brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was
coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung
to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now
he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room.
Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a
little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark
and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four
pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring.
Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat
up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from
a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing
helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge
army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air
like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called
les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to
those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along
lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the
threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it
grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a
stern and threatening attitude.
"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax
and pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill
the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at
Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father-
Prince Andrew - and his father had neither shape nor form, but he
existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with
love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father
caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer
to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke.
"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of
Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human
form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of
me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it.
Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing
happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But
someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do
something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as
happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do
better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!"
And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.
"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.
"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.
"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.
"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father?
Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he
would be satisfied...."
SECOND EPILOGUE
CHAPTER I
History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put
into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a
single nation, appears impossible.
The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to
describe and seize the apparently elusive - the life of a people.
They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and
regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the
whole nation.
The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished
and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the
ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations
to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so
as to accomplish ends that were predestined.
For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the
direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.
Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in
man's subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward
which nations are led, modern history should study not the
manifestations of power but the causes that produce it. But modern
history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held
by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.
Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided
by the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes
endowed with extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of
very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses.
Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or
Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the
progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims-
the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its
highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in
general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a
small northwesterly portion of a large continent.
Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without
replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has
obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the
divine authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach
the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations
guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to
which these nations and humanity at large are tending.
At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon
to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent
novelty of their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.
In the first place the historian describes the activity of
individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian
considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men,
while another includes also orators, learned men, reformers,
philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward
which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of them
this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm;
to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization
of a small corner of the world called Europe.
In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is
expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it
moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east
westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with
remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west,
attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of
middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of
the first movement in the west - Paris - and subsides.
During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of
men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of
Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people
burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these
events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive,
plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it
encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.
For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns
to the science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity
to know themselves.
If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that
reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or
disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone
believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the
history of that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.
But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit
the conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the
Deity in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other
answers.
Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know
what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced
these events? Then listen:
"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such
and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France
badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France
badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such
mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At
the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men
in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This
caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one
another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time
there was in France a man of genius - Napoleon. He conquered
everybody everywhere - that is, he killed many people because he was
a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and
killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he
returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all
obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill
people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great
many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to
restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807
he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled
and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from
Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and
others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All
Napoleon's allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces
advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated
Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him
to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and
showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later
they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII,
who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the
Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old
Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful
statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to
sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended
the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations
made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and
monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering
their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in
France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him,
immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry
at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated
the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent
him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the
beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that
rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a
reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress
their subjects."
It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic - a caricature
of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild
expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions,
which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the
histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and
the new histories of the culture of that period.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact
that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has
asked.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement
of humanity and of the peoples, the first question - in the absence
of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible - is: what is
the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously
replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was
very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it
is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we
recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently
directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we
do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about
Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the
connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.
If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it
should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole
interest of history lies precisely in that force.
History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone
reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new
force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really
quite well known to everybody.
CHAPTER II
What force moves the nations?
Biographical historians and historians of separate nations
understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In
their narration events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and
Alexander, or in general of the persons they describe. The answers
given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes
events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one
historian to each event. As soon as historians of different
nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the
replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is
understood by them all not only differently but often in quite
contradictory ways. One historian says that an event was produced by
Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by Alexander's, a third
that it was due to the power of some other person. Besides this,
historians of that kind contradict each other even in their
statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular
person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's power
was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was
based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians
of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy
the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no
reply to history's essential question.
Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to
recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the
force which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power
inherent in heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a
multiplicity of variously directed forces. In describing a war or
the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause
of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of
many persons connected with the event.
According to this view the power of historical personages,
represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would
seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events. Yet in
most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power
as a force that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause.
In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his
time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his
power is itself a force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and
others, for instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of
the Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another
plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they do not
like were simply the product of Napoleon's misdirected will, and
that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their development by
Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general temper
of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's power
suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the
age.
This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur
at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made
up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs
because after entering the field of analysis the universal
historians stop halfway.
To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant
force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This
condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to
explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to
the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the
resultant action.
Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the
restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were
produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian
Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries
to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons
were due to other things beside Alexander's will - such as the activity
of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte
Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes
Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand,
and the rest - but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions
of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others,
evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of
millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That
Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to
one another only affected their mutual relations but does not
account for the submission of millions. And therefore to explain how
from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people
resulted - that is, how component forces equal to one A gave a
resultant equal to a thousand times A - the historian is again
obliged to fall back on power - the force he had denied - and to
recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he has to
admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just
what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.
Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according
to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the
clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the
same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them
and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events,
and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that
power produces events.
A third class of historians - the so-called historians of culture-
following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes
accept writers and ladies as forces producing events - again take
that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is
called culture - in mental activity.
The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense
number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these
historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that
this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove
that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a
great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between
intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case
can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions,
for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders
of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality
of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the
preaching of love.
