War And Peace

Once the law of Copernicus had been discovered and demonstrated all it took was acknowledgement that the earth moves round the sun rather than vice versa for the entire cosmic view of the ancients to be destroyed. It might have been possible by the refutation of this law to carry on with the old ideas of motion, but in the absence of any such refutation it would seem impossible to carry on studying Ptolemaic worlds. Nevertheless, long after the discovery of the law of Copernicus Ptolemaic worlds continued to be a subject of study.

Once the first person had said and demonstrated that the birth-rate or crime-rate is subject to mathematical laws, that certain geographical and politico-economical laws determine this or that form of government, or that a given relationship between the population and the soil causes mass migration – from that moment the foundations on which history had been built were essentially destroyed.

It might have been possible by the refutation of the new laws to carry on with the former view of history, but in the absence of any such refutation it would seem impossible to carry on studying historical events as if they were the product of man’s free will. For if a certain form of government has been set up, or a certain mass movement has taken place as a result of certain geographical, ethnographic or economic conditions, free will on the part of those persons who have been described as setting up that form of government or inspiring the mass migration cannot be regarded as the cause. And yet history goes on being studied in the same old way, in the teeth of laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology and geology that totally contradict its basic premises.

In the philosophy of physics the struggle between old and new attitudes was long and hard. Theology, the guardian of the old, called the new attitude an offence against divine revelation. But when truth prevailed theology re-established itself just as firmly on new territory.

And now in just the same way a long and hard struggle is being conducted between old and new attitudes to history, and in just the same way theology, guardian of the old, calls the new attitude an offence against revelation.

In both cases and on both sides the struggle arouses deep passions and obscures the truth. On one side fear and regret battle against the demolition of an edifice that has stood for centuries; on the other, there is an intense passion for destruction.

Those who fought against the new truth that was dawning in the philosophy of physics believed that acceptance of this truth would destroy all faith in God, the creation story and the miracle of Joshua.¹³ Defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton such as Voltaire, for instance, believed that the laws of astronomy would destroy religion, and he used the law of gravity as a weapon against religion.

In just the same way it now seems that once we accept the law of necessity we destroy all concepts of the soul, or good and evil, and all the towering political and ecclesiastical institutions founded on them.

Like Voltaire in his day, the uninvited defenders of the law of necessity use the law of necessity as a weapon against religion, though in fact – like the law of Copernicus in astronomy – the law of necessity in history, far from destroying the foundations on which political and ecclesiastical institutions are constructed, actually strengthens them.

As with astronomy in days gone by, so today in matters of history the conflict of opinion depends on the recognition or non-recognition of an absolute entity for the measurement of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the earth’s immobility; in history it is personal independence, or free will.

Just as in astronomy the problem of recognizing the earth’s motion lay in the difficulty of getting away from a direct sensation of the earth’s immobility and a similar sensation of the planets’ motion, so in history the problem of recognizing the dependence of personality on the laws of space, time and causation lies in the difficulty of getting away from the direct sensation of one’s own personal independence. But just as in astronomy the new attitude was, ‘No, we cannot feel the earth’s movement, but if we accept its immobility we are reduced to absurdity, whereas if we accept the movement that we cannot feel we arrive at laws,’ so in history the new attitude is, ‘No, we cannot feel our dependence, but if we accept free will we are reduced to absurdity, whereas if we accept dependence on the external world, time and causation we arrive at laws.’

In the first case, we had to get away from a false sensation of immobility in space and accept movement that we could not feel. In the present case it is no less essential to get away from a false sensation of freedom and accept a dependence that we cannot feel.

Appendix 1:

Summary by Chapters

VOLUME I

Part I (July—August 1805)