Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
History
& Civilization:
Will
Durant:
The
Story of Civilization
- excerpts from Durant's Story of Civilization (1935), volume one, Our
Oriental Heritage, part one:
- "I want to know what were the steps by which men passed
from barbarism to civilization."
Voltaire
-
The Conditions of Civilization
- 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...
A people may possess ordered institutions, a lofty moral code, and even a flair for the
minor forms of art, like the American Indians; and yet if it remains in the hunting stage,
if it depends for its existence upon the precarious fortunes of the chase, it will never
quite pass from barbarism to civilization.
A nomad stock, like the Bedouins of Arabia, may be exceptionally intelligent and
vigorous, it may display high qualities of character like courage... but without that
simple sine qua non of culture, a continuity of food, its intelligence will be
lavished on the perils of the hunt and the tricks of trade, and nothing will remain for
the laces and frills, the curtsies and amenities, the arts and comforts, of civilization.
- The first form of culture is agriculture.
It is when man settles down to till the soil and lay up provisions for the uncertain
future that he finds time and reason to be civilized. Within that little circle of
security -- a reliable supply of water and food -- he builds huts, his temples and his
schools; he invents productive tools, and domesticates the dog... at last himself. He
learns to work with regularity and order, maintains a longer tenure of life, and transmits
more completely than before the mental and moral heritage of his race.
- Culture suggests agriculture, but civilization suggests the
city.
In one aspect civilization is the habit of civility; and civility is the refinement
which townsmen, who made the word, thought possible only in the civitas or city.
For in the city are gathered, rightly or wrongly, the wealth and brains produced in the
countryside; in the city invention and industry multiply comforts, luxuries and leisure;
in the city traders meet, and barter goods and ideas; in that cross-fertilization of minds
at the cross-roads of trade intelligence is sharpened and stimulated to creative power.
In the city some men are set aside from the making of material things, and produce
science and philosophy, literature and art. Civilization begins in the peasant's hut, but
it comes to flower only in the towns.
... For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew
by every generation, and any serious interruption in 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...
The Economic Elements of Civilization
... "Three meals a day are a highly advanced institution. Savages gorge themselves
or fast." The wilder tribes among the American Indians considered it weak-kneed and
unseemly to preserve food for the next day. The natives of Australia are incapable of any
labor whose reward is not immediate... There is a mute wisdom in this improvidence... The moment man begins to take thought of the morrow he passes out of the
Garden of Eden into the vale of anxiety; the pale cast of worry settles down upon him,
greed is sharpened, property begins, and the good cheer of the
"thoughtless" native disappears... "Of what are you thinking?"
Peary asked one of his Eskimo guides. "I do not have to think," was the answer;
"I have plenty of meat." ...
In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply. The cathedral and the
capitol, the museum and the concert chamber, the library and the university are the
facade; in the rear are the shambles. [Editor's note: the "shambles" were
a kind of meat market in the rear of certain ancient-world buildings. The apostle Paul
refers to this in his letter to the Corinthians.]
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