by Will Durant
Winchester School, 591
Winckelmann, Johann (1717–68), 593
Windsor, Berkshire, England, 103
Windsor Castle, 265
Winstanley, Gerrard (1609?–1660?), 185
Winter Palace, Vienna, 426
Wismar, 389
Wisniowiecki, Michael, see Michael, King of Poland
witchcraft, 17, 28, 254, 456, 466, 481–82, 497, 575, 633, 659
Witsen, Burgomaster of Amsterdam (fl. 1698), 468
Witt, Cornelis de (1623–72), 172, 177, 178–79, 625
Witt, Jacob de (fl. 1650), 166, 172
Witt, Jan de (1625–72), 167, 172–77, 178, 625, 630–31, 632, 635, 636, 652
Wittenberg, 405
Wohltemperirte Clavier, Das (Bach), 34
Wolff, Baron Christian von (1679–1754), 679
Wolseley, Sir Charles (fl. 1672), 567
women: education of, 150, 487–88
in England, 195, 199, 269, 272–75, 314, 321, 335, 344, 487–488
in France, 27–31, 149–51, 440, 487–88
in Germany, 411, 414–15
in Italy, 428–29
Milton’s views on, 238
in Russia, 376, 377
and suffrage, Spinoza’s views on, 653
writers, 149–51, 163, 335
Wood, Anthony (1632–95), 240, 330
Wood, William (1671–1730), 357
wood carving, 94, 100, 265, 374, 418
Woodcock, Katharine, see Milton, Katharine
Woodcock Woodward, John (1665–1728), 497, 507
Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, 531, 536
Worcester, Edward Somerset, 2d Marquis of (1601–67), 517
Worcester, battle of (1651), 188–89, 270, 287
Wordsworth, William (1770–1850), 243, 657
World War I, 413
World War II, 290, 418, 433, 437
Worms, 463, 464, 691, 692
Archbishop of, 464
Worthies of England (Fuller), 330
Wotton, Sir Henry (1568–1639), 215
Wotton, William (1666–1727), 491
Wouwerman, Philips (1619–68), 169*
Wren, Christopher (1632–1723) 57, 103, 250, 263–65, 491, 496, 512, 538, 539
wrestling, 195, 275
Wrington, England, 575
Württemberg, duchy of, 485
Würzburg, 418, 511
Palace, 419
Wycherley, William (1640?–1716), 315–16
yellow fever, 525
Yemen, 275
Yeni-Validé, Mosque of, 421
Yiddish language, 464–65
York, Duke of, see James II, King of England
Young, Edward (1683–1765), 355
Young, Thomas (1587–1655), 218*
Ypres, Flanders, 44, 53, 164, 179, 712
Zaandam, Holland, 380–81, 396
Zamojski, Jan (d. 1665), 372
Zatov, Nikita (b. 1641), 393
Zeeland, province of, 178
Zohar (text of Cabala), 471
Zólkiew, Ukraine, 374
Zólkiewski, Stanislas (1547–1620), 371
zoology, 519, 520
Zrinyi, Miklós (1620–64), 421
Zuravno, Treaty of (1676), 373
Zwicker, Daniel (fl. 1658), 167
About the Authors
WILL DURANT was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1885. He was educated in the Catholic parochial schools there and in Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peter’s (Jesuit) College, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbia University. New York. For a summer he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, in 1907, but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament;, he settled down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach Latin, French, English, and geometry (1907–11). He entered the seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons he has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet seminary to the most radical circles in New York, and became (1911–13) the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook to broaden his borders.
Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his pupils—who had been born Ida Kaufman in Russia on May 10, 1898—resigned his position, and married her (1913). For four years he took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Woodbridge and Dewey. He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy at Columbia University for one year. In 1914, in a Presbyterian church in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and philosophy that, continuing twice weekly for thirteen years, provided the initial material for his later works.
The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him to retire from teaching in 1927. Thenceforth, except for some incidental essays Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume 2, The Life of Greece (1939), and Volume 3, Caesar and Christ (1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Europe provided perspective for Volume 4, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume 5, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume 6, The Reformation (1957).
Mrs. Durant’s share in the preparation of these volumes became more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume 7, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it was on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), and Rousseau and Revolution (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1968).
The publication of Volume 11, The Age of Napoleon, in 1975 concluded five decades of achievement. Ariel Durant died on October 25, 1981, at the age of 83; Will Durant died 13 days later, on November 7, aged 96. Their last published work was A Dual Autobiography (1977).
* Albert Guérard, The Life and Death of an Ideal, p. 18.
* Article “Feasts” in the Philosophical Dictionary.
† Dorothy George, London in the XVIIIth Century (London, 1925), p. 166.
* The Notes pour servir aux Mémoires, begun in 1661, were continued at intervals till 1679, when he added Réflexions sur le métier de roi—Thoughts on the Business of Being a King. Despite their theory of absolutism they contain much good sense, and make the treatises of philosophers on this subject seem jejune. They were apparently dictated to secretaries, who tidied them up into literary form. They are as well worth reading as anything in the literature of the age.
