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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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