《War And Peace》　Epilogue2 　CHAPTER I
　　　　by Leo Tolstoy

THE SUBJECT of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and
pin down in words-that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity,
but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.

All the ancient historians employed the same method for describing and
catching what is seemingly elusive-that is, the life of a people. They described
the career of individual persons ruling peoples; and their activity was to them
an expression of the activity of the whole people.

The questions, In what way individual persons made nations act in accordance
with their will, and by what the will of those individuals themselves was
controlled, the ancients answered, By the will of God; which in the first case
made the nation subject to the will of one chosen person, and, in the second,
guided the will of that chosen monarch to the ordained end.

For the ancients these questions were solved by faith in the immediate
participation of the Deity in the affairs of mankind.

Modern history has theoretically rejected both those positions. One would
have thought that rejecting the convictions of the ancients of men's subjection
to the Deity, and of a defined goal to which nations are led, modern history
should have studied, not the manifestations of power, but the causes that go to
its formation. But modern history has not done that. While in theory rejecting
the views of the ancients, it follows them in practice.

Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly led by the will of
the Deity, modern history has set up either heroes, endowed with extraordinary,
superhuman powers, or simply men of the most varied characteristics, from
monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the old aim, the will
of the Deity, that to the old historians seemed the end of the movements of
peoples, such as the Gauls, the Greeks, and the Romans, modern history has
advanced aims of its own-the welfare of the French, the German, or the English
people, or its highest pitch of generalisation, the civilisation of all
humanity, by which is usually meant the peoples inhabiting a small, northwestern
corner of the great mother-earth.

Modern history has rejected the faiths of the ancients, without putting any
new conviction in their place; and the logic of the position has forced the
historians, leaving behind them the rejected, divine right of kings and fate of
the ancients, to come back by a different path to the same point again: to the
recognition, that is (1) that peoples are led by individual persons; and (2)
that there is a certain goal towards which humanity and the peoples constituting
it are moving.

In all the works of the more modern historians, from Gibbon to Buckle, in
spite of their apparent differences and the apparent novelty of their views,
these two old inevitable positions lie at the basis of the argument.

In the first place the historian describes the conduct of separate persons
who, in his opinion, lead humanity (one regards as such only monarchs, military
generals, and ministers of state; another includes besides monarchs, orators,
scientific men, reformers, philosophers, and poets). Secondly, the goal towards
which humanity is being led is known to the historian. To one this goal is the
greatness of the Roman, or the Spanish, or the French state; for another, it is
freedom, equality, a certain sort of civilisation in a little corner of the
world called Europe.

In 1789 there was a ferment in Paris: it grew and spread, and found
expression in the movement of peoples from west to east. Several times that
movement is made to the east, and comes into collision with a counter-movement
from east westwards. In the year 1812 it reaches its furthest limit, Moscow, and
then, with a remarkable symmetry, the counter-movement follows from east to
west; drawing with it, like the first movement, the peoples of Central Europe.
The counter-movement reaches the starting-point of the first movement-Paris-and
subsides.

During this period of twenty years an immense number of fields are not
tilled; houses are burned; trade changes its direction; millions of men grow
poor and grow rich, and change their habitations; and millions of Christians,
professing the law of love, murder one another.

What does all this mean? What did all this proceed from? What induced these
people to burn houses and to murder their fellow-creatures? What were the causes
of these events? What force compelled men to act in this fashion? These are the
involuntary and most legitimate questions that, in all good faith, humanity puts
to itself when it stumbles on memorials and traditions of that past age of
restlessness.

To answer these questions the common-sense of humanity turns to the science
of history, the object of which is the self-knowledge of nations and of
humanity.

Had history retained the view of the ancients, it would have said: The Deity,
to reward or to punish His People, gave Napoleon power, and guided his will for
the attainment of His own divine ends. And that answer would have been complete
and clear. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance of
Napoleon. For one who believed in it, all the history of that period would have
been comprehensible, and there would have been nothing contradictory in
it.

But modern history cannot answer in that way. Science does not accept the
view of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity in the affairs
of mankind, and therefore must give other answers.

