Before reading the page of
contents I came across a wonderful quote by Will Durant. He says: “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”.
This particular book has been divided into six chapters. ‘A shameless worship
of heroes’ is the first chapter of the book that expounds that now to
acknowledge in life or history any genius bigger than ourselves has become
unfashionable. In addition, the author
writes that the real history of man is not of the common man but that of the
lasting contributions made by geniuses to the sum of human civilization and
culture.
Durant makes his case by
saying that “the history of civilization has been the adventure of human
reason”. The criteria set by the author in gauging the greatest minds and ideas
of all times is the extent and persistence of influence upon the lives and
minds of men. Starting from number one Confucius, followed by Plato, Aristotle,
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton,
Voltaire, Immanuel Kant and Charles Darwin. Those excluded from the list
include Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, Nietzsche and many others. The author
believes that many other lists could also be formed and the lists made by him
is not the final.
The criteria set for the ten
greatest poets by the author is to record men who have brought him that strange
mixture of music, emotion, imagery, and thought, which is poetry. Homer, David,
Euripides, Lucretius, LI-PO, Dante, William Shakespeare, John Keats, Percy
Bysshe Shelley and Walt Whitman. He quotes many different poems of various
poets categorized by him.
While categorizing the best
hundred books for an education, the author provides a list of the hundred books
categorizing them under different themes. The author says in the fourth
chapter: “If you have studied with life rather than with courses, it maybe as
well; the rough tutelage of reality has ripened you into some readiness to know
great men. The first book on the author’s list is The Outline of Science. After
that he suggests reading William James book Principles of Psychology. Durant is of the view that even if a one does
not agree with an author one should ‘nevertheless carry on reading, toleration
of differences is one mark of a gentleman’.
Chapter five is about ten
peaks of human progress. Defining ‘progress’, the author mentions that it is
the “increasing control of the environment” and by environment he means “all
the circumstances that condition the coordination and the realization of
desire”. He briefly writes about the peaks, starting from Speech, followed by
fire, the conquest of the animals, agriculture, social organization, morality,
tools, science, education and writing. Moreover, the author adds that ‘never
was our heritage of civilization and culture so secure and never was it half so
rich’. The sixth, which is the last chapter of this book briefly explains the
twelve most vital dates in world history. They are as follows:
·
- 4241 B.C- The Introduction of the Egyptian Calendar
- 543 B.C.- The Death of Buddha
- 478 B.C.- The Death of Confucius
- 399 B.C.- The Death of Socrates
- ? B.C.- The Birth of Christ
- A.D. 632- The Death of Mohammed
- 1294- The Death of Roger Bacon
- 1454- The Press of Johannes Gutenberg (at the Mainz on the Rhine) issues the first printed documents bearing a printed date
- 1492- Columbus Discovers America
- 1769- James Watt brings the steam engine to practical utility
- 1789- The French Revolution
The author concludes the book
hoping that the reader makes his own list, which shall
help him in clarifying
human development.
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