The Essence of the Centuries

In a dun-colored mansion in the Hollywood Hills, removed a scant two miles in space but at least two centuries in spirit from Hollywood and Vine, Will Durant, 79, and his wife Ariel, 67, are hurrying toward completion of their grand 40-year educational project: squeezing the essence of 110 centuries of civilization into ten books. Driven by a sense of their own mortality and the teacherly obsession to share all that they can learn, the Durants have completed Volume IX, The Age of Voltaire, to be published in November, and have rushed ahead of schedule on their final work, Rousseau and the Revolution, set for 1968.

Despite the magnitude of The Story of Civilization, the sprightly Durants hold a modest view of its aim. "We hope that we simplify the task of the young college student who wants to get a perspective of history," says Will. While their writers' fondness for his tory's more colorful characters and odd anecdotes sometimes blurs perspective, the Durants, with tireless scholarship and eloquent prose, have earned the respect of academicians even while challenging the minds of millions. Durant's 1926 The Story of Philosophy has sold 3,000,000 copies; the first eight volumes of The Story of Civilization, printed in nine languages, have each sold 200,000 copies. Few historians have ever en joyed that kind of readership.

Advantages of Hooky. Although naturally gregarious, the Durants have largely withdrawn into their work, shunned most attempts to chronicle their own uncommon story of growth as a team. Ariel, born in Harlem of Russian immigrant parents, disliked public school and "mostly played hooky." Playing hooky one day in 1910, she spotted a school class in Central Park whose teacher "talked with the children, laughed with them, put her arm around them." Ariel followed them into their brownstone building, thus became a contented pupil in the experimental Francisco Ferrer School. One day a substitute teacher took her class. "He had some pimples and he talked through his nose." Ariel mimicked him in class, was ordered to stay after school--and met the new teacher, Will Durant.

Instead of scolding her, Durant pleaded that a substitute teacher needed cooperation, not ridicule. His French Canadian parents, neither of whom had ever attended school, had sent him to a Jesuit seminary. There he found Spinoza's Ethics in the library. "I hid it under books by St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians and clandestinely read it," Durant recalls. Its pantheistic philosophy turned him against a clerical life. His prophetic first try at a public lecture, entitled How History Should Be Written, impressed a wealthy patron of the arts named Alden Freeman, who asked Durant to "meet me in Moscow" for a year's tour of Asia and Europe, helped finance his studies in philosophy and biology at Columbia University.

A Bride at 15. He was just back from the trip when he met Ariel, then 14. Durant was "almost twice her age--but I was ripe to be impressed. I was beginning to feel the need of vitality and vivacity, and she was just the symbol and summary of life." Recalls Ariel: "I was his tabula rasa. I was blank. He could write from the beginning. I became the ears that listened to him, and later, I hope, something more." The next year, over the objections of Ariel's father and a municipal judge who called Durant "a cradle robber" before granting the necessary legal consent, they were married. Ariel came to the ceremony with her roller skates slung over her shoulder.

Ariel has indeed become far more than a listener. Her research and organizational talents are a key to the Durants' steady pace. She works in a littered, beamed-ceiling study on the first floor of their aging Spanish-style house, which has possums and raccoons living in the walls. He labors under a stained glass skylight in a huge second floor room lined wall to wall with books.

They tackle each volume by scanning about 500 books, noting pertinent citations on green slips. Significant ideas and comments are recorded on white pads. Then in Ariel's study they compose an outline. "We argue rather viciously at times," says Durant, "and Mrs. Durant wins at least as often as I do." She checks Durant's tendency to romanticize women's role in history. He confesses that he felt "electric vibrations" when he met Actress Sophia Loren and tends to "fall in love with, say, Queen Elizabeth the First or Catherine the Second."

The notes are strung vertically in order beside a drafting board resting across the arms of Durant's rocking chair. There, swaying gently and munching peanuts for protein, he consults the notes and keyed reference books, writes with a ballpoint pen, in a spiral-bound notebook, aims at 250 words daily.

The Durants live by the clock, work from 8 in the morning to 10 p.m., bedtime, seven days a week. Except for summertime visits to Hollywood Bowl concerts, they break only for an after-lunch nap and a mid-afternoon hike. They stride past their sign reading BEWARE OF DOG (they have no dog), follow a never-varying, mile-long route.

The Discovery of Ignorance. Durant's step is still as sprightly as his wit, but he is conscious of his years. "In my youth," he says, "I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order." He thus argues that U.S. education could stand "a little more authority and discipline." Yet, always wryly optimistic, he predicts that "the children of the children who disturb our university presidents today will probably be very cautious and decent reactionaries." As for the ultimate questions that history and philosophy pose. Durant says: "Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."

Durant insists that Ariel could finish their work alone; she is convinced that she "couldn't do it at all." Certainly the aphorisms that flow from Durant's pen give their work much of its flavor. "A nation is born Stoic, dies Epicurean," he has written. Or "nothing is new except arrangement"; "the world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom"; and, perhaps self-consciously, "literary immortality is but a moment in geological time."

Civilization, for the Durants, will end with the 18th century. "The pep is failing," explains Durant. "I would be unwise to attempt the magnificent 19th century on these depleted resources." Moments later, grinning puckishly, his optimism re-emerges. "I have promised Ariel," he says, "that when the job is finished I shall take her on a ten-year honeymoon--making sure, of course, to bring my crutches."

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