Editing Will Durant (section)

==Early life==
William James Durant was born in [[North Adams, Massachusetts|North Adams]], Massachusetts, to [[French-Canadian]] [[Catholic]] parents, Joseph Durant and Mary Allard, who had been part of the [[Quebec emigration]] to the United States.<ref name="FFRF">{{cite web|url=https://ffrf.org/news/day/dayitems/item/14888-will-durant|title=Will Durant|date=November 5, 1980 |publisher=Freedom From Religion Foundation|access-date=May 29, 2020}}</ref><ref name="Who's Who">{{cite book |last1=Brennan |first1=Elizabeth A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=63nvmt4HqTEC&q=%22will+durant%22+%22Ariel+kaufman%22&pg=PA257 |title=Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners |last2=Clarage |first2=Elizabeth C. |publisher=Oryx Press |year=1999 |isbn=1-57356-111-8 |place=Phoenix |page=257 |oclc=750569323 |via=Google Books}}</ref>

After graduating from [[St. Peter's Preparatory School]] in [[Jersey City, New Jersey]], in 1903, Durant enrolled at [[Saint Peter's University|Saint Peter's College]] (now Saint Peter's University), also in Jersey City, where he graduated in 1907.<ref name="will to capture">{{cite web|url=https://archive.hudsonreporter.com/2010/11/04/the-will-to-capture-history/|title=The will to capture history|work=Hudson Reporter|date=November 4, 2010|access-date=May 29, 2020}}</ref> Historian Joan Rubin writes of that period, "Despite some adolescent flirtations, he began preparing for the vocation that promised to realize his mother's fondest hopes for him: the priesthood. In that way, one might argue, he embarked on a course that, while distant from [[Yale]]'s or [[Columbia University|Columbia]]'s apprenticeships in gentility, offered equivalent cultural authority within his own milieu."<ref name= Rubin>Rubin, Joan Shelley. ''The Making of Middlebrow Culture'', University of North Carolina Press (1992).</ref>

In 1905, he began experimenting with [[socialist]] philosophy, but, after [[World War I]], he began recognizing that a "[[Abusive power and control|lust for power]]" underlay all forms of political behavior.<ref name= Rubin /> However, even before the war, "other aspects of his sensibility had competed with his radical leanings," notes Rubin. She adds that "the most concrete of those was a persistent penchant for philosophy. With his energy invested in [[Baruch Spinoza]], he made little room for the Russian anarchist [[Mikhail Bakunin]]. From then on, writes Rubin, "his retention of a model of selfhood predicated on discipline made him unsympathetic to anarchist injunctions to 'be yourself.'... To be one's 'deliberate self,' he explained, meant to 'rise above' the impulse to 'become the slaves of our passions' and instead to act with 'courageous devotion' to a moral cause."<ref name=Rubin />