War And Peace

Historians have tended to study expressions of will by historical figures only in terms of the relationship between orders and events, and they have jumped to the conclusion that the events were dependent on the orders. But our analysis of the events themselves and the link between historical figures and the masses has shown that historical figures and the orders they give are dependent on events. We have incontrovertible proof of this in the fact that, however many orders are given, the event will not take place if there is no other cause to produce it. But the moment an event does take place, whatever it may be, among all the expressions of will by all sorts of different people there will always be some that happen to coincide in meaning and time so that events correspond to orders given.

With this conclusion in mind, we can give straight and positive answers to two of history’s crucial questions: (1) What is power? (2) What is the force that determines the movement of peoples?

(1) Power is a relationship between a given person and other persons by which the less directly a person participates in a collective enterprise the more involved he is in expressing opinions and theories about it and providing justification for it.

(2) The movement of peoples is determined not as historians have supposed, by the exercise of power, or the intellect, or both together, but by the actions of all involved; all the people who come together in such a way that those who participate most directly in the activity assume the least responsibility for it, and vice versa.

In moral terms power is the cause of the event; in physical terms it is those who are subject to that power. But since moral activity is inconceivable without physical activity, the cause of the event is actually found in neither of them, but in a combination of the two.

To put it another way, the concept of cause does not apply to the phenomenon under review.

In the last analysis we come to the circle of infinity, the furthest limit to which the human intellect must come in every realm of thought if it is not toying with its subject matter. Electricity produces heat; heat produces electricity. Atoms attract; atoms repel.

On the subject of the relationship between heat and electricity, and atoms, we cannot say why things happen like this, so we say they do it because anything else is unimaginable, it has to be, it’s a law. The same applies to historical phenomena. Why do wars or revolutions happen? We don’t know. All we know is that for either of these to happen men must come together in a particular combination with everybody taking part, and we say that this is so because anything else is unimaginable, it has to be, it’s a law.

CHAPTER 8

If history dealt with external phenomena all we would have to do is state this simple and obvious law and our argument would be at an end. But the law of history relates to man. A particle of matter cannot tell us that it doesn’t feel bound by laws of attraction and repulsion and it thinks they are wrong. But man, the subject matter of history, makes no bones about it: ‘I am free,’ he says, ‘and therefore not subject to any laws.’

The problem of man’s free will may often remain unarticulated, but it is felt at every step in history.

All serious-minded historians are inevitably confronted with this question. All the inconsistencies and uncertainties of history, and the wrong path taken by historical studies, can be attributed to this problem and the lack of any solution to it.

If every man enjoyed free will – in other words, if every man could do what he wanted – the whole of history would be a tissue of sporadic accidents.

If one man in millions once in a thousand years had complete freedom of action, freedom to do anything he wanted, it is obvious that any act of free will performed by that man in defiance of all laws would deny the possibility of any laws at all for humanity. Conversely, if there is any one law that controls the actions of men, free will cannot exist, because men’s will would have to be subject to that law.

This contradiction embodies the whole problem of free will, which has occupied the best minds from time immemorial, and from time immemorial has stood out as an issue of tremendous importance.

The problem is that, taking man as a subject for observation from any angle – theological, historical, ethical, philosophical – we find him subject to a universal law of necessity just like everything else that exists. But looking at him from within ourselves, looking at our own consciousness, we feel free.

This consciousness is a separate source of self-awareness independent of reason. Through reason man can observe himself, but he knows himself only through consciousness. Without consciousness, no observation or application of reason is conceivable.