The Durant ego lacks precisely that. It was born in a lake, and it has no thirst for the sea. Like certain aquatic creatures, it takes what floats into its mouth, but makes no explorations. What Durant has given us is simply not the story of philosophy. It is merely a series of interesting comments upon the curriculum of a certain type of college which does not even belong to the University of World Thought. This provincialism is unfortunate, for it is certain to deceive provincial readers with the idea that they have listened to the whole story. It is difficult, after the reading of a book which is an avowed recapitulation of many foreign opinions, to say what an author’s own opinions may be. It is evident that Durant is no Catholic; not quite so evident whether or no he is a believing Protestant. He seems to have little sympathy with Protestantism as a whole, and less yet with Fundamentalism. It may be safe to say that his personal bias takes the direction of a vague Humanism. To quote, without taking the greatest precaution not to pass off some mere explanatory paraphrase as the author’s own, would be so unfair that I hesitate to quote at all in proof of anything. There are, however, certain passages which are clearly Durant, and not Plato, Aristotle or Nietzsche boiled down--though even here we must be on guard lest what we see is Durant under the momentary influence of his subject, not Durant in his daily habit. It is the wind which does not blow, the things which he does not say, that speak most eloquently and surely of the man. Chapters, and most of them long chapters, are given to Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, Nietzsche; a chapter to three contemporary Europeans--Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce and Bertrand Russell; and a final chapter to the three American moderns, George Santayana, William James and John Dewey. There are adequate pages devoted to Rousseau, Locke, Hegel, and many a lesser light. Some, you will note, are pre-Christian; some are atheistic; some deistic, monistic, or agnostic. It is a chorus which is irreligious with a vast predominance, with here and there a tolerant voice for modernistic Protestantism. Bishop Berkeley, represented by a few paragraphs, stands practically alone as the exponent of a particular faith.