The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant summary

July 29, 2022

Will and Ariel Durant wrote the Lessons of History as a survey of human experience throughout history and the role human nature played in evolving and shaping civilization.
A Warning: “Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. ‘Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.‘”
Historians oversimplify, selecting a few facts to tell the story of a chaotic, complex past.
The acceleration of change combined with chance affects how we apply order to a chaotic past. - The past is fluid because of how we view it through new inventions, discoveries, and ideas.
History is an art, not a science. It requires an ability to pull out facts that create meaningful order out of chaos.
“We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities, in history, as in science and politics, relativity rules, and all formula should be suspect. ‘History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or logical grooves; it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules; history is baroque.’ Perhaps, within these limits, we can learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another’s delusions.”
However incomplete, the past gives us a chance to understand today and prepare for tomorrow.
Human history is a tiny blip on the historical timeline of Earth, the galaxy, and the universe.
“The influence of geographical factors diminishes as technology grows.” — Transportation, commerce, and trade (power) were originally controlled by those who controlled the seas. Trains disrupted it some, but the airplane disrupted the old trade routes and created new routes into areas unreachable by sea, shifting the balance of power.
“The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. We are subject to the processes and trials of evolution, to the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest to survive. 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.”
Biological Lessons of History:
- Life is Competition — All species are in competition for survival — peaceful when foods aplenty, warring when food is sparse. They work in groups to improve competitive advantages. “We are acquisitive, greedy, and pugnacious because our blood remembers millenniums through which our forebears had to chase and fight and kill in order to survive, and had to eat to their gastric capacity for fear they should not soon capture another feast. War is a nation’s way of eating.”
- Life is Selection — In the struggle for survival, some are better equipped to succeed, while other’s fail. Nature produces anomalies, specialization, and exceptionalism. Genetic inequalities lead to artificial inequalities. It gives advantage to some groups via invention and discovery, which disadvantages others. So the strong become stronger, and weak become weaker. In other words, inequality rules. — “Nature loves difference as the necessary material of selection and evolution.”
- Life Must Breed — Nature prefers quantity over quality because quantity improves the odds of variation, competition, and selection. When populations are over-abundant, “nature has three agents to restore the balance: famine, pestilence, and war.”
“History is color-blind, and can develop a civilization (in any favorable environment) under almost any skin.”
Human Nature: “Known history shows little alteration in the conduct of mankind. The Greeks of Plato’s time behaved very much like the French of modern centuries; and the Romans behaved like the English. Means and instrumentalities change; motives and ends remain the same: to act or rest, to acquire or give, to fight or retreat, to seek association or privacy, to mate or reject, to offer or resent parental care.”
Human evolution over the past few thousand years has been social, not biological. People evolved economically, politically, intellectually, and morally through education, innovation, or imitation. Imitators (the majority) following innovators (the minority).
Intellect is the main driver of change but it can also drive destructive. So resistance to change plays an important role in questioning new ideas — to help weed out the good ideas from the bad.
History reminds us that people have always been human…sin, mistakes, dishonesty, corruption, gambling has always existed. “We have noted the discovery of dice in the excavation near the site of Nineveh; men and women have gambled in every age.”
“We must remind ourselves again that history as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived: the historian records the exceptional because it is interesting — because it is exceptional.”
The boring parts of history tend to get lost for being unexceptional but would offer a truer picture of how the overwhelming majority of people lived.
“History assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.”
Early religion was not built on morals but the product of fear of mother nature and natural disasters. Fear was eventually redirected to promote morality and laws.
The lesson of history is that religions have a life cycle — being born, thriving, and dying.

History is driven by underlying economic interests.

