第 三百五十五 章 · 第355章

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

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.