Chương Chương 339 · 第339章

If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to the

attainment of certain ends—the greatness of Russia or of France,

the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the

Revolution, general progress, or anything else—then it is impossible

to explain the facts of history without introducing the conceptions of

chance and genius.

If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth

century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been

accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If

the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained

without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the aim was the

dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have accomplished that

much better than warfare. If the aim was the progress of civilization,

it is easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing civilization

more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.

Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

Because it happened so! “Chance created the situation; genius utilized

it,” says history.

But what is chance? What is genius?

The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and

therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of

understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I

think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about

chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary

human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of

genius.

To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a

special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others

must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction

of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram,

who instead of getting into the general fold every evening goes into a

special enclosure where there are oats—that this very ram, swelling with

fat, is killed for meat.

But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to them

happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only

admit that what happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken,

and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened

to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not know for what purpose

they are fattened, they will at least know that all that happened to the

ram did not happen accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions

of chance or genius.

Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately

intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our

ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of

historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they produce

(incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then the words

chance and genius become superfluous.

We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European

convulsions and that we know only the facts—that is, the murders, first

in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain,

and in Russia—and that the movements from the west to the east and from

the east to the west form the essence and purpose of these events, and

not only shall we have no need to see exceptional ability and genius in

Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable to consider them to

be anything but like other men, and we shall not be obliged to have

recourse to chance for an explanation of those small events which made

these people what they were, but it will be clear that all those small

events were inevitable.

By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall

clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for

any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it is

impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down to the

smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than Napoleon and

Alexander with all their antecedents.