* Mme. de Montespan, who was a bit biased, related in her memoirs how an African prince presented Marie with a Negro dwarf, and how Marie gave birth to “a fine, healthy girl, black from head to toe.” The Queen ascribed the color to being frightened by the dwarf during her pregnancy. The Paris Gazette announced that the girl had died shortly after birth, but apparently she survived, was brought up by a colored family, and became a nun. 102
* The Man in the Iron Mask was probably the Count Mattioli who sold to Spain (1679) the secret of the negotiations between Louis and the Duke of Milan. Speculation has identified him with a mysterious prisoner Marchioli, whose face was hidden behind a velvet (not iron) mask, and who died in the Bastille in 1703. 126
* Sainte-Beuve noted that “several of the young ladies who became the outstanding nuns of Port-Royal had had smallpox, which at an early age had disfigured their faces,” and added slyly, “I do not wish to say that we give to God only tha
t which no longer has value in the world.” 15
* “The French language,” said Sainte-Beuve, “has no finer pages than the simple and severe lines of this incomparable picture.” 45
* L’homrne n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mats c’est un roseau pensant.
* Literally, “the surly monk”—a pretended ghost used by nurses and mothers to frighten children.
* “My God! Let us give ourselves less trouble about the manners of the age, and make some small allowances to human nature; let us not examine it with so great rigor, but look upon its defects with some indulgence. This world requires a tractable virtue; one may be blameworthy by stress of wisdom; right reason avoids every extremity, and would have us be wise with sobriety. That great stiffness in the virtues of ancient times too much shocks our age and common usage; it would have mortals too perfect; we must yield to the times without obstinacy, and ‘tis an extremity of folly to busy ourselves in correcting the world. I observe, as you do, a thousand things every day, which might go better taking another course; but whatever I may discover in every transaction, people don’t see me in a rage, like you. I take men with great calmness, just as they are; I accustom myself to bear with what they do; and I think that at court, as well as in the city, my phlegm is as much a philosopher as your bile.”
* “They fear that Hector and Troy may one day be reborn; that his son may take from me the life that in him I have spared. Sir, so much foresight is too cautious; I cannot see evils at so great a distance. I think what Troy used to be-so proud within its ramparts, so fertile in heroes, mistress of Hither Asia; and then I behold its fate and destiny. I see nothing but towers covered with sand, a river colored with blood, fields deserted, a child in chains; and I cannot imagine that Troy in this condition aspires to revenge. Ah, if the death of Hector’s son had been promised, why have deferred it an entire year? Could we not have immolated him on the breast of Priam? He might have been crushed under Troy amid a thousand deaths. All might have been allowable then; old age and infancy would in vain have sought in their weakness their defense; victory and might, more cruel than ourselves, would have excited us to murder in the confusion of our blows. My fury against the vanquished was only too severe. But should my cruelty survive my wrath? Should I leisurely bathe in the blood of a child despite the pity that I feel rising in me? No, sir, let the Greeks seek another prey; let them pursue elsewhere the relics of Troy; the course of my enmity is run. Epirus will save that which Troy has preserved.”
† Montfleury burst a blood vessel acting it, and died soon afterward.
* “Have you seen the splendor of this night? These torches, this pyre, this night with sacred flames, these eagles, these fasces, this assemblage, this army, this crowd of kings, these consuls, this senate—all taking their luster from my lover; this purple and gold made brighter by his glory, and these laurels still bearing witness to his victories; all these eyes that we see come from all parts to unite upon him alone their eager glances; this majestic bearing, this sweet presence. Heaven, with what respect and what willingness all hearts secretly assure him of their trust! Speak: can one see him without thinking, with me, that in whatever obscurity fate had given him birth, the world, beholding him, would have recognized its master?”
* Adam Smith thought Phèdre “the finest tragedy, perhaps, that is extant in any language.” 16
* Says Racine’s son: “He returned several times to the court, and always had the honor of approaching his Majesty.” 24 Saint-Simon gives a different account: Racine fell from favor by criticizing Scarron’s comedies in the presence of Mme. de Maintenon and the King. “At this the poor widow blushed, not for the reputation of the cripple attacked, but at hearing his name uttered in the presence of his successor. The King was also embarrassed . . . The end was that the King sent Racine away, saying that he was going to work. . . . Neither the King nor Mme. de Maintenon ever spoke to Racine again, or even looked at him.” This explanation of Racine’s fall from grace is now generally rejected. 25
* Take as example Le Faiseur d’oreilles—The Maker of Ears. Sir William goes to the city for business, leaving his wife, Alix, pregnant. Her relative André warns her that, judging from the color of her countenance, her child will be lacking an ear. He offers himself as a surgeon, and explains that a bout of love will supply the missing member. She accepts the prescription, and takes several doses, until the thought occurs to her that the child will have too many ears. When William returns he restores the moral balance by seducing André’s wife. 34
* “Certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the country, dark, livid, and all scorched by the sun, fixed to the soil which they rummage and throw up with indomitable pertinacity. They have a kind of articulate voice, and when they rise to their feet they show a human face. They are, in fact, men.” 104
* The political and military history of the Netherlands after 1688 is deferred to Chapter XXIV below.
