he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father
caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer
and nearer to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he
awoke.
‘My father!’ he thought. (Though there were two good
portraits of Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human form.) ‘My father has been
with me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius
Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort
of thing happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And
I will learn. But someday I shall have finished learning, and
then I will do something. I only pray God that something
may happen to me such as happened to Plutarch’s men, and
I will act as they did. I will do better. Everyone shall know
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me, love me, and be delighted with me!’ And suddenly his
bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.
‘Are you ill?’ he heard Dessalles’ voice asking.
‘No,’ answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.
‘He is good and kind and I am fond of him!’ he thought of
Dessalles. ‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he
is! And my father? Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be satisfied…’
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SECOND EPILOGUE
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Chapter I
History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize
and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity
or even of a single nation, appears impossible.
The ancient historians all employed one and the same
method to describe and seize the apparently elusivethe life
of a people. They described the activity of individuals who
ruled the people, and regarded the activity of those men as
representing the activity of the whole nation.
The question: how did individuals make nations act as
they wished and by what was the will of these individuals
themselves guided? the ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of a chosen
man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish ends that were predestined.
For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in
the direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.
Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
It would seem that having rejected the belief of the
ancients in man’s subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations are led, modern history
should study not the manifestations of power but the causes
that produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held by the ancients, it still
follows them in practice.
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Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by the will of God, modern history has given
us either heroes endowed with extraordinary, superhuman
capacities, or simply men of very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the
former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or
Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has
postulated its own aimsthe welfare of the French, German,
or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare
and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually
meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly
portion of a large continent.
Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients
without replacing them by a new conception, and the logic
of the situation has obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine authority of the kings and the
‘fate’ of the ancients, to reach the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided by individual
men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.
At the basis of the works of all the modern historians
from Gibbon to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of their outlooks, lie those
two old, unavoidable assumptions.
In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one
historian considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another includes also orators,
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learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets). Secondly,
it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being
led is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the
greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization
of a small corner of the world called Europe.
In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and
is expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east.
Several times it moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward. In 1812 it reaches its
extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting
to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle
Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point
of the first movement in the westParisand subsides.
During that twenty-year period an immense number of
fields were left untilled, houses were burned, trade changed
its direction, millions of men migrated, were impoverished,
or were enriched, and millions of Christian men professing
the law of love of their fellows slew one another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What
made those people burn houses and slay their fellow men?
What were the causes of these events? What force made
men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.
For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the science of history, whose aim is to enable
nations and humanity to know themselves.
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If history had retained the conception of the ancients it
would have said that God, to reward or punish his people,
gave Napoleon power and directed his will to the fulfillment
of the divine ends, and that reply, would have been clear and
complete. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in it there
would have been nothing unintelligible in the history of
that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.
But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does
not admit the conception of the ancients as to the direct
participation of the Deity in human affairs, and therefore
history ought to give other answers.
Modern history replying to these questions says: you
want to know what this movement means, what caused it,
and what force produced these events? Then listen:
‘Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man;
he had such and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His descendants were weak
men and they too ruled France badly. And they had such
and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover,
certain men wrote some books at that time. At the end of
the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men in
Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal.
This caused people all over France to begin to slash at and
drown one another. They killed the king and many other
people. At that time there was in France a man of geniusNapoleon. He conquered everybody everywherethat is, he
killed many people because he was a great genius. And for
some reason he went to kill Africans, and killed them so
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well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned
to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all
obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out
to kill people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he
killed a great many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and therefore
fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends
with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began
killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander,
helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to
arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces advanced
against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent
him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of
Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years
before and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw
and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the
laughingstock both of the French and the Allies, began to
reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old Guards,
renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who
managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone
else and thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in
Vienna and by these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and monarchs
nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering
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their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had
been hating him, immediately all submitted to him. But the
Allied monarchs were angry at this and went to fight the
French once more. And they defeated the genius Napoleon
and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him to the
island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on
that rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in
Europe a reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again
all began to oppress their subjects.’
It would be a mistake to think that this is ironica caricature of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very
mild expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting
the questions, which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories of separate states to the
writers of general histories and the new histories of the culture of that period.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise
