“The kiss, which seems so indispensible to America, is quite unknown to primitive peoples, or known only to be scorned.” Our Oriental Heritage, 44
“They (the Egyptians) spoke of sexual affairs with a directness alien to our late morality, adorned their very temples with pictures and bas-reliefs of startling anatomical candor, and supplied their dead with obscene literature to amuse them in their grave.” Our Oriental Heritage, 166 (Reading these words, written ninety years ago, reveal the progress of the “sexual revolution” of our present time. “Startling anatomical candor” can now be found on the internet alone on a thousand sites, and I can easily imagine some personage like Hugh Hefner being buried with “obscene literature”, a phrase that would today strike many as antiquated as spats or dickies.)
“They (the Egyptians) spoke of sexual affairs with a directness alien to our late morality, adorned their very temples with pictures and bas-reliefs of startling anatomical candor, and supplied their dead with obscene literature to amuse them in their grave.” Our Oriental Heritage, 166 (Reading these words, written ninety years ago, reveal the progress of the “sexual revolution” of our present time. “Startling anatomical candor” can now be found on the internet alone on a thousand sites, and I can easily imagine some personage like Hugh Hefner being buried with “obscene literature”, a phrase that would today strike many as antiquated as spats or dickies.)
“Sacred prostitution continued in Babylonia until abolished by Constantine (ca. 325 A.D.). Alongside it, in the wine-shops kept by women, secular prostitution flourished.” Our Oriental Heritage, 247
“Probably in no other people outside of the Far East has family lie reached so high a level as among the Jews.” Our Oriental Heritage, 337
Readers of Our Oriental Heritage will note that Will Durant examines the sexual practices of nearly every group of ancient peoples he surveys, from the royal incest practiced by the Egyptians to the temple prostitutes in Babylon, from the harems of Persia to the laws regarding sex and morality of the Hebrews.
This is as it should be. Sex, morality, marriage, and family are at the core of our humanity, residing in importance just next door to our most basic survival needs: food, water, and air. Today, these subjects of sex and love remain perennial topics, still absorbing our attention as they did that of the ancients, still fascinating to our imaginations. The latest splash from the media—the exposure of the sexual abuse of women by movie moguls, politicians, and news commentators—is in just one more indicator of this fascination.
Durant himself would fit right in with these headlines. In A Dual Autobiography, written by Will and his wife Ariel late in life, we learn that Will, a teacher in his mid-twenties, fell in love with one of his students, fourteen-year-old Ariel. Will resigned his teaching post, proposed marriage, and made Ariel his wife when she was fifteen. In their joint autobiography, the bride recounts arriving at the marriage ceremony on roller skates. Later that evening, in a bedroom in her mother’s apartment, Ariel resists the sexual advances of Will until her mother whispers through the door: “It’s all right, my child; don’t be afraid.” Still married, Will and Ariel died in 1981 within two weeks of each other.
The marriage occurred in 1913. A Dual Autobiography appeared in 1977. On neither occasion were there repercussions regarding the pursuit of a minor by her teacher.
In this same book, Will and Ariel occasionally slip us more information than some of us need or want to know. Though both were advocates of the “free love” movement of that long ago era, and though they claim to have remained loyal to each other, Ariel was frequently jealous of Will, who was an egregious flirt and was often away from home on speaking tours. She also at least once asked if she might sleep with a male friend who was sharing their apartment, though according to her nothing came of that encounter. Early in the book, Will tells us that he once went to confession to a priest—he later lost his Catholic faith—and was refused absolution because of the frequency of his sexual self-indulgence.
In Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, conservative historian Paul Johnson makes the case that many of the great thinkers of the past two hundred years, men and women whom many revere, posited their ideas in part either to justify their private morality or else to recommend political and cultural changes standing in stark contrast to that morality. Many credit Rousseau, for instance, with worthy ideas on childrearing and education, yet he deposited his own children on the steps of orphanages with a mortality rate as high as 90%. Karl Marx, who may never have set foot in a factory in his life, impregnated his maid, whom he never paid, and forced her to place their baby in an orphanage. And so on.
Durant does not quite fit this bill of “do as I say, not as I do.” In Our Oriental Heritage and elsewhere, he acknowledges time and again the importance of the family and its place as a primary building block of culture and society. Another ongoing theme in Our Oriental Heritage is the tension between the constancy of a universal moral code and changes in that code: “Every vice was once a virtue, necessary in the struggle for existence….”
