War And Peace: Epilogue 2 - CHAPTER I

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THE SUBJECT of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and

pin down in words—that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity,

but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.

All the ancient historians employed the same method for describing and

catching what is seemingly elusive—that is, the life of a people. They described

the career of individual persons ruling peoples; and their activity was to them

an expression of the activity of the whole people.

The questions, In what way individual persons made nations act in accordance

with their will, and by what the will of those individuals themselves was

controlled, the ancients answered, By the will of God; which in the first case

made the nation subject to the will of one chosen person, and, in the second,

guided the will of that chosen monarch to the ordained end.

For the ancients these questions were solved by faith in the immediate

participation of the Deity in the affairs of mankind.

Modern history has theoretically rejected both those positions. One would

have thought that rejecting the convictions of the ancients of men's subjection

to the Deity, and of a defined goal to which nations are led, modern history

should have studied, not the manifestations of power, but the causes that go to

its formation. But modern history has not done that. While in theory rejecting

the views of the ancients, it follows them in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly led by the will of

the Deity, modern history has set up either heroes, endowed with extraordinary,

superhuman powers, or simply men of the most varied characteristics, from

monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the old aim, the will

of the Deity, that to the old historians seemed the end of the movements of

peoples, such as the Gauls, the Greeks, and the Romans, modern history has

advanced aims of its own—the welfare of the French, the German, or the English

people, or its highest pitch of generalisation, the civilisation of all

humanity, by which is usually meant the peoples inhabiting a small, northwestern

corner of the great mother-earth.

Modern history has rejected the faiths of the ancients, without putting any

new conviction in their place; and the logic of the position has forced the

historians, leaving behind them the rejected, divine right of kings and fate of

the ancients, to come back by a different path to the same point again: to the

recognition, that is (1) that peoples are led by individual persons; and (2)

that there is a certain goal towards which humanity and the peoples constituting

it are moving.

In all the works of the more modern historians, from Gibbon to Buckle, in

spite of their apparent differences and the apparent novelty of their views,

these two old inevitable positions lie at the basis of the argument.

In the first place the historian describes the conduct of separate persons

who, in his opinion, lead humanity (one regards as such only monarchs, military

generals, and ministers of state; another includes besides monarchs, orators,

scientific men, reformers, philosophers, and poets). Secondly, the goal towards

which humanity is being led is known to the historian. To one this goal is the

greatness of the Roman, or the Spanish, or the French state; for another, it is

freedom, equality, a certain sort of civilisation in a little corner of the

world called Europe.

In 1789 there was a ferment in Paris: it grew and spread, and found

expression in the movement of peoples from west to east. Several times that

movement is made to the east, and comes into collision with a counter-movement

from east westwards. In the year 1812 it reaches its furthest limit, Moscow, and

then, with a remarkable symmetry, the counter-movement follows from east to

west; drawing with it, like the first movement, the peoples of Central Europe.

The counter-movement reaches the starting-point of the first movement—Paris—and

subsides.

During this period of twenty years an immense number of fields are not

tilled; houses are burned; trade changes its direction; millions of men grow

poor and grow rich, and change their habitations; and millions of Christians,

professing the law of love, murder one another.

What does all this mean? What did all this proceed from? What induced these

people to burn houses and to murder their fellow-creatures? What were the causes

of these events? What force compelled men to act in this fashion? These are the

involuntary and most legitimate questions that, in all good faith, humanity puts

to itself when it stumbles on memorials and traditions of that past age of

restlessness.

To answer these questions the common-sense of humanity turns to the science

of history, the object of which is the self-knowledge of nations and of

humanity.

Had history retained the view of the ancients, it would have said: The Deity,

to reward or to punish His People, gave Napoleon power, and guided his will for

the attainment of His own divine ends. And that answer would have been complete

and clear. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance of

Napoleon. For one who believed in it, all the history of that period would have

been comprehensible, and there would have been nothing contradictory in

it.

But modern history cannot answer in that way. Science does not accept the

view of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity in the affairs

of mankind, and therefore must give other answers.

