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