Second Epilogue: 1813-20 - Chapter III

by Leo Tolstoy

　　A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasantsays the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves becauseits wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movementlies 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 nodevil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it isnot the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, asa 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 causerefutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go onand explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reachedthe ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressureof steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search forthe cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive bythe smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do notsupply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs tohim and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.

　　The only conception that can explain the movement of thelocomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

　　The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoplesis that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of thepeoples.

　　Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces ofdifferent kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movementobserved. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as thepeasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a forceresulting from several other forces, like the movement of thewheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke thatis blown away.

　　So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whetherCaesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories ofall, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quiteimpossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conceptionof a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certainend. And the only such conception known to historians is that ofpower.

　　This conception is the one handle by means of which the materialof history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone whobreaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some othermethod of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of theone possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conceptionof power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstratedby the universal historians and historians of culture themselves,for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably haverecourse to it at every step.

　　In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to nowis like money in circulation- paper money and coin. The biographiesand special national histories are like paper money. They can beused and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm toanyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is thesecurity behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will ofheroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will beinteresting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge ofpoetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money ariseeither because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made orbecause people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubtsconcerning the real value of such histories arise either because toomany of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someoneinquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?- that is, wants toexchange the current paper money for the real gold of actualcomprehension.

　　The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture arelike people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide tosubstitute for it money made of metal that has not the specificgravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no morethan that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody isdeceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle.As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchangebut also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only whenthey can reply to history's essential question: what is power? Theuniversal historians give contradictory replies to that question,while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quitedifferent. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only amonga group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those whodo not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historiansof culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve ascurrency for some purposes of their own, only in universities andamong the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "seriousreading."