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The Lessons of History
“If,” said Gibbon, “a man were called upon to fix the period during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the accession of Nerva to the death of Marcus Aurelius. Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people
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Fascinating point about transfer of power during the pax romana
opposed to innovation, but in vital ways it co-operates with it. As submissive natures unite with masterful individuals to make the order and operation of a society, so the imitative majority follows the innovating minority, and this follows the originative individual, in adapting new responses to the demands of environment or survival. History in
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the civilized soul will reveal itself in treating every man or woman, however lowly, as a representative of one of these creative and contributory groups.
Will Durant • The Lessons of History
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life—peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation is real, and increases with social
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The authority of father and mother lost its economic base through the growing individualism of industry.
Will Durant • The Lessons of History
Competing groups have the qualities of competing individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship, pride.
Will Durant • The Lessons of History
Group is inherently individuals with same qualities
In the Athens of 594 B.C., according to Plutarch, “the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor had reached its height, so that the city seemed to be in a dangerous condition, and no other means for freeing it from disturbances… seemed possible but despotic power.”35 The poor, finding their status worsened with each year—the government in
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Info from "The Life of Greece"
If some of us seem to escape the strife or the trials it is because our group protects us; but that group itself must meet the tests of survival.
Will Durant • The Lessons of History
Interesting concept of society .it protects the weak. Why?
A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individ
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