Reading From Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization" Book VII Chapter XIX

I found the discussion of Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter Christina to be fascinating and thought I'd share some of it.

The Durant's describe Gustavus Adolphus -

"The most romantic figure in Swedish history was now sixteen. His mother was a German, daughter of Duke Adolphus of Holstein-Gottorp. Father and mother gave him a rigorous education in the Swedish and German languages and the Protestent doctrine. By the age of twelve he had learned Latin, Italian, and Dutch; later he picked up English, Spanish, even some Polish and Russian, to which was added a strong dose of the classics as comported with training in sports, public affairs, and the arts of war. At the age of nine he began to attend sessions of the Riksdag; at thirteen he received ambassadors; at fifteen he ruled a province, at sixteen he fought in battle. He was tall, handsome, courteous, generous, merciful, intelligent, brave; what more could history ask of a man?"

and write of his daughter Queen Christina -

"In 1644 Christina, now eighteen, assumed control. She felt herself fit to rule this vibrant nation, grown to a million and a half souls; and indeed she had all the abilities of a precocious male. "I came into this world", she said, "all armed with hair; my voice strong and harsh. This made the women think I was a boy, and they gave vent to their joy in exclamations which at first deceived the KIng." Gustavus took the discovery of her sex like a gentleman and came to love her so dearly that he seemed quite content to have her as heir to his power, but her mother, Maria Eleanora of Brandenburg, would never forgive her for being a girl. Perhaps this maternal rejection shared in making Christian as much of a man as her physique would allow. She conscientiously neglected her person, scorned ornament, swore manfully, liked to wear male dress, took to masculine sports, rode astride at top speed, hunted wildly, and bagged her game at the first shot, but: "I never killed an animal without feeling pity for it."

...

"She wished to rival not only the youths in sports and courtiers in politics, but also the scholars in learning, and these not merely in languages and literature but in science and philosophy as well. By the age of fourteen she knew German, French, Italian and Spanish; by eighteen she knew Latin; later she studied Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. She read and loved the French and Italian poets and envied the bright vivacity of French civilization. She corresponded eagerly with scholars, scientists, and philosophers in several lands. She brought together a splendid library, including rare ancient manuscripts which students came from many countries to consult.

...

"Pascal sent her his calculating machine, with a remarkably beautiful letter complementing her on being a queen in the realm of mind as well as government." 

...

"Her penultimate passion was for philosophy. She corresponded with Gassendi, who, like a hundred others, congratulated her on realizing Plato's dream of philosopher-kings. Rene Descartes, the outstanding philosopher of the age, came, saw, and marveled to hear her deduce his pet ideas from Plato. When he tried to convince her that all animals were mechanisms, she remarked that she had never seen her watch give birth to baby watches."

...

"Her fragmentary memoirs are vital and fascinating. The maxims which she left in manuscripts have nothing hackneyed about them. E.g.:

• One is, in proportion as one can love.
• Fools are to more feared than knaves.
• To undeceive men is to offend them.
• Extraordinary merit is a crime never forgiven.
• There is a star which unites souls of the first order, though ages and distances divide them.
• More courage is required for marriage, than for war.
• One rises above all, when one no longer esteems or fears anything.
• He who loses his temper with the world has learned all he knows to no purpose.
• Philosophy neither changes men nor corrects men. 

I included an audio file below so you can hear my beautiful voice instead of me clicking on this keyboard in silence. I probably should have taken the wad of tobacco out of my mouth and not tried to balance the book, a laptop and a small dog on my lap but hopefully it's semi-intelligible and may prove to be a sleep aid.

 __________________________

 

Reading from book VII in the eleven-book series "The Story of Civilization". Book VII is titled "The Age of Reason Begins". It was published by Simon and Schuster in 1961.

This reading is a section from Chapter XIX "The Rise of The North: 1559-1648" discussing Sweden's King Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter - Sweden's Queen Christina. Begins". It was published by Simon and Schuster in 1961

_________________________

Speaking of Sweden, perhaps a Swede rocking out on a Hammond B3 organ with a Leslie speaker would be of interest? or the song Dancing Queen by the Swedish group ABBA? Before I go too far down a random "things Swedish" path I think I better wrap this and go enjoy some warm medicinal smoke to help myself focus....and laugh. Hope this day was good for you💖

Back In The Day

I'm almost through Volume VII of "The Story of Civilization" series by Will and Ariel Durant. Volume VII is titled "The Age of Reason Begins". At 647 pages it is one of the shorter volumes of the set so it's not suitable for reading on a smart phone or by those with more important things to do. It can be time consuming to read but if you are interested in time travel, reading history is a practical means that doesn't require a flux capacitor.

When I first started reading about this series of books I thought it was a joke that anyone could claim to write "the story of civilization." Luckily Will Durant has a sense of humor and created what seems to be a fair minded, necessarily partial treatment of history with all the limitations that any history writing has especially one of this scope that reaches back over 2500 years. If nothing else reading this type of history will give you some sense of perspective when considering our present time. It will also disabuse you of any notions of "exceptionalism" when it comes to nations, states, races, creeds, genders or colors. Exceptional individuals - yes; exceptional abstractions - not so much.