Perhaps thinking of his own marital life, Durant writes in a debatable statement that “the greatest task of morals is always sexual regulation….” We see this regulation transformed in our own age, granting legal rights and moral acceptability, for example, to homosexuals and transgendered people, while at the same time reacting like stiff-necked puritans to men and women who aggressively push their own sexual desires, condemning not just the movie star or the politician mentioned above, but the priest, teacher, and anyone else as well. An eighteen-year-old high school senior may lie with a fifteen-year-old sophomore, and no one blinks an eye; a twenty-five-year-old teacher who does the same will, if detected, find himself before a judge and in many cases, facing some years in prison.
In light of today’s headlines, it is therefore amusing to learn that one hundred years ago Will Durant married a high school student. As he himself wrote of the Egyptians (Our Oriental Heritage, 167), “it was a civilization with different prejudices than our own.”
Next up: Durant’s take on the Ten Commandments.
“Probably in no other people outside of the Far East has family lie reached so high a level as among the Jews.” Our Oriental Heritage, 337
Readers of Our Oriental Heritage will note that Will Durant examines the sexual practices of nearly every group of ancient peoples he surveys, from the royal incest practiced by the Egyptians to the temple prostitutes in Babylon, from the harems of Persia to the laws regarding sex and morality of the Hebrews.
This is as it should be. Sex, morality, marriage, and family are at the core of our humanity, residing in importance just next door to our most basic survival needs: food, water, and air. Today, these subjects of sex and love remain perennial topics, still absorbing our attention as they did that of the ancients, still fascinating to our imaginations. The latest splash from the media—the exposure of the sexual abuse of women by movie moguls, politicians, and news commentators—is in just one more indicator of this fascination.
Durant himself would fit right in with these headlines. In A Dual Autobiography, written by Will and his wife Ariel late in life, we learn that Will, a teacher in his mid-twenties, fell in love with one of his students, fourteen-year-old Ariel. Will resigned his teaching post, proposed marriage, and made Ariel his wife when she was fifteen. In their joint autobiography, the bride recounts arriving at the marriage ceremony on roller skates. Later that evening, in a bedroom in her mother’s apartment, Ariel resists the sexual advances of Will until her mother whispers through the door: “It’s all right, my child; don’t be afraid.” Still married, Will and Ariel died in 1981 within two weeks of each other.
The marriage occurred in 1913. A Dual Autobiography appeared in 1977. On neither occasion were there repercussions regarding the pursuit of a minor by her teacher.
In this same book, Will and Ariel occasionally slip us more information than some of us need or want to know. Though both were advocates of the “free love” movement of that long ago era, and though they claim to have remained loyal to each other, Ariel was frequently jealous of Will, who was an egregious flirt and was often away from home on speaking tours. She also at least once asked if she might sleep with a male friend who was sharing their apartment, though according to her nothing came of that encounter. Early in the book, Will tells us that he once went to confession to a priest—he later lost his Catholic faith—and was refused absolution because of the frequency of his sexual self-indulgence.
In Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky, conservative historian Paul Johnson makes the case that many of the great thinkers of the past two hundred years, men and women whom many revere, posited their ideas in part either to justify their private morality or else to recommend political and cultural changes standing in stark contrast to that morality. Many credit Rousseau, for instance, with worthy ideas on childrearing and education, yet he deposited his own children on the steps of orphanages with a mortality rate as high as 90%. Karl Marx, who may never have set foot in a factory in his life, impregnated his maid, whom he never paid, and forced her to place their baby in an orphanage. And so on.
Durant does not quite fit this bill of “do as I say, not as I do.” In Our Oriental Heritage and elsewhere, he acknowledges time and again the importance of the family and its place as a primary building block of culture and society. Another ongoing theme in Our Oriental Heritage is the tension between the constancy of a universal moral code and changes in that code: “Every vice was once a virtue, necessary in the struggle for existence….”
Perhaps thinking of his own marital life, Durant writes in a debatable statement that “the greatest task of morals is always sexual regulation….” We see this regulation transformed in our own age, granting legal rights and moral acceptability, for example, to homosexuals and transgendered people, while at the same time reacting like stiff-necked puritans to men and women who aggressively push their own sexual desires, condemning not just the movie star or the politician mentioned above, but the priest, teacher, and anyone else as well. An eighteen-year-old high school senior may lie with a fifteen-year-old sophomore, and no one blinks an eye; a twenty-five-year-old teacher who does the same will, if detected, find himself before a judge and in many cases, facing some years in prison.
In light of today’s headlines, it is therefore amusing to learn that one hundred years ago Will Durant married a high school student. As he himself wrote of the Egyptians (Our Oriental Heritage, 167), “it was a civilization with different prejudices than our own.”
Next up: Durant’s take on the Ten Commandments.