chronicle of massacres, eye-gaugings and tongue-extractions, but a meditation on cruelty and culture, empire and decadence, revelation and madness, glory and transience. Next comes Judea, with its gods and prophesies, where Durant, with his Jesuit education, is completely at home. For the first time in my life I have seen the order and context of the Old Testament. Durant's breakdown of Yahweh I and II, Isaiah I and II, and the Ten Commandments today might be called a deconstruction, but it is wonderfully clear, supremely knowledgeable and wisely both devastating and humane. If only history had been like this in high school and college, how much I would have learned!
As for the rest of the volume--Persia, India, China, Japan and "a motley" of other nations--I assure the reader: You can't go wrong. If you can't sail around the globe yourself or take a time machine to the past, it is worth the time to read this story and carry on your bit of civilization. As Durant writes: "Sumeria was to Babylonia, and Babylonia to Assyria, what Crete was to Greece, and Greece to Rome: the first created a civilization, the second developed it to its height, the third inherited it, added little to it, protected it, and transmitted it as a dying gift to the encompassing and victorious barbarians. For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, or unchecked fertility. Barbarism is like the jungle; it never admits its defeat; it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost."
Disappointing. Where is the "history"?
I recently found this first book of Durant's impressive-looking multivolume history set at my local library and was instantly enraptured at the thought of a comprehensive tour down through the ages of our known history. Unfortunately my expectations were soon dashed as I began to read. Instead of history, I found one man's opinions and a lot of rank speculation. While admittedly much of history is guesswork because, well, we weren't there, this author stretches that license beyond what is reasonable.
"History" as that term is normally defined means a narrative of what happened, when it happened, where it happened, and to whom it happened. In several hundred pages I learned very little to answer these fundamental questions. What I found instead were rather strained conclusions and sometimes quite enormous logical leaps about cultural characteristics and mores of ancient peoples, often based on the scantiest of evidence. For example, the discovery of cereal grains in a non-native environment is interpreted to mean that a people "must" have already developed agriculture. What about the possibility of trade? What about the possibility that, at that time, the cereals in question were, in fact, native to that area? Large numbers of these types of sweeping conclusions, in my opinion, left me with little confidence in the credibility of what I was reading. Another example is the author's unabashedly Darwinistic bent that leads him to place far too much weight on the reliability of the "Peking Man" and similar fossil evidence. Even he uses words like "may" and "possibly" in describing whether these are, in fact, human remains. However, the extreme sketchiness of this and other evidence doesn't deter him from making rather dogmatic statements about presumed developments during the paleolithic period.
Similar to that were the author's repeated interjections of his own opinions about the development of culture, morality, social norms, etc. Again, as a student of history I want to know what happened, not the author's opinion about what happened. Yet when I read statements about how clothing developed as the result of a regressive cultural movement away from the "paradise of primitive nudity," quite frankly I just wanted to yak up my lunch. Puh-leeze! Can we leave the half-baked sermonizing to those who at least don't pretend to be scholarly? The author also seems to seize frequent opportunities to take jabs at the opinions and conclusions of other researchers. It was almost as if I were sitting in on one side of a petty squabble between a couple of petulant children.
In short, the flavor I got of Will Durant's master work in the first several hundred pages left me deeply disappointed. I was very much looking forward to reading the whole set, but now I cannot see the point of wasting any more time on even the first volume. Just because it's big and old, that doesn't mean it's great.
A fairly good read, but looses me in some sections.
Will Durant's "Our Oriental Heritage" is the first volume in his eleven volume "The Story of Civilization". I picked a leather bound copy of the massive book from Easton Press. My initial expectation, not having read any substantive previews, was that the book would discuss primarily political, military, economic, and social history. After having completed the first volume, my expectations proved incorrect, to a certain extent. While these topics are covered, I felt a greater emphasis was placed on philosophy and religion. Of course, these two weighty subjects dominate many of the ancient civilizations discussed in "Our Oriental Heritage". Shame on me for having false expectations and not doing my homework.
I found the first half of the book more enjoyable and readable than the latter half. The chapters covering the Near (Middle) East, specifically Sumeria, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Judea, and Persia insightful and interesting, especially in today's world-wide political and social climate. Durant's coverage of these early civilization helps the 21st century reader frame some of today's long-standing disputes in the region and their historical backdrop.
Durant lost me in his chapters on India. Perhaps this was due to my relatively little previous exposure to Indian cultural, history, and civilization. Or, as another reviewer has mentioned, perhaps this is due to the fact that the book was written in 1935 and western civilization was just learning about this ancient civilization. His coverage of China was somewhat more engaging and interesting to me. Durant closes with a review of Japan's civilization up through the gathering storm of World War II. Here, he was able to recapture my attention and interest.
In all, a fairly decent read about civilizations that we in the United States are barely taught about in elementary school, middle school, and high school. He may have been better served by dividing the book into two volumes, one on the Near (Middle East) and another on East and Southeast Asia. However, I still plan to move on to volume II of "The Story of Civilization: The Life of Greece".
A 1935 view of history
"Our Oriental Heritage" is the first volume of the eleven-volume history of civilization by Will and Ariel Durant.
It is worth the five stars; yet it is dated (1935) and things change. So does the history's we learn as we extrapolate the new knowledge; things will change. The basic information in Will and Ariel's book is still sound. In this volume they cover Egypt, the Near East, India, China and Japan. This is to the present day. However you do not have time to track down all their great references to economics and morality. This book is packed with references and if you do not watch out, you will forget to come back.
In the section on "THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK", he expands on possible original purposes of the Ten Commandments. Things that Cecil B. DeMille never told you.
There is a good section on Buddha the legend and teachings. You might want to watch this movie to see how they differ. "Little Buddha" (1994).
One side book to read that will cover a lot of the same ground is The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition (Vol 1), The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition (Vol 2).
I know this is a short review. I intend to review the other books in this series separately. So if I missed something in the big picture feel free to let me know.
(24 reviews)