“The men who can manage men manage men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.”
Every economic system must have a way for people to gain wealth in exchange for productivity. - Economic systems that tried to use other motives (not wealth) to achieve productivity were too unproductive.
“Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce — except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy.”
Since inequality rules, there always exists a small portion of the population with a better ability than most to gather wealth. This concentration of wealth is a recurring theme throughout history.
The redistribution of wealth is also a recurring theme. The rate of wealth concentration depends on the morals and laws of the time. If the gap between rich and poor becomes too wide, revolution or new laws rebalance the wealth gap.
“We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution, In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.”
Socialism versus capitalism is part of the cycle of concentration and redistribution of wealth. Finding a balance between public and private has been a long struggle throughout history.
Capitalism has shown its superior ability to put capital and people (talents) to work in the most productive and efficient way possible toward the production of goods and services.
Socialism offers the possibility of equality to the most unequal through government-supported works like education, health, and recreation.
Competition, unhindered by laws and morals, drives capitalism to extremes. Private monopolies, price manipulation, wage manipulation, and other abuses eventually lead to riot and revolt demanding change.
Socialism, absent all liberty, leads to its own extremes. Government monopolies, price fixing, wage fixing, high taxation, and a police (military) force to maintain control, eventually lead to corruption, civil unrest, and revolution.
“The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality.”
History shows that power tends to centralize.
Absolute freedom leads to chaos. So the role of government is to establish order without suffocating freedom.
The history of governments is overwhelmingly one of monarchy, briefly interrupted by democracy. But monarchy has a poor poor track record thanks to hereditary succession. “When it is hereditary it is likely to be more prolific of stupidity, nepotism, irresponsibility, and extravagance than of nobility and statesmanship.”
“If the majority of abilities is contained in a minority of men, minority government is as inevitable as the concentration of wealth; the majority can do no more than periodically throw out one minority and set up another.”
Violent revolutions do more to destroy wealth than redistribute it and ultimately recreating the very thing it sought to change. The natural tendency of inequality leads to a concentration of possessions, wealth, and power in a minority of hands.
“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.”
“Every advance in the complexity of the economy puts an added premium upon superior ability, and intensifies the concentration of wealth, responsibility, and power.”
Democracy only succeeds with widespread intelligence. When intelligence is in the minority, democracy fails under widespread ignorance because ignorance is easily manipulated.
“It may be true as Lincoln supposed, that ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time,’ but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.”
Democracy has done more good than any other form of government because, despite prevailing inequality, its role is to provide access to education and opportunity as equally as possible — to give every person the best opportunity to succeed on their own merits and abilities.
War is a constant of history and the ultimate form of competition in humans. The reasons for war are the same for competition — a desire for more food, land, materials, fuels, power… Making long periods of peace as unnatural as equality.
The only constant in history is change.
“History repeats itself, but only in outline and in the large…because human nature changes with geological leisureliness, and man is equipped to respond in stereotyped ways to frequently occurring situations and stimuli like hunger, danger, and sex. But in a developed and complex civilization individuals are more differentiated and unique than in a primitive society, and many situations contain novel circumstances requiring modifications of instinctive response; custom recedes, reasoning spreads; the results are less predictable. There is no certainty that the future will repeat the past. Every year is an adventure.”
Civilizations move between growth and decay. Growth depends on the right circumstances to produce highly intelligent, creative, able people equipped to successfully handle change. - Civilizations decline because it fails to produce people capable of handling change.

Science is neutral. It will kill or create, destroy or build.

Despite all the progress in science, technology, and knowledge, people are still the same biological creatures they were thousands of years ago.
“Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement of man’s understanding, control, embellishment, and enjoyment of life.”

Quotes

“Consider education not as the painful accumulation of facts and dates and reigns, nor merely the necessary preparation of the individual to earn his keep in the world, but as the transmission of our mental, moral, technical, and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible, for the enlargement of man’s understanding, control, embellishment, and enjoyment of life.”

“History repeats itself, but only in outline and in the large…because human nature changes with geological leisureliness, and man is equipped to respond in stereotyped ways to frequently occurring situations and stimuli like hunger, danger, and sex. But in a developed and complex civilization individuals are more differentiated and unique than in a primitive society, and many situations contain novel circumstances requiring modifications of instinctive response; custom recedes, reasoning spreads; the results are less predictable. There is no certainty that the future will repeat the past. Every year is an adventure.”

“It may be true as Lincoln supposed, that ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time,’ but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.”

“The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.”

“If the majority of abilities is contained in a minority of men, minority government is as inevitable as the concentration of wealth; the majority can do no more than periodically throw out one minority and set up another.”

“The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality.”

“We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution, In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.”

“Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce — except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy.”

“The men who can manage men manage men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.”

“History assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely.”

“History is color-blind, and can develop a civilization (in any favorable environment) under almost any skin.”

“We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities, in history, as in science and politics, relativity rules, and all formula should be suspect. ‘History smiles at all attempts to force its flow into theoretical patterns or logical grooves; it plays havoc with our generalizations, breaks all our rules; history is baroque.’ Perhaps, within these limits, we can learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another’s delusions.”

“The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history. We are subject to the processes and trials of evolution, to the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest to survive. 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.”

“We must remind ourselves again that history as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived: the historian records the exceptional because it is interesting — because it is exceptional.”

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