The replies this theory gives to historical questions are
like the replies of a man who, watching the movements of a
herd of cattle and paying no attention to the varying quality
of the pasturage in different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute the direction the herd
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takes to what animal happens to be at its head.
‘The herd goes in that direction because the animal in
front leads it and the collective will of all the other animals
is vested in that leader.’ This is what historians of the first
class saythose who assume the unconditional transference
of the people’s will.
‘If the animals leading the herd change, this happens
because the collective will of all the animals is transferred
from one leader to another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them in the direction selected by the
whole herd.’ Such is the reply historians who assume that
the collective will of the people is delegated to rulers under
conditions which they regard as known. (With this method
of observation it often happens that the observer, influenced
by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as leaders
who, owing to the people’s change of direction, are no longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.)
‘If the animals in front are continually changing and
the direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this
is because in order to follow a given direction the animals
transfer their will to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the movements of the herd we must
watch the movements of all the prominent animals moving
on all sides of the herd.’ So say the third class of historians
who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to journalists, as the expression of their age.
The theory of the transference of the will of the people to
historic persons is merely a paraphrasea restatement of the
question in other words.
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What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the collective will of the people transferred to
one person. Under what condition is the will of the people
delegated to one person? On condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people. That is, power is power:
in other words, power is a word the meaning of which we
do not understand.
If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning, then having subjected to criticism the
explanation of ‘power’ that juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is merely a word and has
no real existence. But to understand phenomena man has,
besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies
his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not
merely a word but an actually existing phenomenon.
Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective activity of men can do without the conception of power,
the existence of power is proved both by history and by observing contemporary events.
Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear,
by whose will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree and the French go to Mexico. The
King of Prussia and Bismarck issue decrees and an army
enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and an army
enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French
submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever
event occurs it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have decreed it.
The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowl2256
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edging divine intervention in human affairs, want to see the
cause of events in the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that supposition is not confirmed
either by reason or by experience.
On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a
man’s willhis wordsare only part of the general activity expressed in an event, as for instance in a war or a revolution,
and so without assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural forcea miracleone cannot admit that words can be the
immediate cause of the movements of millions of men. On
the other hand, even if we admitted that words could be
the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the
will of historical personages does not in most cases produce
any effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and sometimes the very opposite of what they order
occurs.
Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of
humanity we cannot regard ‘power’ as the cause of events.
Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the
relation that exists between the expression of someone’s will
and the execution of that will by others.
To explain the conditions of that relationship we must
first establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to man and not to the Deity.
If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as
ancient history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity
is not controlled by an event. But speaking of commands
that are the expression of the will of men acting in time
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and in relation to one another, to explain the connection of
commands with events we must restore: (1) the condition
of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in time
both of the events and of the person who commands, and
(2) the inevitability of the connection between the person
commanding and those who execute his command.
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Chapter VI
Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time, can relate to a whole series of events occurring
over a period of years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can by His sole will determine the
direction of humanity’s movement; but man acts in time
and himself takes part in what occurs.
Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we
see that no command can be executed without some preceding order having been given rendering the execution of
the last command possible.
No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole series of occurrences; but each command follows
from another, and never refers to a whole series of events
but always to one moment only of an event.
When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies
to go to war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a
whole series of consecutive commands dependent one on
another. Napoleon could not have commanded an invasion
of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered such and such
papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg;
tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army,
the fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so onmillions of
commands, which formed a whole series corresponding to a
series of events which brought the French armies into Rus
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sia.
If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an invasion of England and expended on no other
undertaking so much time and effort, and yet during his
whole reign never once attempted to execute that design
but undertook an expedition into Russia, with which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a conviction
he repeatedly expressed)this came about because his commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first
case, but did so correspond in the latter.
For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that
a man should order what can be executed. But to know what
can and what cannot be executed is impossible, not only in
the case of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in which millions
participated, but even in the simplest event, for in either
case millions of obstacles may arise to prevent its execution.
Every order executed is always one of an immense number
unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with the
course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones
get linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a series of events, and are executed.
Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes it is due to the fact that when the
event has taken place and out of thousands of others those
few commands which were consistent with that event have
been executed, we forget about the others that were not
executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the
chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact
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able, diverse, and petty events, such for instance as all those
which led the French armies to Russia, is generalized into
one event in accord with the result produced by that series
of events, and corresponding with this generalization the
whole series of commands is also generalized into a single
expression of will.
We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In reality in all Napoleon’s activity we never find
anything resembling an expression of that wish, but find
a series of orders, or expressions of his will, very variously
and indefinitely directed. Amid a long series of unexecuted
orders of Napoleon’s one series, for the campaign of 1812,
was carried outnot because those orders differed in any way
from the other, unexecuted orders but because they coincided with the course of events that led the French army
into Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes
out not because the color was laid on from this side or in
that way, but because it was laid on from all sides over the
figure cut in the stencil.
So that examining the relation in time of the commands
to the events, we find that a command can never be the
cause of the event, but that a certain definite dependence
exists between the two.
To understand in what this dependence consists it is
necessary to reinstate another omitted condition of every
command proceeding not from the Deity but from a man,
which is, that the man who gives the command himself
takes part in
This relation of the commander to those he commands
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is just what is called power. This relation consists in the following:
For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in which regardless of the difference of the aims
set
