The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history - humans are subject to the trials of selection and the struggle for existence, like all other animals. The group and nation merely inherits the will of the individual - after all, societies are made up of individuals.
Human nature has largely been unchanged throughout history - the means change, but the motives stay the same.
Humans are born with different abilities, and so inequality among humans is a natural consequence. This is magnified by the complexity of civilization, as each invention is seized by the strong to make themselves stronger, and the weak weaker.
Culture, customs, and morals provide a useful social stabilizing force, and a dampening force on innovation. What practices survive to present day have survived over time because they worked. New changes need to be put through the crucible of criticism before overthrowing the result of centuries of experiment.
Morals change with the times as a reflection of what is necessary to grow and survive.
Religion has been constantly present in history.
Every economic system must eventually rely on some form of profit motive to stir people to productivity. Alternatives like slavery, brute force management, or ideology have historically proved too unproductive or unsuccessful.
The constant friction in societal structure is between the rulers and the ruled.
War is a constant in history. In the past 3421 years, there have been only 268 years of no documented war.
Civilizations have grown and decayed with great regularity.
Geography is the physical structure that holds history.
Civilization habitually develops along waterways - rivers, lakes, oceans - to provide life and offering inexpensive routes of transport and trade.
The airplane neutralizes some advantage of waterways, allowing inland countries (Russia, China, Brazil) to develop.
Outside forces like climate no longer control humans, but they limit us. And we are still at the mercy of these larger forces - an earthquake can destroy a city that took two centuries to build.
But, at the end of the day, despite the influence of earth, man is the one that makes civilization by transforming the possibilities into fact.
The laws of biology are the lessons of history. As animals, we are subject to the same forces as all other living beings - the trials of evolution, the struggle for survival and existence.
All the history and achievements of humans are humbly just a part of the history of life.
If some people seem to supersede biology and are no longer subject to the trials of survival, it’s because they’re protected by their group; the group itself must endure and survive, like individual organisms. (Shortform example: within a society, the wealthy may have a privileged position that places them above the normal struggles of day-to-day survival. But if the society they belong to crumbles, as in a war, the position of the privileged itself crumbles.)
Life has three forces that determine the behavior.
Animals compete to survive. In nature, animals eat one another without a second thought. In civilization, humans consume each other by due process of law.
Cooperation is real, but serves mainly to enhance competition with other groups (whether it’s our family, church, political party, race, or nation).
Our societies are individuals multiplied to a massive scale. They conduct along human nature as individuals do, on a larger scale. They multiply our good and evil on a scale of millions. War is like one animal eating another, on a national scale.
Some organisms succeed and some fail. Some individuals are better equipped than others to survive. This is the natural product of biological variation, which is necessary for evolution and natural selection.
Inequality is magnified as civilization becomes more complex. New inventions are seized by the able individuals to make themselves stronger, while making the weak weaker. (Shortform note: consider the disparities of wealth created by a small minority of people who harnessed the technology of industrialization in the 1800s and the power of computing in present day.)
Freedom and equality are diametric opposites. When one wins, the other disappears. If people are given freedom, their natural differences in ability will materialize in different outcomes. If people were forced to show equal outcomes and equal abilities, this reduces individual freedom.
This is problematic for egalitarians, who desire equality among all. The best that egalitarians can hope for is an equality of environment, where educational opportunity and the legal system are equal among people.
Life is competition, and societies compete with one another. A society in which equality is force and individual variation is quashed will face a survival disadvantage, compared to one that harnesses the greatest potential of all its individuals. The latter will win the competition between groups, and subjugate the former.
Nature selects for abundant reproduction. Individual animals that reproduce more perpetuate themselves, outnumbering those that reproduce less.
High birth rates tend to accompany less developed civilizations. At times, a low birth rate nation is “chastened by some more virile and fertile group.”
Differential birth rates change power dynamics within and between nations. Faster-breeding groups grow in economic and political power (the authors note Roman Catholic families will be dominant in the US by 2000).
Nature has three agents for restoring the balance of overpopulation: famine, pestilence and war.
Western history has been biased toward the success of the white man.
The Durants reject all this in Lessons of History - “history is color-blind” and can develop civilization under any skin, given a favorable environment. Ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Rome civilizations counter the notion of Aryan superiority.
“Would any of the white races” have done better in Africa? The authors note that the heights of achievement of African-Americans are remarkable, despite their deep structural setbacks.
Civilization is not determined by the race. Instead, civilization development is a factor of geographic opportunity and economic and political development.
