War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER II

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WHAT is the force that moves nations?

Biographical historians, and historians writing of separate nations,

understand this force as a power residing in heroes and sovereigns. According to

their narratives, the events were entirely due to the wills of Napoleons, of

Alexanders, or, generally speaking, of those persons who form the subject of

historical memoirs. The answers given by historians of this class to the

question as to the force which brings about events are satisfactory, but only so

long as there is only one historian for any event. But as soon as historians of

different views and different nationalities begin describing the same event, the

answers given by them immediately lose all their value, as this force is

understood by them, not only differently, but often in absolutely opposite ways.

One historian asserts that an event is due to the power of Napoleon; another

maintains that it is produced by the power of Alexander; a third ascribes it to

the influence of some third person. Moreover, historians of this class

contradict one another even in their explanation of the force on which the

influence of the same person is based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that

Napoleon's power rested on his virtue and his genius; Lanfrey, a Republican,

declares that it rested on his duplicity and deception of the people. So that

historians of this class, mutually destroying each other's position, at the same

time destroy the conception of the force producing events, and give no answer to

the essential question of history.

Writers of universal history, who have to deal with all the nations at once,

appear to recognise the incorrectness of the views of historians of separate

countries as to the force that produces events. They do not recognise this force

as a power pertaining to heroes and sovereigns, but regard it as the resultant

of many forces working in different directions. In describing a war on the

subjugation of a people, the writer of general history seeks the cause of the

event, not in the power of one person, but in the mutual action on one another

of many persons connected with the event.

The power of historical personages conceived as the product of several

forces, according to this view, can hardly, one would have supposed, be regarded

as a self-sufficient force independently producing events. Yet writers of

general history do in the great majority of cases employ the conception of power

again as a self-sufficient force producing events and standing in the relation

of cause to them. According to their exposition now the historical personage is

the product of his time, and his power is only the product of various forces,

now his power is the force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, for instance,

and others, in one place, explain that Napoleon is the product of the

Revolution, of the ideas of 1789, and so on; and in another plainly state that

the campaign of 1812 and other events not to their liking are simply the work of

Napoleon's wrongly directed will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested

in their development by Napoleon's arbitrary rule. The ideas of the Revolution,

the general temper of the age produced Napoleon's power. The power of Napoleon

suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the age.

This strange inconsistency is not an accidental one. It confronts us at every

turn, and, in fact, whole works upon universal history are made up of

consecutive series of such inconsistencies. This inconsistency is due to the

fact that after taking a few steps along the road of analysis, these historians

have stopped short halfway.

To find the component forces that make up the composite or resultant force,

it is essential that the sum of the component parts should equal the resultant.

This condition is never observed by historical writers, and consequently, to

explain the resultant force, they must inevitably admit, in addition to those

insufficient contributory forces, some further unexplained force that affects

also the resultant action.

The historian describing the campaign of 1813, or the restoration of the

Bourbons, says bluntly that these events were produced by the will of Alexander.

But the philosophic historian Gervinus, controverting the view of the special

historian of those events, seeks to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the

restoration of the Bourbons was due not only to Alexander, but also to the work

of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Sta

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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 III