From the fall of 1982 to the summer of 1984, with much help from family and friends, I restored the Palmer House in Waynesville, North Carolina. This former tourist home, one hundred years old then, had seen better times: the plumbing leaked in a dozen places, intruders had urinated on the ratty carpeting, and vines were growing into the third-floor windows. The roofs invited the rain, the front porch was rotting, and all twenty-two rooms and ten bathrooms commanded painting and repair.
It was a wreck only a fool would buy. And the fool appeared. The realtor who sold it to me told me I should tear it down and make a parking lot for the Baptist church just up the street.
It was a wreck only a fool would buy. And the fool appeared. The realtor who sold it to me told me I should tear it down and make a parking lot for the Baptist church just up the street.
To ward off discouragement, we who revamped the house devised a motto: look only at the task at hand. When laying a new roof on the add-on utility room at the back of the house, don’t worry about painting the kitchen. When repairing the broken pipe in the basement, don’t scope out the tottering front porch.
Worry only about the task before you.
I am relearning this lesson in my quest to read all of Will Durant’s The Story Of Civilization.
I am now nearing the end of Our Oriental Heritage, Volume I in Durant’s eleven-volume magnum opus. Like a runner embarked on a long race, I have entered into a rhythm of reading, jogging across 20 to 40 pages per day, my attention directed at the sentence I am reading instead of thinking of the ten thick volumes squatting on my desk.
Such an attitude allows me to partake of the pleasures offered by Will Durant.
Let me share some of these with you.
For the past ten days or so, the historian has taken me on a tour of China and now has dropped me into Japan. In China he covered the influence of Confucius and other philosophers on Chinese life, morals, behavior, and customs, an influence that has survived not only the vicissitudes of numerous invasions and revolutions, but even the brutal upheaval of Communism. Durant wrote years before the Communists came to power in Peking, but an online piece recently made a point with which he would surely have agreed, that today’s China, despite its Marxism, still honors what Confucius declared important: family, order, education, morality, strong government.
In addition, Durant has brought to the table poets like Li-Po, who enjoyed his cups as much as any Edgar Allen Poe or Dylan Thomas (Okay, maybe not as much as Thomas). He introduced me to a multitude of people and topics, like the artisans creating their magnificent ceramics and the scholars operating the system of examinations for government office, creating a bureaucratic class, with good and bad consequences, akin to our Ivy League elites in today’s government. He pictured for me a highly developed civilization operating at a time when my own European ancestors were still wearing animal skins and tromping through the woods looking to take on the Roman legions.
Such reading for thirty or forty minutes a day acts as a sort of therapy. For those minutes, the philosophers of China and the warlords of Japan sweep me away from my life and its difficulties. (Sometimes, I must admit, Durant can be annoying as a drunken friend. Like Thomas Wolfe, he loves the adjective. The paucity of dates frequently leaves me scratching my head and wondering what century he is addressing, and he often too readily accepts contemporary accounts of those ancients he is describing. One small example: citing Marco Polo as his authority, Will writes that at Peking, then called Cambaluc, “every day a thousand loads of raw silk entered the gates to be turned into clothing for the inhabitants.” Sorry, Messieurs Will and Marco, but I ain’t buying that one. I see in my mind’s eye ten million panting silkworms being worked to death by sweating overseers.)
At any rate, a few excerpts for your edification and enjoyment:
The worst conceivable government would be by philosophers; they botch every natural process with a theory; their ability to make speeches and multiply ideas is precisely the sign of their incapacity for action. Our Oriental Heritage, page 653
Three subjects formed the substance of his curriculum: history, poetry, and the rules of propriety. (Durant speaks here of Confucius. These three same subjects once played key parts in American life. Enough said.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 659
And today, as then, no better medicine could be prescribed for any people suffering from the disorder general by an intellectualist education, a decadent moral code, and a weakened fibre of individual and national character, than the absorption of the Confucian philosophy by the nation’s youth. (Huzza, as enthusiasts cried two hundred years ago. In post-Christian America, adopting the code of Confucius—think Miss Manners with a silk fan—might just bring us happiness and even unity.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 676
She was corpulent and wore false hair, but the Emperor loved her because she was obstinate, capricious, domineering and insolent. (She is Yang Kwei-Fei, thirty-three years Emperor Ming Huang’s junior. Blessed be the man who sees a lover as the Emperor saw Yang Kwei-Fei.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 704
Soon the poor joined with the rich that taxes were too high; men are always readier to extend governmental functions than to pay for them. (Hey, does that sound familiar or what? Wonder why we have a debt in excess of 20 Trillion Dollars? Restraint is a lost word in our government.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 726
It takes a day to make a revolution, and a generation to make a government. (Will is speaking of China in the early twentieth century, but the aphorism applies to most revolutions.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 817
The first lesson of philosophy is that we may all be mistaken. (Most of us must have stepped outside for a smoke for this lesson. The second lesson of philosophy is that, having missed the first lesson, we go right on hammering away with absolute certitude that we are correct in our beliefs. The third lesson finds us posting our beliefs too frequently online or writing comments on blogs. The fourth lesson is that I may be mistaken.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 845
Worry only about the task before you.
