________________________________________________
_ The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The
waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies
are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have
caused the floods to abate.
But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The
diplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of this
fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between their
sovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they
feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises
again from the same point as before- Paris. The last backwash of the
movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the
apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military
movement of that period of history.
The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without
any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but
by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man
they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.
This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.
That act is performed.
The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off
his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.
And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to
himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues
and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to
the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as
long as an unseen hand directed his actions.
The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the
actor shows him to us.
"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was
not he but I who moved you?"
But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people
understood this.
Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of
Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from
east to west.
What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head
of that movement from east to west?
What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with
European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests;
a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated
with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal
grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all
this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life:
his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded
him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.
During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed.
But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented
itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the
nations of Europe, led them to the goal.
The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses
all possible power. How does he use it?
Alexander I- the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early
years had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the
liberal innovations in his fatherland- now that he seemed to possess
the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing
about the welfare of his peoples- at the time when Napoleon in exile
was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made
mankind happy had he retained power- Alexander I, having fulfilled his
mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes
the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and
gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying
only:
"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like
the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of
God."
As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself,
and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to
comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet
has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.
A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is
afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet
admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it
exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee
collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it
exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life
of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed
the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate
its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of
a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this
the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration
of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that
in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the
bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes
the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in
the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the
ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee
to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of
historic characters and nations. _
Read next: First Epilogue: 1813 - 20: Chapter 5
Read previous: First Epilogue: 1813 - 20: Chapter 3
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