I’m working on a history multi-part question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.
1) What is unique about your document? Is it handwritten or typed? 2) Who was the original author of this document? Who was the intended audience? What is the date of the document?3) What is the main point or idea of the document? Why do you personally think this document was written?4) Other than your textbook or the source itself, where could you find more information on this document?Will Durant’s: Freedom of Worship
(1943)
Will Durant. Freedom of Worship (1943) / [Reflection of Norman Rockwell’s 4
Freedoms]
(February, 1943)
Man differs from the animal in two things: He laughs, and he prays. Perhaps the animal
laughs when he plays, and prays when he begs or mourns; we shall never know any soul
but our own, and never that. But the mark of man is that he beats his head against the
riddle of life, knows his infinite weakness of body and mind, lifts up his heart to a
hidden presence and power, and finds in his faith a beacon of heartening hope, a pillar
of strength for his fragile decency. These men of the fields, coming from afar in the
uncomfortable finery of a Sabbath morn, greeting one another with bluff cordiality,
entering to worship their God in their own fashion–I think, sometimes, that they know
more than I shall ever find in all my books. They have no words to tell me what they
know, but that is because religion, like music, lives in a world beyond words, or
thoughts, or things. They have felt the mystery of consciousness within themselves,
and will not say that they are machines. They have seen the growth of the soil and the
child, they have stood in awe amid the swelling fields, in the humming and teeming
woods, and they have sensed in every cell and atom the same creative power that wells
up in their own striving and fulfillment. Their unmoved faces conceal a silent
thankfulness for the rich increase of summer, the mortal loveliness of autumn, and the
gay resurrection of the spring. They have watched patiently the movement of the stars,
and found in them a majestic order so harmoniously regular that our ears would hear its
music were it not eternal. Their tired eyes have known the ineffable splendor of earth
and sky, even in tempest, terror, and destruction; and they have never doubted that in
this beauty some sense and meaning dwell. They have seen death, and reached beyond
it with their hope.
Source: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/12/will-durants-freedom-
worship/ (Links to an external site.)
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