Second Epilogue: 1813-20 - Chapter IV

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divinesubjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and thesubjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot withoutcontradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of twothings: either a return to the former belief in the directintervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanationof the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed"power."

　　A return to the first is impossible, the belief has beendestroyed; 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 soaccustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that thequestion: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleonuttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power andso what he ordered was done.

　　This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power wasgiven him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomesessential to determine what is this power of one man over others.

　　It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weakone- a domination based on the application or threat of physicalforce, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effectof moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who saythat the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men giftedwith a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This powercannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not tomention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinionsdiffer widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor aMetternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particularmoral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weakerthan any of the millions they ruled over.

　　If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moralqualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked forelsewhere- in the relation to the people of the man who wields thepower.

　　And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history'sunderstanding of power for true gold.

　　Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressedor tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

　　In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of howa state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that tobe arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history thatdefinition of power needs explanation.

　　The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as theancients regarded fire- namely, as something existing absolutely.But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as formodern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.

　　From this fundamental difference between the view held by historyand that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tellminutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and whatpower- existing immutably outside time- is, but to history's questionsabout the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answernothing.

　　If power be the collective will of the people transferred to theirruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? Ifnot, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal whenhe was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were thosecriminals whom he arrested?

　　Do palace revolutions- in which sometimes only two or three peopletake part- transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? Ininternational relations, is the will of the people also transferred totheir conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhinetransferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian peopletransferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with theFrench went to fight the Austrians?

　　To these questions three answers are possible:

　　Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is alwaysunconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggleagainst the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded asan infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of thepeople is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definiteand known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, andeven destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulersof the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulersconditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, andthat the appearance of several authorities, their struggles andtheir falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment bythe rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the peopleis transferred from some people to others.

　　And these are the three ways in which the historians do explainthe relation of the people to their rulers.

　　Some historians- those biographical and specialist historiansalready referred to- in their simplicity failing to understand thequestion of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collectivewill of the people is unconditionally transferred to historicalpersons, and therefore when describing some single state they assumethat particular power to be the one absolute and real power, andthat any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation ofpower- mere violence.

　　Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods ofhistory, has the inconvenience- in application to complex and stormyperiods in the life of nations during which various powers arisesimultaneously and struggle with one another- that a Legitimisthistorian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while aRepublican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Conventionand the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all theothers were violations of power. Evidently the explanationsfurnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can onlysatisfy young children.

　　Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set ofhistorians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of thewill of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders havepower only conditionally on carrying out the program that the willof the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what thisprogram consists in these historians do not say, or if they do theycontinually contradict one another.

　　Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation'sprogress, 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 natureof this program- or even admitting that some one general program ofthese conditions exists- the facts of history almost always contradictthat theory. If the conditions under which power is entrustedconsist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, howis it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reignstranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by theirpeople? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it notreact on Louis XIV or on Louis XV- why should it react just on LouisXVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questionsthere are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explainwhy for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn fromcertain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period offifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, toNapoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, toCharles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and toNapoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people'swill from from one individual to another, especially in view ofinternational relations, conquests, and alliances, the historiansare obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normaldelegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent oncunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, aruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events ofhistory- civil wars, revolutions, and conquests- are presented bythese historians not as the results of free transferences of thepeople's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one ormore individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And sothese historians also see and admit historical events which areexceptions to the theory.

　　These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that someplants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist thatall that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that thepalm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growthand no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.

　　Historians of the third class assume that the will of the peopleis transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that theconditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages havepower only because they fulfill the will of the people which hasbeen delegated to them.

　　But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in thehistoric leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance havethose leaders?

　　The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of thepeople: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of thepeople.

　　But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of theleaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some partof it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expressionof the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the detailsof the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon ora Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which isevident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of theactivity of an historical leader which serves to express thepeople's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historiansbelieve, then to determine which side of the activity of a leaderexpresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in whatthe nation's life consists.

　　Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some mostobscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover allconceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim ofhumanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted byalmost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalizationas the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study themen of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings,ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, tothe extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted orhindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that theaim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, orcivilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulersand enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumptionthat the collective will of the people is always transferred to themen whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millionswho migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one anothernever is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen peoplewho did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellowcreatures.

　　History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoplesof the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their driveeastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, theirmistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau,Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?

　　Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan andSiberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan theTerrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?

　　Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explainedby the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and theirladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, withoutleaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit,remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is thecessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for theCrusade- the deliverance of Jerusalem- had been clearly defined byhistoric leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples tofree the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown causewhich had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. Thehistory of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not coverthe life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and theMinnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers,but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses hasremained unknown.

　　Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to usthe life of the peoples.

　　The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions oflife and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had ahot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau wassuspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn whyafter the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor whyduring the French Revolution they guillotined one another.

　　If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newesthistorians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but notthe history of the life of the peoples.