I am relearning this lesson in my quest to read all of Will Durant’s The Story Of Civilization.
I am now nearing the end of Our Oriental Heritage, Volume I in Durant’s eleven-volume magnum opus. Like a runner embarked on a long race, I have entered into a rhythm of reading, jogging across 20 to 40 pages per day, my attention directed at the sentence I am reading instead of thinking of the ten thick volumes squatting on my desk.
Such an attitude allows me to partake of the pleasures offered by Will Durant.
Let me share some of these with you.
For the past ten days or so, the historian has taken me on a tour of China and now has dropped me into Japan. In China he covered the influence of Confucius and other philosophers on Chinese life, morals, behavior, and customs, an influence that has survived not only the vicissitudes of numerous invasions and revolutions, but even the brutal upheaval of Communism. Durant wrote years before the Communists came to power in Peking, but an online piece recently made a point with which he would surely have agreed, that today’s China, despite its Marxism, still honors what Confucius declared important: family, order, education, morality, strong government.
In addition, Durant has brought to the table poets like Li-Po, who enjoyed his cups as much as any Edgar Allen Poe or Dylan Thomas (Okay, maybe not as much as Thomas). He introduced me to a multitude of people and topics, like the artisans creating their magnificent ceramics and the scholars operating the system of examinations for government office, creating a bureaucratic class, with good and bad consequences, akin to our Ivy League elites in today’s government. He pictured for me a highly developed civilization operating at a time when my own European ancestors were still wearing animal skins and tromping through the woods looking to take on the Roman legions.
Such reading for thirty or forty minutes a day acts as a sort of therapy. For those minutes, the philosophers of China and the warlords of Japan sweep me away from my life and its difficulties. (Sometimes, I must admit, Durant can be annoying as a drunken friend. Like Thomas Wolfe, he loves the adjective. The paucity of dates frequently leaves me scratching my head and wondering what century he is addressing, and he often too readily accepts contemporary accounts of those ancients he is describing. One small example: citing Marco Polo as his authority, Will writes that at Peking, then called Cambaluc, “every day a thousand loads of raw silk entered the gates to be turned into clothing for the inhabitants.” Sorry, Messieurs Will and Marco, but I ain’t buying that one. I see in my mind’s eye ten million panting silkworms being worked to death by sweating overseers.)
At any rate, a few excerpts for your edification and enjoyment:
The worst conceivable government would be by philosophers; they botch every natural process with a theory; their ability to make speeches and multiply ideas is precisely the sign of their incapacity for action. Our Oriental Heritage, page 653
Three subjects formed the substance of his curriculum: history, poetry, and the rules of propriety. (Durant speaks here of Confucius. These three same subjects once played key parts in American life. Enough said.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 659
And today, as then, no better medicine could be prescribed for any people suffering from the disorder general by an intellectualist education, a decadent moral code, and a weakened fibre of individual and national character, than the absorption of the Confucian philosophy by the nation’s youth. (Huzza, as enthusiasts cried two hundred years ago. In post-Christian America, adopting the code of Confucius—think Miss Manners with a silk fan—might just bring us happiness and even unity.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 676
She was corpulent and wore false hair, but the Emperor loved her because she was obstinate, capricious, domineering and insolent. (She is Yang Kwei-Fei, thirty-three years Emperor Ming Huang’s junior. Blessed be the man who sees a lover as the Emperor saw Yang Kwei-Fei.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 704
Soon the poor joined with the rich that taxes were too high; men are always readier to extend governmental functions than to pay for them. (Hey, does that sound familiar or what? Wonder why we have a debt in excess of 20 Trillion Dollars? Restraint is a lost word in our government.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 726
It takes a day to make a revolution, and a generation to make a government. (Will is speaking of China in the early twentieth century, but the aphorism applies to most revolutions.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 817
The first lesson of philosophy is that we may all be mistaken. (Most of us must have stepped outside for a smoke for this lesson. The second lesson of philosophy is that, having missed the first lesson, we go right on hammering away with absolute certitude that we are correct in our beliefs. The third lesson finds us posting our beliefs too frequently online or writing comments on blogs. The fourth lesson is that I may be mistaken.) Our Oriental Heritage, page 845