________________________________________________
_ 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." _
Read next: Second Epilogue: Chapter 4
Read previous: Second Epilogue: Chapter 2
Table of content of War and Peace
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
