Second Epilogue: 1813-20 - Chapter VII

by Leo Tolstoy

　　When an event is taking place people express their opinions andwishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activityof many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sureto be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinionsexpressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the eventas a command preceding it.

　　Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as tohow and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happensthat this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we havecommand and power in their primary form. The man who worked mostwith his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, orreflect on or command what would result from the common activity;while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with hishands on account of his greater verbal activity.

　　When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to acommon aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because theiractivity is given to directing and commanding, take less less partin the direct work.

　　When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflectionswhich as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify hispresent activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Justthe same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do nottake a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.

　　For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown andkill one another. And corresponding to the event its justificationappears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfareof France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill oneanother, and this event was accompanied by its justification in thenecessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, andso on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that thesejustifications of the events have no common sense and are allcontradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result ofrecognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia forthe humiliation of England. But these justifications have a verynecessary significance in their own day.

　　These justifications release those who produce the events from moralresponsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in frontof a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: theyclear men's moral responsibilities from their path.

　　Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplestquestion that presents itself when examining each historical event.How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes- make war,commit murder, and so on?

　　With the present complex forms of political and social life inEurope can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered bymonarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Isthere any collective action which cannot find its justification inpolitical unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or incivilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincideswith some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presentsitself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.

　　In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cutswill always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the shipthe movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.

　　Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of thatflow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convinceourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movementof the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that weourselves were imperceptibly moving.

　　We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement ofhistorical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitablecondition of all that occurs- the continuity of movement in time)and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historicalpersons with the masses.

　　When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the samewave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it alsoturns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be thewave anticipating its movement.

　　Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseenand decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neitherdirects nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at adistance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern theship's movement also.

　　Examining only those expressions of the will of historical personswhich, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumedthat the events depended on those commands. But examining the eventsthemselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood tothe people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent onevents. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, howevermany commands were issued, the event does not take place unlessthere are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs- be itwhat it may- then out of all the continually expressed wishes ofdifferent people some will always be found which by their meaningand their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.

　　Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positivelyto these two essential questions of history:

　　(1) What is power?

　　(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?

　　(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, inwhich the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, andjustifications of the collective action that is performed, the less ishis participation in that action.

　　(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor byintellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two ashistorians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people whoparticipate in the events, and who always combine in such a way thatthose taking the largest direct share in the event take onthemselves the least responsibility and vice versa.

　　Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moralactivity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the eventis neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.

　　Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable tothe phenomena we are examining.

　　In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity- that finallimit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if itis not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heatproduces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel oneanother.

　　Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, wecannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it isinconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law.The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur wedo not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, andwe say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or inother words that it is a law.