(1885–1981) (1898–1981), were well-known American authors. Will first became famous with the publication of the Story of Philosophy, 1926. In 1932, he began publishing his eight volume work, Story of Civilization, which included Our Oriental Heritage; The Life of Greece; Caesar and Christ; The Age of Faith; and Rousseau and the Revolution, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. Their other works include: Philosophy and The Social Problem; Adventures in Genius; and On The Meaning of Life.
In The Lessons of History, 1968, Will and Ariel Durant stated:
The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, not even East versus West; it is whether man can live without God.3386
The Durants cited the 1866 writings of Joseph Ernest Renan (1823–1892), a French philologist, philosopher and historian, who stated:
What would we do without [Christianity]? … If rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder.3387
From Renan and their own studies of history, Will and Ariel Durant’s drew the conclusion that:
There is no significant example in history before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.3388