Chương Chương 356 · 第356章

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.”