In turn, civilization makes the people. People who live in new areas adopt the new culture. Ethnic mixtures over centuries create a new type of people and culture.
A race-centric view of history is narrow-minded. A broadened education is the cure for a racially biased view of history. Civilization is a “cooperative product” - all people have contributed to it in some way.
Man’s character sets the character of groups and nations.
Human nature includes both positive and negative, balancing action vs inaction; fight vs flight; acquisition vs avoidance; association vs privacy; mating vs refusal; parental care vs filial dependence.
Has human nature changed? The historian authors say no - history shows that humans have conducted themselves the same way, time and time again, throughout thousands of years. The means of exercising human nature have changed; the motives remain the same.
If people have developed, over time, it has been social and cultural evolution rather than biological (which acts on a much longer timescale). Social behavior and culture are transmitted to the next generation by imitation, custom, or education.
Culture acts as a stabilizing force, limiting massive upheavals in human conduct. If a culture has persisted to today, then it has been selected through “centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.” Be cautious if you reject the culture or institutions of your society, for you reject the inherited wisdom of tens of generations.
Therefore, new ideas may be inferior to the status quo, and are not worth adopting by pure novelty. They must be superior to what has come before. New ideas deserve to be criticized and opposed, to be put through trials. If these new ideas survive, then they are allowed to affect the human race.
Therefore, the conservative who is inert and rejects change contributes as much as the radical who proposes change. Both are needed to guide the development of human society.
The poor have largely the same impulses as the rich, with only less resources or ability to implement them. Time and time again, the poor who successfully rebelled adopted the very conventions of the people they overthrew.
Society is made up of the imitative majority and the innovating minority. A minority of people are “heroes of action,” pushing past the customs of culture to adapt society to new situations. The words of Churchill may have been worth a hundred battalions. The influence of a Gandhi may lift a society of poor millions to surprising ambition and power.
History in general is the conflict of minorities. The majority celebrates the winner and “supplies the human material of social experiment.”
Morals are the rules by which a society exhorts its members to behave.
Moral codes look superficially different between societies and across history, but they are quite universal and necessary.
Morals change with the times and economic engine, from hunting to agriculture to industry. The morals reflect what is needed for the individual to survive in the society, and for the society to survive in the greater world.
Morals in the Hunting Era
Morals in the Agriculture Era
Morals in the Industrial Era
(Shortform note: Doubtless the character has changed again with the Information Age with computing and the Internet. We now prize niche personalization instead of mass consumption. Regional and national boundaries have blurred with the ease of global communication. Social groups have been redefined around interest, rather than mere geography - you connect with people who are like you, rather than people who happen to live around you.)
Sin has flourished in every age, including prostitution, gambling, alcohol.
While our times may seem to have unprecedented moral laxity, it may not actually be unique in history. It may even be self-correcting - our children might come to see modesty as fashionable and more stimulating than nudity.
Much of our modern moral freedom is good - we’re relieved of the supernatural terrors of religious punishment, and so we can enjoy pleasures that don’t harm others or ourselves.
In times of war, morals become laxer. Citizens see their savings taxed away, women have unprecedented freedom, soldiers have tasted adventure and learned to kill.
But history is the tale of the exceptional, while ignoring the many stories of the ordinary. Behind the exciting facade of war and politics, murder and adultery, were millions of orderly homes and affectionate people.
Even the agnostic historian has to acknowledge that religion has functioned and been seemingly indispensable in every land and age. The authors note that our society is exceptional in history for maintaining moral conduct without the ubiquitous force of religion. Before our time, there is no significant example of a stable society without religion.
Religion has enabled stability by elevating agreements between humans to rigid promises to God.
Religion has provided hope for billions of people - even the unhappy, the suffering, the bereaved, the old enjoy “supernatural comforts” more soothing than any material benefit.
Said Napoleon, religion kept the poor from murdering the rich. For many, hope and faith may be the only thing preventing despair. Destroy that hope, and you risk triggering class war.
Mankind seems to desire a religion rich in mythology, mystery, and miracle.
In the earliest formation of religion, gods seem to have been created to explain natural events (earth, water, winds, sky), without a clear moral purpose. Spurred by fear of the vagaries of the natural world, religion became the worship of natural forces.
Gradually, religion included moral prescriptions for human behavior that were handed down by gods. Religion provided general social stability, providing paths for conflict resolution through courts and softening penalties exacted by barbarian law.
In so doing, religion became a useful ally/servant of the state.
