731 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0671013202
The Story of Civilization is an 11-volume set of books by the American writer, historian and philosopher Will Durant that focuses on a philosophical understanding of Western history that was intended for the general reader. Written over a period of more than fifty years, Volume 7: The Age of Reason Begins was originally published in 1961, and covers the history of Europe and the Near East from 1559 to 1648 (it also marks the first time that Ariel Durant was recognized as a co-author, whereas before she was merely mentioned in the acknowledgements). These 80 years were some of the most tumultuous the continent had even seen, which saw the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I, King James I (and VI of Scotland) and King Charles I (as well as his beheading) and the conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants engulfing the realms. It was also the Age of Shakespeare, and the Durant’s are not silent about the contributions of the Bard to the culture of the world:
The language is the richest in all of literature: fifteen thousand words, including the technical terms of heraldry, music, sports, and the professions, the dialect of the shires, the argot of the pavement, and a thousand hurried or lazy inventions – occulted, unkenneled, fumitory, burnet, spurring…He relished words and explored the nooks and crannies of the language; he loved words in general and poured them forth in frolicsome abandon; if he names a flower he must go on to name a dozen – the words themselves are fragrant. He makes simple characters mouth polysyllabic circumlocutions. He plays jolly havoc with the grammar: turns nouns, adjectives, even adverbs into verbs, and verbs, adjectives, even pronouns into nouns; gives a plural verb to a singular subject or a singular verb to a plural subject; but there were as yet no grammars of English usage. Shakespeare wrote in haste, and had no leisure to repent.
Meanwhile, The Netherlands at last gained independence from Bloody Spain, France experienced a civil war that saw the Catholics and Huguenots in constant conflict and the Holy Roman Empire was turned into an abattoir by one foreign, invading army after another. On the theological front, the long-running dispute between the followers of John Calvin and Jakob Hermanszoon led to the Synod of Dordrecht and the Canons of Dordrecht, while the Catholic Church continued onwards after the Council of Trent at last wrapped up its business, which left the Church with an ambiguous relationship with science, to say the least (just ask Galileo).
As usual, though long – 731 pages or so – The Age of Reason Begins is never boring. The Durant’s knack for writing in a manner both informative and interesting tells me that they must have been terrific teachers, and I can imagine their classrooms as being just an intellectual smorgasbord of thought and discussion. I, for one, was particularly amused (chagrined?) by the manner in which the governments of the era tried to manage their societies and how similar it all is to our current struggles to do the same (the more things change and all that…). But for all of our current challenges, would one really want to switch places with someone from this era? After all, our present time of freedom and plenty is really the exception to human history which has typically seen man in a state of “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (thanks, Hobbes). Doctors didn’t cure you but killed you quicker with their peculiar treatments; your standing with some inbred monarch or other could see you advance to the top or crash into the depths; superstition and dogma would drive people to slaughter one another for no other reason than that they believed differently than you (actually, that one would appear to still be with us…) And our age hasn’t been free from war and suffering, as this passage describing the Thirty Years’ War could just as easily have been written about World War II or any other conflict you could dream up:
The towns suffered only less than the villages. Many of them were reduced to half their former population. Great cities were in ruins – Magdeburg, Heidelberg, Wurzburg, Neustadt, Bayreuth. Industry declined for lack of producers, purchasers, and trade; commerce hid its head; once-wealthy merchants begged and robbed for bread. Communes, declaring themselves bankrupt, repudiated their debts. Financiers were loath to lend, fearing that loans would be gifts. Taxation impoverished everyone but generals, tax collectors, prelates, and kings. The air was poisonous with refuse and offal and carcasses rotting in the streets. Epidemics of typhus, typhoid, dysentery, and scurvy ran through the terrified population and from town to town…Morals and morale alike collapsed. The fatalism of despair invited the cynicism of brutality. All the ideals of religion and patriotism disappeared after a generation of violence; simple men now fought for food or drink or hate, while their masters mobilized their passions in a competition for taxable lands and political power. Here and there some humane features showed: Jesuits gathering and feeding deserted children; preachers demanding of governments an end to bloodshed and destruction. “God send that there may be an end at last,” wrote a peasant in his daybook. “God send that there be peace again. God in heaven, send us peace”.
In “To the Reader” at the beginning of The Age of Reason Begins, Durant wrote that he “had hoped to conclude my sketch of the history of civilization with a seventh volume…which was to cover the cultural development of Europe from the accession of Elizabeth I to the outbreak of the French Revolution. But as the story came closer to our own times and interests it presented an every greater number of personalities and events still vitally influential today…Since the great debate between religion and science is the main current in the stream of modern thought, it will be recorded in these pages more frankly than may seem wise to the men of the world…” Again, the more things change…
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