War and Peace

hat 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
Staël, 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 Staël, and the
others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon
of millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand,
Madame de Staël, 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.