But as with all humans, religious leaders can be weak, leading to a variety of abuses of power:
The recurring nature of abuses triggered skepticism of religion, contributing to its declining influence over the past centuries.
Other forces also weakened religion’s foothold:
Religion played a functional role, including education, moral codes, and laws. But as society stabilized and civilization grew more complex, secular alternatives arose to substitute for religion’s functions:
Despite its erosion, religion survives because it inspires imagination and hope. It “consoles and brightens the lives of the poor” and those “wearied with the uncertainty of reason.” As long as there is poverty, the authors argue, there will be religion.
Religion has a habit of resurrection, being periodically destroyed by the state or philosophers, but it becomes reborn in different forms.
There is a cyclical nature to religion. In periods when laws are feeble and society is weak, religion and morals shoulder the task of maintaining social order. As law and government stabilize and shoulder the load, skepticism allows religion to retreat to the background.
The authors conclude that history does not support a belief in God as a benevolent supreme being, given the various natural and man-made atrocities unleashed on human life. It may instead support a theological dualism wherein a good spirit and an evil spirit battle for control of the universe.
And nature and history, in any case, have a different conception of good and bad. Good is what survives; bad is what does not. Nature and history do not favor Buddha over Genghis Khan.
Much of history can be interpreted sensibly through the economics lens, as a contest among individuals, groups, and states vying for resources and economic power.
Not all activities are primarily economically motivated - like the teachings of Buddha or the nationalistic fervor of Hitler’s troops. The motives of leaders may be economic, but the passions of the masses may not be.
Money is vital in shaping the direction of history. “The men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.”
The individual profit motive is vital to spurring productivity. The profit motive sparks the spirit of competition and inventiveness, in a way that works without excessive monitoring, and scales well across an entire growing population.
Every successful economic system must eventually rely on profit incentive. Alternatives like slavery, governmental force, or ideology ultimately prove too unproductive or too unsuccesful to compete against incentive-driven systems.
The concentration of wealth is a natural result of the concentration of ability.
As we discussed in the section on biology, some individuals are better equipped than others to survive. This is the natural product of biological variation, which in turn is necessary for evolution and natural selection. And the complexity of civilization magnifies this difference, allowing the exceptional few to wield tools that further enrich themselves.
In a society, the degree of wealth concentration depends on the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws. Democracy, which allows the most liberty, accelerates inequality.
Concentration of wealth and redistribution (violent or peaceful) cycle in civilizations like a heartbeat. Concentration may reach a point where the strength in the many poor rivals that of the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium requires either legislation redistributing wealth, or by revolution distributing poverty.
Nothing instills the spirit of competition and inventiveness and exhaustive labor like capitalism and self-interest do.
Yet elements of socialism have recurred throughout history. These include state control of commerce, wide government employment, price controls, welfare, progressive taxation, redistribution of wealth, and large public works to reduce unemployment.
Socialism is especially palatable under threat of security. When external danger mounts, people are willing to forsake internal liberty.
Socialist institutions are commonly overturned when:
In the modern day, communism has taken on capitalist flair to stimulate productivity. Inversely, capitalist societies have taken on socialist programs to curb discontent with inequality. And so capitalism and communism look more like each other than they did decades past.
Durant believes that the first requirement of freedom is its own limitation - absolute freedom would cause chaos,and the extinction of freedom itself. For the sake of stability, order needs to be established, and that is the role of an organized central government.
In his idea of “five regimes,” Plato saw a natural progression of government from monarchy to aristocracy to democracy to tyranny:
Such was the progression in Greece:
And in Rome:
The authors believe that the effects achieved could be had through gradual development instead of violent upheaval, which risks loss of sanity around breaking continuity.
Revolutions try to redistribute wealth, but because wealth is the means of production rather than goods, the natural inequality of man soon recreates inequality. “The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character.”
Much of historical “democracy” does not deserve the title, not giving true equal access to opportunity for all.
America had better initial conditions, with the precedence of the Magna Carta, defending citizens against the state, and of Protestantism, which gave religious liberty. It eased rebellion with ample free land and minimal legislation. It was also mostly protected from foreign powers by seas.
Modern democracies are more successful in redistributing wealth to give such access to education and public health. Man does not have rights to wealth and power, but rather the rights to access to opportunities that can develop and test a person’s fitness for wealth and power.
Yet the authors claim that true democracy, or rule by the majority, is unnatural. The majority can rarely organize themselves for united action, but a minority can. If abilities are naturally concentrated in a minority of people, then government by a minority is as inevitable as wealth inequality.