Modern history, in answer to these questions, says: “You want to know what

this movement means, what it arose from, and what force produced these events?

Listen.

“Louis XIV. was a very haughty and self-willed man; he had such and such

mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. Louis's

successors, too, were weak men, and they, too, governed France badly. And they

had such and such favourites, and such and such mistresses. Moreover, there were

certain men writing books at this period. At the end of the eighteenth century

there were some two dozen men in Paris who began to talk all about men being

equal and free. This led people all over France to fall to hewing and hacking at

each other. These people killed the king and a great many more. At that time

there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He conquered every one everywhere,

that is, he killed a great many people, because he was a very great genius. And

for some reason he went to kill the Africans; and killed them so well, and was

so cunning and clever, that on returning to France he bade every one obey him.

And they all did obey him. After being made Emperor he went to kill people in

Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there, too, he killed a great many. In Russia

there was an Emperor, Alexander, who was resolved to re-establish order in

Europe, and so made war with Napoleon. But in 1807 he suddenly made friends with

him, and in 1811 he quarrelled again, and again they began killing a great many

people. And Napoleon took six hundred thousand men into Russia, and conquered

Moscow, and then he suddenly ran away out of Moscow, and then the Emperor

Alexander, aided by the counsels of Stein and others, united Europe for defence

against the destroyer of her peace. All Napoleon's allies suddenly became his

enemies; and the united army advanced against the fresh troops raised by

Napoleon. The allies vanquished Napoleon; entered Paris; forced Napoleon to

abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him, however, of the

dignity of Emperor, showing him, in fact, every respect, although five years

before, and one year later, he was regarded by every one as a brigand outside

the pale of the law. And Louis XVIII., who, till then, had been a laughing-stock

to the French and the allies, began to reign. Napoleon shed tears before the Old

Guard, abdicated the throne, and went into exile. Then the subtle, political

people and diplomatists (conspicuous among them Talleyrand, who succeeded in

sitting down in a particular chair before any one else, and thereby extended the

frontiers of France) had conversations together at Vienna, and by these

conversations made nations happy or unhappy. All at once the diplomatists and

monarchs all but quarrelled; they were on the point of again commanding their

armies to kill one another; but at that time Napoleon entered France with a

battalion, and the French, who had been hating him, at once submitted to him.

But the allied monarchs were angry at this, and again went to war with the

French. And the genius, Napoleon, was conquered; and suddenly recognising that

he was a brigand, they took him to the island of St. Helena. And on that rock

the exile, parted from the friends of his heart, and from his beloved France,

died a lingering death, and bequeathed all his great deeds to posterity. And in

Europe the reaction followed, and all the sovereigns began oppressing their

subjects again.”

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is mockery—a caricature of

historical descriptions. On the contrary, it is a softened-down picture of the

contradictory and random answers, that are no answers, given by all

history, from the compilers of memoirs and of histories of separate states to

general histories, and the new sort of histories of the culture of that

period.

What is strange and comic in these answers is due to the fact that modern

history is like a deaf man answering questions which no one has asked him.

If the aim of history is the description of the movement of humanity and of

nations, the first question which must be answered, or all the rest remains

unintelligible, is the following: What force moves nations? To meet this

question modern history carefully relates that Napoleon was a very great genius,

and that Louis XIV. was very haughty, or that certain writers wrote certain

books.

All this may very well be so, and humanity is ready to acquiesce in it; but

it is not what it asks about. All that might be very interesting if we

recognised a divine power, based on itself and always alike, guiding its peoples

through Napoleons, Louis', and writers; but we do not acknowledge such a power,

and therefore before talking about Napoleons, and Louis', and great writers, we

must show the connection existing between those persons and the movement of the

nations. If another force is put in the place of the divine power, then it

should be explained what that force consists of, since it is precisely in that

force that the whole interest of history lies.

History seems to assume that this force is taken for granted of itself, and

is known to every one. But in despite of every desire to admit this new force as

known, any one who reads through very many historical works cannot but doubt

whether this new force, so differently understood by the historians themselves,

is perfectly well known to every one.

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