Will Durant rocks

“Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.” (Will Durant, my favorite historian, in his massive work The Story of Civilization, Vol. 6, The Reformation — a history of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564, p. 3).

This guy writes great prose with wit and poise. His dry humour always surprises me and the depth of his thinking stimulates my mind and touches my heart.

For example, writing about the importance of belief, he says, “A cosmos without known cause or faye is an intellectual prison; we long to believe that the great drama has a just author and a noble end.”

Talking about the predicament of death, he says, “… we covet survival, and find it hard to conceive that nature should so laboriously produce man, mind, and devotion only to snuff them out in the maturity of their development.”

Speaking of the limitations of science, he pulls no punches, “Science gives man ever greater powers but ever less significance; it improves his tools and neglects his purposes; it is silent on ultimate origins, values and aims; it gives life and history no meaning or worth that is not canceled by death or omnivorous time.”

As far as I know, Dr. Durant was not a Christian, and I am not advocating that he is pitching Christianity with the above statements, but these are brutally honest words from someone who was truly wrestling with the meaning and purpose of life. We would do well to think on those things.

I encourage you to read anything by Will Durant. His “Story of Philosophy still sits next to the Bible on my bedside.

Ivanildo C. Trindade

Posted by Ivanildo C. Trindade via Blackberry