Opportunities can open for a tyrant to rise. Example situations include when a government loses interest in the well-being of citizens; workers become more resentful of losing economic freedom; inequality intensifies; civil strife continues; substantial outside threat materializes. In these cases, a tyrant can appear, promising opportunity and security for all.
War is a constant in history, there being only 268 years of no war in 3421 years of history.
War occurs for the same reason individuals fight - to compete for more resources and power, for pride, and to survive under threat. Peace is accomplished only through acknowledged supremacy or equal power.
The state inherits the will of the individual, without the individual’s normal boundaries. The individual is constrained by morals and laws, because the state guarantees him basic protection in exchange for his submission. But the state is unfettered, either because it is strong enough to defy interference with its will, or because there is no superstate to offer it protection.
Nationalism gives added force in diplomacy and war.
Philosophers will wax about pacifism, but generals believe that war is necessary and, in the military interpretation of history, the final arbiter.
The book was written in the 1970s, and the authors consider what to do about communism, if it threatens to engulf Asia, Africa, and South America.
Russia industrialized rapidly under a model of state control. Young nations in developing areas want to imitate this, and so are eager to replicate its practices.
Should America, at the height of its power, withdraw and let hostile states encroach; or should it consider what future generations wish they had done? Should it resist once, fight on foreign soil, and make the necessary sacrifice to protect America and democracy?
There are two schools of thought. The philosopher will suggest that the destructiveness of military weapons is unprecedented, and humanity should try a new approach in defiance of history. The philosopher suggests the President should be conciliatory, agreeing to mutual peace and commitment and avoiding subversion and betrayal. We should seek mutual understanding and chances to learn from one another, attempting a radical experiment in history.
In contrast, the general laughs, thinking the philosopher has forgotten all of history and the competitive nature of man. The general believes some fundamental differences cannot be negotiated away, that subversion will continue happening regardless of what is said on the surface, and that world order will arise from a victory so decisive that it will dictate international law. Groups unite only in the face of a common enemy, and mankind will become one only if it faces a foreign enemy together.
The authors define civilization as “social order promoting cultural development.” Social order is granted by political order of custom, laws, and morals, and economic order through production and trade.
Looking back at history, all civilizations have ended. What are the patterns of civilization’s growth and decay?
In general, the pattern is one of coherent construction, then of individualistic deconstruction.
On internal strife, the authors have an elitist perspective: as a natural result of inequality, society may be divided between a cultured minority and a majority of people unable to adopt the standards of “excellence and taste.” As this majority grows, it drags down the minority - its judgment and thoughts pollute upward, and the society undergoes a mass “barbarization.” This is the price that the minority pays for its unequal control of wealth.
Does history necessarily repeat itself? By and large, it has, because human nature is a relative constant. Humans react in stereotyped ways to frequently occurring situations like hunger and danger.
But the authors argue we are in an unprecedented time of development, where individuals are more differentiated than in primitive societies, and many novel circumstances will arise that demand novel responses. They say, with cautious optimism, that “there is no certainty that the future will repeat the past.”
Inevitably civilizations will fall, but this is not something to be bemoaned. What is gone is the frame; what was created in that civilization can be immortal. Civilizations pass its accomplishments onto their heirs. To wit, more people read Homer today than did in his time.
If history repeats itself endlessly, then is humanity actually making progress?
It depends on how you define progress.
The authors have no strong conclusion. History has so many examples and counterexamples that almost any conclusion can be drawn, depending on what lens you look through.
If progress is defined as humanity’s control over the environment, there is certainly progress.
If progress is defined as increase in happiness, then there has been little progress.
Yet human nature has seemed largely fixed. Science and technology are new means of achieving the same old ends - acquisition of goods, sex, and power.
The achievements of civilization (fire, wheel, language, agriculture) have passed from one to the next. They connect eras to each other, back to the beginnings of biology.
The amount of achievement in human history is staggering. Interrupt this transmission for 100 years and we return to being savages.
Education is the transmission of a multifactorial heritage - our modes of thought, morals, technology, and culture. This heritage is richer than ever before, including all of Greek thinking and the Italian Renaissance.
History is the creation and recording of this heritage. Progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use.
Place your understanding of today into context.
What’s an issue you thought was unique to our time, but now realize has happened throughout history?
How does this broader perspective make you feel about the issue? Do you feel more concerned or more relieved?