War and peace ( Constance Garnett-1900)

reason. In the same way the force of man’s freewill is only distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature by the definition given it by reason. Freewill apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason defining it, is in no way different from gravitation, or heat, or the force of vegetation; for reason, it is only a momentary, indefinite sensation of life.

And as the undefined essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies, the undefined essence of the force of heat, of electricity, or of chemical affinity, or of vital force, forms the subject of astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, so the essence of the force of freewill forms the subject matter of history. But even as the subject of every science is the manifestation of that unknown essence of life, yet that essence itself can only be the subject of metaphysics, so too the manifestation of the force of freewill in space, and time, and dependence on cause, forms the subject of history, but freewill itself is the subject of metaphysics.

In the experimental sciences, what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is simply an expression for what remains unexplained by what we know of the essence of life. So in history what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown, we call freewill. Freewill is for history simply an expression for what remains unexplained by the laws of men’s life that we know.

XI

History examines the manifestations of man’s freewill in connection with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, defines that freedom by the laws of reason; and so history is only a science in so far as that freedom is defined by those laws.

To history the recognition of the freewills of men as forces able to influence historical events, that is, not subject to laws, is the same as would be to astronomy the recognition of freewill in the movements of the heavenly bodies.

This recognition destroys the possibility of the existence of laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is so much as one body moving at its freewill, the laws of Kepler and of Newton are annulled, and every conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies is destroyed. If there is a single human action due to freewill, no historical law exists, and no conception of historical events can be formed.

For history there exist lines of movement of human wills, one extremity of which vanishes in the unknowable, and at the other extremity of which in space, in time, and in dependence on cause, there moves men’s consciousness of freewill in the present.

The more this curve of movement is analysed before our eyes, the clearer are the laws of its movement. To discover and define those” laws is the problem of history.

xi 44 WAR AND PEACE

From the point of view from which the science of history now approaches its subject, by the method it now follows, seeking the causes of phenomena in the freewill of men, the expression of laws by science is impossible; since however we limit the freewill of men, so long as we recognise it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law becomes impossible.

Only limiting this element of freewill to infinity, that is, regarding it as an infinitesimal minimum, we are convinced of the complete unattainability of causes, and then, instead of seeking causes, history sets before itself the task of seeking laws.

The seeking of those laws has been begun long ago, and the new lines of thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously with the self-destruction towards which the old-fashioned history is going, for ever dissecting and dissecting the causes of phenomena.

All human sciences have followed the same course. Reaching infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of the sciences, leaves the process of analysis and enters on a new process of approximating to summing up the unknown infinitesimals. Forsaking the conception of cause, mathe-' matics seeks law, that is, properties common to all unknown, infinites^ mal quantities.