transmissions..............

 

     We have said that a great civilization does not entirely die—non omnis moritur.  Some precious achievements have survived all the vicissitudes of  rising and falling states: the making of fire and light, of the wheel and other basic tools; language, writing art, and song; agriculture, the family, and parental care; social organization, morality, and charity; and the use of teaching to transmit the lore of the family and race.  These are the elements of civilization, and they have been tenaciously maintained through the perilous passage from one civilization to the next.  They are the connective tissue of human history.

     If education is the transmission of civilization, we are unquestionably progressing.  Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

-Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History