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WHAT is the force that moves nations?
Biographical historians, and historians writing of separate nations,
understand this force as a power residing in heroes and sovereigns. According to
their narratives, the events were entirely due to the wills of Napoleons, of
Alexanders, or, generally speaking, of those persons who form the subject of
historical memoirs. The answers given by historians of this class to the
question as to the force which brings about events are satisfactory, but only so
long as there is only one historian for any event. But as soon as historians of
different views and different nationalities begin describing the same event, the
answers given by them immediately lose all their value, as this force is
understood by them, not only differently, but often in absolutely opposite ways.
One historian asserts that an event is due to the power of Napoleon; another
maintains that it is produced by the power of Alexander; a third ascribes it to
the influence of some third person. Moreover, historians of this class
contradict one another even in their explanation of the force on which the
influence of the same person is based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that
Napoleon's power rested on his virtue and his genius; Lanfrey, a Republican,
declares that it rested on his duplicity and deception of the people. So that
historians of this class, mutually destroying each other's position, at the same
time destroy the conception of the force producing events, and give no answer to
the essential question of history.
Writers of universal history, who have to deal with all the nations at once,
appear to recognise the incorrectness of the views of historians of separate
countries as to the force that produces events. They do not recognise this force
as a power pertaining to heroes and sovereigns, but regard it as the resultant
of many forces working in different directions. In describing a war on the
subjugation of a people, the writer of general history seeks the cause of the
event, not in the power of one person, but in the mutual action on one another
of many persons connected with the event.
The power of historical personages conceived as the product of several
forces, according to this view, can hardly, one would have supposed, be regarded
as a self-sufficient force independently producing events. Yet writers of
general history do in the great majority of cases employ the conception of power
again as a self-sufficient force producing events and standing in the relation
of cause to them. According to their exposition now the historical personage is
the product of his time, and his power is only the product of various forces,
now his power is the force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, for instance,
and others, in one place, explain that Napoleon is the product of the
Revolution, of the ideas of 1789, and so on; and in another plainly state that
the campaign of 1812 and other events not to their liking are simply the work of
Napoleon's wrongly directed will, and that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested
in their development by Napoleon's arbitrary rule. The ideas of the Revolution,
the general temper of the age produced Napoleon's power. The power of Napoleon
suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the age.
This strange inconsistency is not an accidental one. It confronts us at every
turn, and, in fact, whole works upon universal history are made up of
consecutive series of such inconsistencies. This inconsistency is due to the
fact that after taking a few steps along the road of analysis, these historians
have stopped short halfway.
To find the component forces that make up the composite or resultant force,
it is essential that the sum of the component parts should equal the resultant.
This condition is never observed by historical writers, and consequently, to
explain the resultant force, they must inevitably admit, in addition to those
insufficient contributory forces, some further unexplained force that affects
also the resultant action.
The historian describing the campaign of 1813, or the restoration of the
Bourbons, says bluntly that these events were produced by the will of Alexander.
But the philosophic historian Gervinus, controverting the view of the special
historian of those events, seeks to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the
restoration of the Bourbons was due not only to Alexander, but also to the work
of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Staël, Talleyrand, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and
others. The historian obviously analyses the power of Alexander into component
forces. Talleyrand, Chateaubriand, and so on, and the sum of these component
forces, that is, the effect on one another of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame
de Staël, and others is obviously not equal to the resultant effect, that is,
the phenomenon of millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. Such and
such words being said to one another by Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, and
others, only affects their relation to one another, and does not account for the
submission of millions. And therefore to explain how the submission of millions
followed from their relation to one another, that is, how from component forces
equal to a given quantity A, there followed a resultant equal to a thousand
times A, the historian is inevitably bound to admit that force of power, which
he has renounced, accepting it in the resultant force, that is, he is obliged to
admit an unexplained force that acts on the resultant of those components. And
this is just what the philosophic historians do. And consequently they not only
contradict the writers of historical memoirs, but also contradict
themselves.
Country people who have no clear idea of the cause of rain say: The wind has
blown away the rain, or the wind is blowing up for rain, according as they are
in want of rain or of fair weather. In the same way, philosophic historians at
times, when they wish it to be so, when it fits in with their theory, say that
power is the result of events; and at times, when they want to prove something
else, they say power produces the events.
A third class of historians, the writers of the so-called history of culture,
following on the lines laid down by the writers of universal history who
sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces producing events, yet understand
that force quite differently. They see that force in so-called culture, in
intellectual activity. The historians of culture are quite consistent as regards
their prototypes—the writers of universal history—for if historical events can
be explained by certain persons having said certain things to one another, why
not explain them by certain persons having written certain books? Out of all the
immense number of tokens that accompany every living phenomenon, these
historians select the symptom of intellectual activity, and assert that this
symptom is the cause. But in spite of all their endeavours to prove that the
cause of events lies in intellectual activity, it is only by a great stretch
that one can agree that there is anything in common between intellectual
activity and the movement of peoples. And it is altogether impossible to admit
that intellectual activity has guided the actions of men, for such phenomena as
the cruel murders of the French Revolution, resulting from the doctrine of the
equality of man, and the most wicked wars and massacres arising from the Gospel
of love, do not confirm this hypothesis.
But even admitting that all the cunningly woven arguments with which these
histories abound are correct, admitting that nations are governed by some
indefinite force called an idea—the essential question of history still remains
unanswered; or to the power of monarchs and the influence of counsellors and
other persons, introduced by the philosophic historian, another new force is now
joined—the idea, the connection of which with the masses demands
explanation. One can understand that Napoleon had power and so an event came to
pass; with some effort one can even conceive that Napoleon together with other
influences was the cause of an event. But in what fashion a book, Le Contrat
Social, led the French to hack each other to pieces cannot be understood
without an explanation of the causal connection of this new force with the
event.
There undoubtedly exists a connection between all the people living at one
time, and so it is possible to find some sort of connection between the
intellectual activity of men and their historical movements, just as one may
find a connection between the movements of humanity and commerce, handicrafts,
gardening, and anything you like. But why intellectual activity should be
conceived of by the historians of culture as the cause or the expression of a
whole historical movement, it is hard to understand. Historians can only be led
to such a conclusion by the following considerations: (1) That history is
written by learned men; and so it is natural and agreeable to them to believe
that the pursuit of their calling is the basis of the movement of the whole of
humanity, just as a similar belief would be natural and agreeable to merchants,
agriculturists, or soldiers (such a belief on their part does not find
expression simply because merchants and soldiers don't write history); and (2)
that spiritual activity, enlightenment, civilisation, culture, ideas are all
vague, indefinite conceptions, under cover of which they can conveniently use
phrases having less definite signification, and so easily brought under any
theory.
But to say nothing of the inner dignity of histories of this kind (possibly
they are of use for some one or for something), the histories of culture,
towards which all general histories tend more and more to approximate, are
noteworthy from the fact that though they give a serious and detailed analysis
of various religious, philosophic, and political doctrines as causes of events,
every time they have to describe an actual historical event, as, for instance,
the campaign of 1812, they unconsciously describe it as the effect of the
exercise of power, frankly saying that that campaign was the work of Napoleon's
will. In saying this, the historians of culture unconsciously contradict
themselves, to prove that the new force they have invented is not the expression
of historical events, and that the sole means of explaining history is by that
power which they had apparently rejected.
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