Fun fact - Will and Ariel Durant were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the Republican President Gerald Ford in 1977. It seems somehow instructive that the Republican President Donald Trump awarded this medal to the radio personality Rush Limbaugh in his 2020 State of the Union address.

So what's the point? 

You'll certainly learn by reading Will and Ariel's books that civilizations evolve and devolve. The moral arc of the universe may be long and bend towards justice as Martin Luther King taught but the actual state of society has varied wildly over the last couple of thousand years alternating between times of feast and  famine, war and peace, enlightenment and darkness.

I wanted to include a bit of Volume VII to give you a taste of the style of the Durant's writing, which of course changed some over the 37 years they spent on their project but remained always informative, surprising (to me at least) and somewhat wry. This is from the chapter "Imperial Armageddon" in a section titled "Morals and Manners" describing the German empire in the mid 1500's. It may cause you to wonder if there is anything truly new under the sun or if humans are actually acting out some variation of an absurd, sometimes beautiful sometimes cruel and ugly, drama with only the names and dates varying over the millennia. Hopefully it will also make you laugh a little at us apes wearing pants and pantsuits. 

From Will and Ariel -

If we believe the moralists of this half century before the war, the moral picture was as dark as the economic. Teachers complained that the youngsters sent to them were not Christians but barbarians. "The people bring up their children so badly," wrote Matthias Brendenbach in 1557, "that it becomes obvious to the poor schoolmasters...that they have got to reckon...with wild animals." "All discipline appears at an end," said another in 1561;"the students are refractory and insolent in the extreme." In most university towns the citizens hesitated to go out at night for fear of the students, who on some occasions attacked them with open knives. "A chief cause of the general depravity of the students," said Nathan Chytransin in 1578, "is undoubtedly the decline in home training...Now that we have slipped the yoke of ancient laws and statutes from off our necks...it is no wonder that we find, among the larger part of our young people, such unbridled licentiousness, such boorish ignorance, such ungovernable insolence, such terrible godlessness." Others thought that "not the least among the causes why the young lapse into immorality and lasciviousness are the comedies, spectacles, and plays."

As for adults, the preachers described them as quarrelsome hypocrites, gluttons, drunkards and adulterers. Pastor Johann Kuno complained in 1579, "Vice of all sorts is now so common that it is committed without shame, nay, people even boast of it in sodomitish fashion; the coarsest, the most indecent sins have become viirtues...Who regards common whoredom any longer as a sin?" Pastor Bartholomaus Ringwalt thought in 1585 that these were "the last and worst times which have come upon the world." Profanity was almost universal among the men, regardless  of the creed. Calumny had a festival. "My superintendent," wrote the Count of Oldenburg in 1594, "has complained to me of the manner in which Dr. Pezel, at Bremen, has abused and slandered him in one of his books, making out that he spent his days in gluttony, drunkenness and debauchery, that he...was a sheep-devouring wolf, a serpent, a he-goat, an abortion...and that he must be gotten rid of by hanging, drowning, or imprisonment, by the wheel or by the sword." The court preacher of the Elector of Saxony found that, "almost throughout the length and breadth of Germany it has been falsely reported that I earn large gilded goblets in drinking matches, that...I so fill myself with wine that...I have to be propped up and laid on a wagon and carted off like a drunken calf or sow."

Eating and drinking were major industries. Half the day of a well-to-do German was consumed in passing edibles from one end of the anatomy to the other. Burghers were proud of their appetites, which like the dress of their women, served as heralds of prosperity. A circus performer earned national fame by eating at one meal a pound of cheese, thirty eggs, a large loaf of bread--after which stint he fell dead. Dinners lasting seven hours, with fourteen toasts, were not unusual. Weddings were in many cases riots of gourmandizing and intoxication. A jovial prince signed his letters "Valete et inebriamini" (Be well and get drunk). Elector  Christian II of Saxony drank himself to death at the age of twenty-seven. A temperance society struggled against the evil, but its first president died of drink. It was asserted that gluttony was shortening the tenure of life. Said Erasmus Winter in 1599: "Owing to immoderate eating and drinking there are now few old people, and we seldom see a man of thirty or forty who is not affected by some sort of disease, either stone, gout, cough, consumption, or what not."

We must not take these contemporary complaints too seriously. Probably the majority of the people were hard-working, long-suffering, and literally God-fearing folk; but in history, as in journalism, virtue makes no news--which proves it usual.

I hope you can find time to read something that makes you realize how complex and in some sense unknowable this world and the people in it are, while also seeing the common virtue of human individuals throughout time. If nothing else it's like a billion piece puzzle you can enjoy spending your life trying to piece together and in the end knowing the effort was the point. In other words - there are plenty of dittoheaads what the world always needs more of are independent, thinking, evolving humans.

___________________________