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A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?"
A peasant says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive
moves because its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause
of its movement lies in the smoke which the wind carries away.
The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation.
To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is
no devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that
it is not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only
then, as a result of the contradiction, will they see that they
are both wrong. But the man who says that the movement of the
wheels is the cause refutes himself, for having once begun to
analyze he ought to go on and explain further why the wheels go
round; and till he has reached the ultimate cause of the movement
of the locomotive in the pressure of steam in the boiler, he has
no right to stop in his search for the cause. The man who explains
the movement of the locomotive by the smoke that is carried back
has noticed that the wheels do not supply an explanation and has
taken the first sign that occurs to him and in his turn has offered
that as an explanation.
The only conception that can explain the movement of the locomotive
is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.
The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples
is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of
the peoples.
Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces
of different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes,
as the peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force
resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the
wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke
that is blown away.
So long as histories are written of separate individuals,
whether Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the
histories of all, absolutely all those who take part in an event,
it is quite impossible to describe the movement of humanity without
the conception of a force compelling men to direct their activity
toward a certain end. And the only such conception known to historians
is that of power.
This conception is the one handle by means of which the material
of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone
who breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some
other method of treating historical material, merely deprives
himself of the one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity
of the conception of power as an explanation of historical events
is best demonstrated by the universal historians and historians
of culture themselves, for they professedly reject that conception
but inevitably have recourse to it at every step.
In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history
up to now is like money in circulation- paper money and coin.
The biographies and special national histories are like paper
money. They can be used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose
without harm to anyone and even advantageously, as long as no
one asks what is the security behind them. You need only forget
to ask how the will of heroes produces events, and such histories
as Thiers' will be interesting and instructive and may perhaps
even possess a tinge of poetry. But just as doubts of the real
value of paper money arise either because, being easy to make,
too much of it gets made or because people try to exchange it
for gold, so also doubts concerning the real value of such histories
arise either because too many of them are written or because in
his simplicity of heart someone inquires: by what force did Napoleon
do this?- that is, wants to exchange the current paper money for
the real gold of actual comprehension.
The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture
are like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide
to substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific
gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do
no more than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody
is deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely
jingle. As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for
exchange but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable
only when they can reply to history's essential question: what
is power? The universal historians give contradictory replies
to that question, while the historians of culture evade it and
answer something quite different. And as counters of imitation
gold can be used only among a group of people who agree to accept
them as gold, or among those who do not know the nature of gold,
so universal historians and historians of culture, not answering
humanity's essential question, serve as currency for some purposes
of their own, only in universities and among the mass of readers
who have a taste for what they call "serious reading."
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