The Lessons of History
A sobering reflection of our nature as humans through the lens of history...
In 1968, renowned historians Will and Ariel Durant took it upon themselves the daunting task of compressing all of the lessons of human history into a mere 100-page book. The result is striking. “The Lessons of History” departs from the classical historian’s laborious chronology of various dates and descriptions. Instead, it focuses on the enduring elements of human nature, which we should all spend some time learning if we are to truly know ourselves and understand our present.
Although now almost 60 years old, many parts of the book read as if it could have been written yesterday. Admittedly, some parts of the book have not aged well, and the contextual backdrop in which the book was written is palpable at times: written by an Anglo-Saxon heterosexual couple in the USA during a time of race riots and during the Cold War.
Nonetheless, by and large, examining the broader brushstrokes of human history and societal evolution with a book such as this helps one to step outside of our immediate bubble of modern life to understand the events of the present from a different perspective.
One aspect of the book that I personally found fascinating was the Durants’ characterization of history through the lens of biology. They argue that “… 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.”
They continue to distil history down into several biological lessons. The first is centred on the competitive forces of our nature, which are required for the survival of our species:
“the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition… peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food...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. It promotes cooperation because it is the ultimate form of competition.”
Another powerful quote is drawn from the Durants’ second biological lesson of human history on the selectivity of life:
“The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival. Since Nature (here meaning total reality and its processes) has not read very carefully the American Declaration of Independence or the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man, we are all born unfree and unequal: subject to our physical and psychological heredity, and to the customs and traditions of our group; diversely endowed in health and strength, in mental capacity and qualities of character. Nature loves difference as the necessary material of selection and evolution…”
It is perhaps refreshing in this age of over-political-correctness that the Durant’s unapologetically acknowledge the innate inequality of our inborn endowments. In fact, it is somewhat refreshing that they highlight this as a precursor for successful evolution. They continue:
“Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, the weak relatively weaker, than before. Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group. If we knew our fellow men thoroughly we could collect thirty percent of them whose combined ability would equal that of all the rest. Life and history do precisely that…”
If you look at the actual contribution of individuals to total tax paid, the Durants’ estimate of about 30% of the population carrying most of the weight for the others is actually conservative. In the USA, for example, the top 10% of income earners pay a staggering 76% of the total income tax paid! See Who Pays Federal Income Taxes? Latest Federal Income Tax Data (taxfoundation.org)
The Durants continue later with what is perhaps the most striking quote of the whole book:
“Like other departments of biology, history remains at bottom a natural selection of the fittest individuals and groups in a struggle wherein goodness receives no favours, misfortunes abound, and the final test is the ability to survive… Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under; and the universe has no prejudice in favour of Christ as against Genghis Khan.”
In order to have a chance at having a fulfilling or perhaps even successful life, it would be wise to study nature, and human nature, as it is, and has been throughout the millennia. We should embrace reality as it actually is, not as we wish it to be. Most of all, it is important to observe what people do, not what they say. Humans are not unlike other biological organisms on this earth competing for resources.
The Durants’ note that “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.”
Soberingly, the Durants’ remind us that humans have been at war for most of history:
“War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war. We have acknowledged war as at present the ultimate form of competition and natural selection in the human species. “Polemos pater panton” said Heracleitus; war, or competition, is the father of all things, the potent source of ideas, inventions, institutions and states. Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.”
These are certainly sombre reflections on the historic nature of ourselves. Reading these lessons could well be disheartening to the idealists among you. Take heart, however, for the Durants’ offer us some parting wisom:
“History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statemen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. 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.”
Thanks for reading - Toby Carrodus