* Nicolaes Berchem: The Castle in the Forest (Dresden). Ferdinand Bol: Jacob before Pharaoh (Dresden). Gerard Dou: Old Woman at a Window (Vienna). Barent Fabritius: Jacob and Benjamin (Chicago). Bartholomeus van der Heist: A Dutch Burgomaster, (New York). Pieter de Hooch: Interior of a Dutch House (London). Philips de Koninck: Landscape (Frankfurt). Nicolaes Maes: Old Woman Spinning (Amsterdam). Gabriel Metsu: The Vegetable Market (London). Frans van Mieris I: Self-portrait with Wife (The Hague). Willem van Mieris: The Recognition of Preciosa (Dresden). Aert van der Neer: Moonlight Scene (Berlin). Gerard Terborch: The Music Lovers (London). Adriaen van der Velde: The Farm (Berlin). Willem van der Velde II: Zuider Zee (Berlin). Jan Weenix II: A Hunting Scene (London). Adriaen van der Werff: The Expulsion of Hagar (Dresden). Philips Wouwerman: Halt of a Hunting Party (Dulwich).
* The American Civil War renewed the English Civil War by pitting the descendants of English aristocrats in the South against the descendants of English Puritans in the North.
* Books I and II, 1653; Book III, 1693. Pierre Motteux completed the translation in 1708.
* We regret to add that when Milton was assigned the task of defending the execution of Charles I, he listed, among the blots on that monarch’s memory, a fondness for Shakespeare. 28
* I.e., to write poetry.
* Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William (W as double U) Spurstow.
* Areopagitica meant matters pertaining to the supreme court of Athens, which was called the Areopagus from the hill where it convened. Milton took the title from a pamphlet addressed to the Areopagus by Isocrates in 355 B. C.
* See below, Chapter XVI, Section 1.
* Described and exaggerated in a famous passage of Macauiay’s History of England (I. 253–55). Cf. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century , I, 75–79.
* About this time sash windows began to replace casement windows, because they admitted more light.
* Whig was apparently a shortened form of Whiggamore, the name of a band of Scots active in 1648 against Charles I. Tory was an Irish word for robber, and was first applied to the Court Party by Titus Oates in 1680. 140
* The assizes were the periodical sittings of the superior courts in each county.
* The cackling of the frightened sacred geese on the Capitol awakened the Roman garrison to defeat a night attack by the Celts in 390 B.C. 34
* The earliest recorded paper money was issued in the seventh century A.D. under the T’ang Dynasty in China. Marco Polo saw such paper money in China in 1275, and tried without success to introduce the device into Italy. Sweden used paper money in 1656, Massachusetts Colony in 1690. 47
* From a letter of April 24, 1769, by the often mendacious Voltaire.
* This phrase was apparently first used by Count Francesco Algarotti in 1739. 13
* One of Cristofori’s pianofortes, dated 1720, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
* Wlodzimierz Kaminski in 1961 claimed to have found descriptions of the violin in fourteenth-century
Polish manuscripts.—Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1961.
* Sepharad appears in the Bible 1 as the name of a district in western Asia, where Jewish deportees were settled after the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem. Later it became a Hebrew term for Spain, and the Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin were called Sephardim.
* The name Ashkenaz appears first in Genesis x, 3, as a great-grandson of Noah; in Jeremiah LI, 27, it is the name of a kingdom in western Asia, among the medieval rabbis, for reasons unknown, it was the name for Germany; and Ashkenazim became a synonym for the Jews of Germany, Poland, and Russia.
* Gentlemen goes back to the Latin gens, a clan or family line of freemen. A “liberal” education was originally one intended for freemen (liberi).
* For us who are not initiates, differential calculus may be described as the calculation of variable quantities, as of weight, distance, or time. So the level of water poured at a uniform rate into an inverted cone will rise less and less rapidly; differential calculus determines how much the level will rise in any given unit of time. A body falling in a resistancefree medium will increase its rate of fall with each increment of time; calculus determines how far it will fall in any stated interval. More complicated forms of calculus deal with the construction of tangents to curves, the areas enclosed by a curve, the approximation of indefinitely multiplied straight lines to a circle. . . . Infinitesimal calculus calculates a variable quantity by reducing it without limit to so infinitesimal a part that the rate of variation may be ignored. Integral calculus calculates a quantity from knowledge of its rate of change. All these methods of reckoning have proved invaluable in engineering.
* At Oxford, says Aubrey, “he kept a body . . . soused or pickled.” One of the corpses turned over to him for dissection was that of Nan Green, who had murdered her bastard child; Petty found her still breathing, and brought her back to life. 19
