The Uses Of The Past: Profiles Of Former Societies

With the vision of both historian and philosopher, Herbert Muller surveys the golden ages of past societies in a search for a pattern or a lesson that can be meaningful today. He analyzes the spirit and contribution of the Byzantine Empire, Israel, Greece, and Rome; Western Christendom, including the Age of the Enlightenment; 'Holy Russia,' Byzantine and Marxist; and the mysticism of India and the humanism of China. In his final chapter he presents a challenge and a credo for the present. Professor Muller is in the Department of English, Indiana University. Orville Prescott in the New York Times called The Uses of the Past 'a brilliant survey of the world's great civilizations filled with fascinating historical insights.' In The Virginia Quarterly Review T.V. Smith wrote: 'This is a rare kind of history in America, reminiscent of Voltaire...The profound wisdom of this book consists in the thesis that while history has no grand Meaning, it is constituted of many continuous and conflicting meanings...Here is history with a mighty undertow of philosophy...history bathed in tears but, like Aphrodite, upspringing in beauty.' John Herman Randall, Jr., called the book '...a realistic study of the light which careers of past societies can shed on the present crisis in our own.'