Our Oriental Heritage The Story Of Civilization Volume I Durant by Durant, Will B004ZZS93Q instant download after payment.

assignment which I rashly laid upon myself some twenty years ago: to 

write a history of civilization. I wish to tell as much as I can, in as little 

space as I can, of the contributions that genius and labor have made to 

the cultural heritage of mankind—to chronicle and contemplate, in their 

causes, character and effects, the advances of invention, the varieties of 

economic organization, the experiments in government, the aspirations 

of religion, the mutations of morals and manners, the masterpieces of 

literature, the development of science, the wisdom of philosophy, and 

the achievements of art. I do not need to be told how absurd this 

enterprise is, nor how immodest is its very conception; for many years 

of effort have brought it to but a fifth of its completion, and have made it 

clear that no one mind, and no single lifetime, can adequately compass 

this task. Nevertheless I have dreamed that despite the many errors 

inevitable in this undertaking, it may be of some use to those upon 

whom the passion for philosophy has laid the compulsion to try to see 

things whole, to pursue perspective, unity and understanding through 

history in time, as well as to seek them through science in space. 

I have long felt that our usual method of writing history in separate 

longitudinal sections—economic history, political history, religious 

history, the history of philosophy, the history of literature, the history of 

science, the history of music, the history of art—does injustice to the 

unity of human life; that history should be written collaterally as well as 

lineally, synthetically as well as analytically; and that the ideal 

historiography would seek to portray in each period the total complex 

of a nation’s culture, institutions, adventures and ways. But the 

accumulation of knowledg