First Epilogue: 1813-20 - Chapter IV

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. Thewaves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddiesare formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they havecaused the floods to abate.

　　But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. Thediplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of thisfresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between theirsovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave theyfeel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It risesagain from the same point as before- Paris. The last backwash of themovement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve theapparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the militarymovement of that period of history.

　　The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, withoutany conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, butby strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the manthey cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.

　　This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.

　　That act is performed.

　　The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash offhis powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.

　　And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy tohimself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intriguesand lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying tothe whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength aslong as an unseen hand directed his actions.

　　The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped theactor shows him to us.

　　"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it wasnot he but I who moved you?"

　　But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before peopleunderstood this.

　　Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life ofAlexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement fromeast to west.

　　What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the headof that movement from east to west?

　　What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy withEuropean affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests;a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operatedwith him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personalgrievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; allthis had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life:his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surroundedhim, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.

　　During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed.But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presenteditself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting thenations of Europe, led them to the goal.

　　The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possessesall possible power. How does he use it?

　　Alexander I- the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his earlyyears had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of theliberal innovations in his fatherland- now that he seemed to possessthe utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringingabout the welfare of his peoples- at the time when Napoleon in exilewas drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have mademankind happy had he retained power- Alexander I, having fulfilled hismission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizesthe insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, andgives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, sayingonly:

　　"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man likethe rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and ofGod."

　　As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself,and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man tocomprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yethas them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.

　　A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child isafraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poetadmires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says itexists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the beecollect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that itexists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the lifeof the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feedthe young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuateits race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen ofa male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in thisthe purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migrationof plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say thatin this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of thebee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processesthe human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises inthe discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that theultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.

　　All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the beeto other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose ofhistoric characters and nations.