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If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity
to the attainment of certain ends- the greatness of Russia or
of France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the
ideas of the Revolution general progress or anything else- then
it is impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing
the conceptions of chance and genius.
If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might
have been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without
the invasion. If the aim wag the aggrandizement of France, that
might have been attained without the Revolution and without the
Empire. If the aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing
press could have accomplished that much better than warfare. If
the aim was the progress of civilization, it is easy to see that
there are other ways of diffusing civilization more expedient
than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.
Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?
Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation;
genius utilized it," says history.
But what is chance? What is genius?
The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing
thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote
a certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why
a certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do
not try to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing
effects beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not
understand why this occurs and I talk of genius.
To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening
into a special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat
as the others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an
astonishing conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary
chances that this ram, who instead of getting into the general
fold every evening goes into a special enclosure where there are
oats- that this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.
But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens
to them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims;
they need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes
beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence
in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do
not know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least
know that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally,
and will no longer need the conceptions of chance or genius.
Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately
intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond
our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives
of historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they
produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and
then the words chance and genius become superfluous.
We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the
European convulsions and that we know only the facts- that is,
the murders, first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia,
in Austria, in Spain, and in Russia- and that the movements from
the west to the east and from the east to the west form the essence
and purpose of these events, and not only shall we have no need
to see exceptional ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander,
but we shall be unable to consider them to be anything but like
other men, and we shall not be obliged to have recourse to chance
for an explanation of those small events which made these people
what they were, but it will be clear that all those small events
were inevitable.
By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose,
we shall clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom
or seed for any single plant better suited to it than those it
produces, so it is impossible to imagine any two people more completely
adapted down to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to
fulfill, than Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.
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