War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER III

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A STEAM-ENGINE moves. The question is asked, How is it moved? A peasant

answers, It is the devil moving it. Another man says, The steam-engine moves

because the wheels are going round. A third maintains that the cause of the

motion is to be found in the smoke floated from it by the wind.

The peasant's contention is irrefutable. To refute him some one must prove to

him that there is no devil, or another peasant must explain that it is not a

devil, but a German who moves the steamer. Then from their contradictory views

they see that both are wrong. But the man who says the cause is the movement of

the wheels refutes himself, seeing that having once entered on the path of

analysis, he ought to proceed further and further along it; he ought to explain

the cause of the wheels moving. And he has not to stop in his search for a cause

till he finds the ultimate cause of the movement of the steam-engine in the

steam compressed in the boiler. As for the man who explained the movement of the

steam-engine as due to the smoke being blown back from it, he has simply noticed

that the wheel explanation was insufficient, and pitching on the first

accompanying symptom, gave that out as his cause.

The only conception which can explain the movement of the steamer is the

conception of a force equal to the movement that is seen.

The only conception by means of which the movements of nations can be

explained is a conception of a force equal to the whole movement of the

nations.

Yet under this conception there are included by various historians forces of

the most various kinds, and all unequal to the movement that is seen. Some see

in it a force directly pertaining to heroes, as the peasant sees the devil in

the steam-engine. Others, a force resulting from several other forces, like the

movement of the wheels; a third class, intellectual influence, like the

smoke.

So long as histories are written of individual persons—whether they are

C

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1. Ebooks list page : 85
2. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER I
3. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER IV
4. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER V
5. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER VI
6. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER VII
7. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XIV
8. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER IX
9. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER X
10. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XI
11. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XII
12. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER XVI
13. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER III
14. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER IV
15. War And Peace: Epilogue 1 - CHAPTER I
16. War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER II