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Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the
divine subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and
the subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot
without contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one
of two things: either a return to the former belief in the direct
intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation
of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed
"power."
A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been destroyed;
and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.
Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are
so accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that
the question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when
Napoleon uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had
the power and so what he ordered was done.
This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power
was given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it
becomes essential to determine what is this power of one man over
others.
It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over
a weak one- a domination based on the application or threat of
physical force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based
on the effect of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians
think who say that the leading figures in history are heroes,
that is, men gifted with a special strength of soul and mind called
genius. This power cannot be based on the predominance of moral
strength, for, not to mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose
moral qualities opinions differ widely, history shows us that
neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich, who ruled over millions of
people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the contrary
were generally morally weaker than any of the millions they ruled
over.
If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in
the moral qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently
be looked for elsewhere- in the relation to the people of the
man who wields the power.
And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,
that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's
understanding of power for true gold.
Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by
expressed or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.
In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions
of how a state and power might be arranged were it possible for
all that to be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied
to history that definition of power needs explanation.
The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as
the ancients regarded fire- namely, as something existing absolutely.
But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just
as for modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.
From this fundamental difference between the view held by
history and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence
can tell minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted
and what power- existing immutably outside time- is, but to history's
questions about the meaning of the mutations of power in time
it can answer nothing.
If power be the collective will of the people transferred
to their ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the
people? If not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III
a criminal when he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later
on, were those criminals whom he arrested?
Do palace revolutions- in which sometimes only two or three
people take part- transfer the will of the people to a new ruler?
In international relations, is the will of the people also transferred
to their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine
transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people
transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with
the French went to fight the Austrians?
To these questions three answers are possible:
Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always
unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,
and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle
against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded
as an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of
the people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite
and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts,
and even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by
the rulers of the conditions under which their power was entrusted
to them; or (3) that the will of the people is delegated to the
rulers conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and
indefinite, and that the appearance of several authorities, their
struggles and their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser
fulfillment by the rulers of these unknown conditions on which
the will of the people is transferred from some people to others.
And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain
the relation of the people to their rulers.
Some historians- those biographical and specialist historians
already referred to- in their simplicity failing to understand
the question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the
collective will of the people is unconditionally transferred to
historical persons, and therefore when describing some single
state they assume that particular power to be the one absolute
and real power, and that any other force opposing this is not
a power but a violation of power- mere violence.
Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods
of history, has the inconvenience- in application to complex and
stormy periods in the life of nations during which various powers
arise simultaneously and struggle with one another- that a Legitimist
historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,
and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a
Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention
and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all
the others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations
furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can
only satisfy young children.
Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set
of historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation
of the will of the people to their rulers, and that historical
leaders have power only conditionally on carrying out the program
that the will of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed
to them. But what this program consists in these historians do
not say, or if they do they continually contradict one another.
Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes
a nation's progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness,
wealth, freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some
other country. But not to mention the historians' contradictions
as to the nature of this program- or even admitting that some
one general program of these conditions exists- the facts of history
almost always contradict that theory. If the conditions under
which power is entrusted consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment
of the people, how is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible
end their reigns tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are
executed by their people? To this question historians reply that
Louis XIV's activity, contrary to the program, reacted on Louis
XVI. But why did it not react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV- why
should it react just on Louis XVI? And what is the time limit
for such reactions? To these questions there are and can be no
answers. Equally little does this view explain why for several
centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from certain rulers
and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of fifty years
is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to Napoleon,
to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to Charles X,
to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to Napoleon
III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's will
from from one individual to another, especially in view of international
relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians are obliged
to admit that some of these transfers are not normal delegations
of the people's will but are accidents dependent on cunning, on
mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a ruler,
or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of history-
civil wars, revolutions, and conquests- are presented by these
historians not as the results of free transferences of the people's
will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or more individuals,
that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so these historians
also see and admit historical events which are exceptions to the
theory.
These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that
some plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist
that all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and
that the palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into
full growth and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations
from the theory.
Historians of the third class assume that the will of the
people is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but
that the conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical
personages have power only because they fulfill the will of the
people which has been delegated to them.
But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not
in the historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance
have those leaders?
The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of
the people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity
of the people.
But in that case the question arises whether all the activity
of the leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or
only some part of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves
as the expression of the people's will, as some historians suppose,
then all the details of the court scandals contained in the biographies
of a Napoleon or a Catherine serve to express the life of the
nation, which is evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular
side of the activity of an historical leader which serves to express
the people's life, as other so-called "philosophical"
historians believe, then to determine which side of the activity
of a leader expresses the nation's life, we have first of all
to know in what the nation's life consists.
Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some
most obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover
all conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be
the aim of humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations
adopted by almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,
progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization
as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study
the men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained:
kings, ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists,
to the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted
or hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that
the aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment,
or civilization, and as the connection of the people with the
rulers and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary
assumption that the collective will of the people is always transferred
to the men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity
of the millions who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture,
and destroy one another never is expressed in the account of the
activity of some dozen people who did not burn houses, practice
agriculture, or slay their fellow creatures.
History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples
of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive
eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI,
their mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon,
Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?
Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and
Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the
Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?
Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades
explained by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es
and their ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west
to east, without leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter
the Hermit, remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible
is the cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim
for the Crusade- the deliverance of Jerusalem- had been clearly
defined by historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited
the peoples to free the Holy Land; but the people did not go,
for the unknown cause which had previously impelled them to go
no longer existed. The history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers
can evidently not cover the life of the peoples. And the history
of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers has remained the history
of Godfreys and Minnesingers, but the history of the life of the
peoples and their impulses has remained unknown.
Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain
to us the life of the peoples.
The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions
of life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther
had a hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that
Rousseau was suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we
do not learn why after the Reformation the peoples massacred one
another, nor why during the French Revolution they guillotined
one another.
If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the
newest historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers,
but not the history of the life of the peoples.
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