But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments
with which these histories are filled - admitting that nations are
governed by some undefined force called an idea - history's essential
question still remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs
and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the
universal historians, another, newer force - the idea - is added, the
connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is
possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so events occurred;
with some effort one may even conceive that Napoleon together with
other influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat
social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin to drown one
another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal
nexus of this new force with the event.
Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live
contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some connection
between the intellectual activity of men and their historical
movements, just as such a connection may be found between the
movements of humanity and commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything
else you please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the
historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole
historical movement is hard to understand. Only the following
considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion: (1)
that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and
agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a
similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists,
and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because
traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that spiritual
activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture, ideas, are all
indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very
easy to use words having a still less definite meaning, and which
can therefore be readily introduced into any theory.
But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this
kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something)
the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and
more to approximate, are significant from the fact that after
seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and
political doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to
describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for
instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise
of power - and say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will.
Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict
themselves, and show that the new force they have devised does not
account for what happens in history, and that history can only be
explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not
recognize.
CHAPTER III
A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant
says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because
its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement
lies in the smoke which the wind carries away.
The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation.
To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no
devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is
not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as
a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong.
But the man who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause
refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go on
and explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reached
the ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure
of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search for
the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by
the smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do not
supply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to
him and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.
The only conception that can explain the movement of the
locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.
The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples
is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the
peoples.
Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force
resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the
wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that
is blown away.
So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether
Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of
all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite
impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception
of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain
end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of
power.
This conception is the one handle by means of which the material
of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who
breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other
method of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the
one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception
of power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated
by the universal historians and historians of culture themselves,
for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably have
recourse to it at every step.
In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now
is like money in circulation - paper money and coin. The biographies
and special national histories are like paper money. They can be
used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to
anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the
security behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will of
heroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will be
interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge of
poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money arise
either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made or
because people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts
concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too
many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someone
inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this? - that is, wants to
exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual
comprehension.
The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are
like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to
substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific
gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more
than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is
deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle.
As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange
but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only when
they can reply to history's essential question: what is power? The
universal historians give contradictory replies to that question,
while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quite
different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among
a group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those who
do not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians
of culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve as
currency for some purposes of their own, only in universities and
among the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "serious
reading."
CHAPTER IV
Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the
subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without
contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of two
things: either a return to the former belief in the direct
intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation
of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed
"power."
A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been
destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.
Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the
question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon
uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and
so what he ordered was done.
This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was
given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes
essential to determine what is this power of one man over others.
It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak
one - a domination based on the application or threat of physical
force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect
of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say
that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted
with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power
cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to
mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions
differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a
Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular
moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker
than any of the millions they ruled over.
If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral
qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for
elsewhere - in the relation to the people of the man who wields the
power.
And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
understanding of power for true gold.
Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed
or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.
In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how
a state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to
be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that
definition of power needs explanation.
The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the
ancients regarded fire - namely, as something existing absolutely.
But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for
modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.
From this fundamental difference between the view held by history
and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell
minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what
power - existing immutably outside time - is, but to history's questions
about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer
nothing.
If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their
ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If
not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when
he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those
criminals whom he arrested?
Do palace revolutions - in which sometimes only two or three people
take part - transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In
international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to
their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine
transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people
transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the
French went to fight the Austrians?
To these questions three answers are possible:
Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,
and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as
an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the
people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite
and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and
even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers
of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or
(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers
conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and
that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and
their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by
the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people
is transferred from some people to others.
And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain
the relation of the people to their rulers.
Some historians - those biographical and specialist historians
already referred to - in their simplicity failing to understand the
question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective
will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical
persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume
that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and
that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of
power - mere violence.
Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of
history, has the inconvenience - in application to complex and stormy
periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise
simultaneously and struggle with one another - that a Legitimist
historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,
and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a
Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention
and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the
others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations
furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only
satisfy young children.
Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of
historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the
will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have
power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will
of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this
program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they
continually contradict one another.
Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's
progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth,
freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country.
But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature
of this program - or even admitting that some one general program of
these conditions exists - the facts of history almost always contradict
that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted
consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how
is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns
tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their
people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,
contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not
react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV - why should it react just on Louis
XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions
there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain
why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from
certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of
fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to
Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to
Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to
Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's
will from one individual to another, especially in view of
international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians
are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal
delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on
cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a
ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of
history - civil wars, revolutions, and conquests - are presented by
these historians not as the results of free transferences of the
people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or
more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so
these historians also see and admit historical events which are
exceptions to the theory.
These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some
plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that
all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the
palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth
and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.
Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people
is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the
conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have
power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has
been delegated to them.
But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the
historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have
those leaders?
The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the
people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the
people.
But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the
leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part
of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression
of the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details
of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or
a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is
evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the
activity of an historical leader which serves to express the
people's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historians
believe, then to determine which side of the activity of a leader
expresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in what
the nation's life consists.
Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most
obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all
conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of
humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by
almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,
progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization
as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the