War And Peace

Confronted by this difficulty, this type of historian will invent the most obscure, insubstantial and generalized abstraction that can be found to cover the greatest possible number of events, and tell us that this abstraction represents the aim of humanity in movement. The most commonly encountered abstractions, accepted by virtually all historians, are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress, civilization, culture. Presenting any old abstraction as the goal of human movements, the historians go on to study those people who have left behind the greatest number of memorials – kings, ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes and journalists – arranging them in order, according to the effect these people have had (in the historians’ opinion) in advancing or retarding the abstraction in question. But since there is no proof whatsoever that the goal of humanity really is freedom, equality, enlightenment or civilization, and since the connection between the masses and their rulers or educators rests on the arbitrary assumption that the collective will of the masses is always transferred to figures who attract our attention – it so happens that the activities of the millions who uproot themselves, burn their houses down, abandon the fields and go off to butcher each other never find expression in the descriptions of activities limited to a dozen personalities who don’t happen to burn houses down, work the soil or kill their fellow creatures.

History shows this at every end and turn. Take the ferment among western people towards the end of the last century, and the way they went rampaging eastward – is all of this explained by the actions of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, or their mistresses and ministers, or by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais⁶ and others?

The eastward movement of the Russians, to Kazan and Siberia, is that expressed in the details of the morbid character of Ivan the Terrible and his correspondence with Kurbsky?⁷

The movement of peoples at the time of the Crusades, is that explained by studying any number of Godfreys and Louis⁸ and their ladies? That particular movement of people from west to east has remained incomprehensible, having had no goal, no leadership, nothing but a crowd of vagrants, followers of Peter the Hermit.⁹ And even more incomprehensible is why it suddenly stopped, at a point when a rational and sacred aim for the Crusades – the liberation of Jerusalem – had been clearly established by the historical leaders.

Popes, kings and knights urged the people to liberate the Holy Land. But the people didn’t go, because the unknown cause that had got them going before was no longer there. The history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers¹⁰ clearly cannot encompass the lives of the people. Meanwhile what has remained is the history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers, whereas the history of the people’s lives and their motivation remains for ever unknown. And the biographies of writers and reformers will tell us even less about ordinary people’s lives.

Cultural history will elucidate the motivation, the lifestyle and the thoughts of a writer or a reformer. We learn from them that Luther had a quick temper and made certain speeches, we learn that Rousseau was suspicious and wrote certain books, but what we don’t learn is why the nations hacked each other to pieces after the Reformation, or why men guillotined one another during the French Revolution.

If we combine these two different kinds of history, as most modern historians do, all we shall get is the history of monarchs and writers instead of a history of the lives of nations.

CHAPTER 5

The lives of nations cannot be contained within the lives of a few men, since the connection between those few men and the nations has never been discovered. The theory that this connection is based on a transfer of collective popular will from a people to its historical leaders is a hypothesis not borne out by historical experience.

The theory of the transfer of collective popular will from a people to historical personages may perhaps explain a good deal in the realm of jurisprudence, and may well be essential for its purposes. But when you apply it to history – the moment revolutions, conquests and civil strife come into the picture, the moment history begins, in fact – this theory explains nothing.

This theory has an air of infallibility, for one good reason: the act of transferring the popular will can never be verified, because it has never existed.

Whatever the turn of events, and whoever takes charge of them, this theory can always say that such and such a person took charge of events because the collective popular will had been transferred to him.