Modern history, in answer to these questions, says: "You want to know what
this movement means, what it arose from, and what force produced these events?
Listen.

"Louis XIV. was a very haughty and self-willed man; he had such and such
mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. Louis's
successors, too, were weak men, and they, too, governed France badly. And they
had such and such favourites, and such and such mistresses. Moreover, there were
certain men writing books at this period. At the end of the eighteenth century
there were some two dozen men in Paris who began to talk all about men being
equal and free. This led people all over France to fall to hewing and hacking at
each other. These people killed the king and a great many more. At that time
there was in France a man of genius-Napoleon. He conquered every one everywhere,
that is, he killed a great many people, because he was a very great genius. And
for some reason he went to kill the Africans; and killed them so well, and was
so cunning and clever, that on returning to France he bade every one obey him.
And they all did obey him. After being made Emperor he went to kill people in
Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there, too, he killed a great many. In Russia
there was an Emperor, Alexander, who was resolved to re-establish order in
Europe, and so made war with Napoleon. But in 1807 he suddenly made friends with
him, and in 1811 he quarrelled again, and again they began killing a great many
people. And Napoleon took six hundred thousand men into Russia, and conquered
Moscow, and then he suddenly ran away out of Moscow, and then the Emperor
Alexander, aided by the counsels of Stein and others, united Europe for defence
against the destroyer of her peace. All Napoleon's allies suddenly became his
enemies; and the united army advanced against the fresh troops raised by
Napoleon. The allies vanquished Napoleon; entered Paris; forced Napoleon to
abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him, however, of the
dignity of Emperor, showing him, in fact, every respect, although five years
before, and one year later, he was regarded by every one as a brigand outside
the pale of the law. And Louis XVIII., who, till then, had been a laughing-stock
to the French and the allies, began to reign. Napoleon shed tears before the Old
Guard, abdicated the throne, and went into exile. Then the subtle, political
people and diplomatists (conspicuous among them Talleyrand, who succeeded in
sitting down in a particular chair before any one else, and thereby extended the
frontiers of France) had conversations together at Vienna, and by these
conversations made nations happy or unhappy. All at once the diplomatists and
monarchs all but quarrelled; they were on the point of again commanding their
armies to kill one another; but at that time Napoleon entered France with a
battalion, and the French, who had been hating him, at once submitted to him.
But the allied monarchs were angry at this, and again went to war with the
French. And the genius, Napoleon, was conquered; and suddenly recognising that
he was a brigand, they took him to the island of St. Helena. And on that rock
the exile, parted from the friends of his heart, and from his beloved France,
died a lingering death, and bequeathed all his great deeds to posterity. And in
Europe the reaction followed, and all the sovereigns began oppressing their
subjects again."

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is mockery-a caricature of
historical descriptions. On the contrary, it is a softened-down picture of the
contradictory and random answers, that are no answers, given by all
history, from the compilers of memoirs and of histories of separate states to
general histories, and the new sort of histories of the culture of that
period.

What is strange and comic in these answers is due to the fact that modern
history is like a deaf man answering questions which no one has asked him.

If the aim of history is the description of the movement of humanity and of
nations, the first question which must be answered, or all the rest remains
unintelligible, is the following: What force moves nations? To meet this
question modern history carefully relates that Napoleon was a very great genius,
and that Louis XIV. was very haughty, or that certain writers wrote certain
books.

All this may very well be so, and humanity is ready to acquiesce in it; but
it is not what it asks about. All that might be very interesting if we
recognised a divine power, based on itself and always alike, guiding its peoples
through Napoleons, Louis', and writers; but we do not acknowledge such a power,
and therefore before talking about Napoleons, and Louis', and great writers, we
must show the connection existing between those persons and the movement of the
nations. If another force is put in the place of the divine power, then it
should be explained what that force consists of, since it is precisely in that
force that the whole interest of history lies.

History seems to assume that this force is taken for granted of itself, and
is known to every one. But in despite of every desire to admit this new force as
known, any one who reads through very many historical works cannot but doubt
whether this new force, so differently understood by the historians themselves,
is perfectly well known to every one.