Chapter 4 Chapter Four

If we deny the old view that the will of a people is subject to a man chosen by God, and that man's will is subject to God, then history has to choose one of two things: or restore the directness of God. Unless the old beliefs intervene in human affairs, or clearly spell out the meaning of the forces of so-called power that produce historical events, history will be contradicted at every step. It is impossible to return to the first statement, since the old belief has been broken; So the meaning of power must be explained. Napoleon ordered the army to be called to battle.We are so accustomed to this view, so familiar with it, that the question of why Napoleon sent six hundred thousand men to battle as soon as he gave the order is meaningless.He has power, so do as he commands.

This answer is quite satisfactory if we believe that power is given to him by God.But if we do not admit this, we shall have to decide what this power of one man over another is. This power cannot be the direct power of a strong man over a weak man in physical strength--a superiority which uses or threatens physical strength, such as the power of Hercules; nor can it The superiority based on spirituality is like the naive idea of ​​some historians. They say that the great men in history are heroes, that is, people endowed with special spirit and wisdom, and endowed with so-called genius.Such power cannot be based on spiritual superiority, for, apart from heroes like Napoleon, whose moral character is widely judged, history shows us that Louis XI and Neither Metternich had any special spiritual superiority; on the contrary, they were probably far less spiritual than any of the millions over whom they ruled.

-------- ① Hercules is a strong man in Greek mythology. If the source of power lies neither in the physical strength inherent in the possessor nor in his moral character, it is obvious that the source of this power must lie outside the person, in the relation of the possessor to the masses. Such is the jurisprudence's understanding of power, the historical currency exchange that promises to convert the historical understanding of power into pure gold. Power is the sum total of the will of the masses, which they commit, either by word of approval or by acquiescence, to their chosen rulers.

In the field of jurisprudence, this is all quite clear when it comes to discussing how states and power should be properly constituted (if they can be properly constituted); but when applied to history, this definition of power needs to be explained. . Jurisprudence treats state and power as the ancients treated fire—as an absolute existence.But, from the perspective of history, state and power are only phenomena, just as fire is not a chemical element but a phenomenon from the perspective of modern physics. Because of this fundamental difference in views between history and jurisprudence, although jurisprudence can specify how power should be constituted according to its own opinions, and what is power that is not limited by time, but for the passage of time proposed by history And the question of the meaning of changing power cannot be answered at all.

If power is the sum total of the will of the masses handed over to the ruler, is Bugachev the representative of the will of the masses?If not, then why was Napoleon I the representative?Why was Napoleon III a criminal when he was captured in Boulogne, and those who were arrested by him later became criminals again? ① -------- ①Napoleon III seized the throne three times, but failed the first two times and succeeded the third time. Are palace coups, sometimes involving only two or three people, the transfer of the will of the masses to a new ruler?In international relations, is it also the transfer of the will of the masses of a people to the conqueror?Had the will of the Rhine Confederation passed to Napoleon in 1808?In 1809, when our army united with the French to fight the Austrians, did the will of the Russian people turn over to Napoleon?

There are three possible answers to these questions: 1. Or to admit that the will of the masses is always unconditionally transferred to their chosen ruler or rulers, and that therefore any emergence of new powers, and any struggle against those already transferred, should be regarded as acts of destruction. 2. Or admit that the will of the masses is transferred to the rulers under clear and well-known conditions, and point out that all kinds of restrictions, collisions, and even destruction of power are caused by the rulers' failure to abide by the conditions for the transfer of power of.

3. Or to admit that the will of the masses is transferred to the rulers under uncertain and unknown conditions, and to admit that many regimes rise and fall, and that the struggle among them is due to the more or less satisfied will of the masses by the rulers, Unknown conditions passed from one person to another. These are the three interpretations historians have given to the relationship between the masses and the rulers. Some historians, the biographers and thematic historians mentioned above, do not understand the question of the meaning of power. They naively believe that it seems that the sum of the will of the masses is unconditionally handed over to historical figures. Therefore, when describing a certain When there is a kind of power, these historians regard this kind of power as the only, absolute and real power. Any force that opposes this kind of power is not power, but a violation of power, a kind of violence.

Their theories are only applicable to primitive and peaceful historical periods, but when various nations are in a complex and turbulent period, when various powers rise up at the same time and struggle with each other, their theories are not applicable, because orthodox historians It will be proved that the National Assembly, the Government, and Bonaparte are nothing but aggressors of real power, and the republicans will prove that the National Assembly is the real power, the Bonapartists will prove that the Empire is the real power, and the rest Everything is a violator of power.Apparently, the different explanations provided by these historians can only be told to children.

Another school of historians recognizes the error of this view of history. They say that the basis of power is the sum total of the will of the masses that is conditionally handed over to the ruler, and that historical figures have power only on the condition that they carry out the program that the will of the people has tacitly agreed to them. .But what are these conditions?These historians don't tell us, and when they do, what they say always contradicts each other. Every historian, according to his opinion of the ends of national movements, regards the greatness, wealth, liberty, or education of the citizens of France or elsewhere as conditions.But apart from the fact that historians contradict each other about these conditions, even if there were such a common program to include them, the historical facts almost always contradict that theory.If the conditions for the transfer of power were the wealth, liberty, and education of the people, why did Louis XIV and Ivan IV die peacefully on the throne, while Louis XVI and Charles I were guillotined by the people?Historians answer this question by saying that Louis XIV's actions against the program were met with retribution in Louis XVI.But why not get retribution on Louis XIV or Louis XV?Why did it just happen to get retribution on Louis XVI?How long is this retribution?These questions do not have answers and cannot be answered.Those who hold this view cannot explain why the sum total of wills which, for centuries, were in the hands of certain rulers and their successors, were suddenly handed over within fifty years to the National Assembly, to the Government, to the To Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to the republic, to Napoleon III.In explaining this rapid transfer of the will of the people from one person to another, especially in relation to international relations, conquests and alliances, these historians are obliged to admit that some of these transfers were not normal transfers of the will of the people but An accident inseparable from cunning, error, intrigue, or the incompetence of diplomats, emperors, or party leaders.Thus, in the eyes of these historians, most historical phenomena—civil wars, revolutions, conquests—are the result not of free will transfers, but of the wrong transfer of will by one or The destruction of power.Therefore, in the view of some historians, such historical events deviate from historical theory.

These historians are like those botanists who, seeing that some plants grow from dicotyledonous seeds, insist that all plants grow into two leaves; , even if the oak tree bears no resemblance to the two leaves, he thinks these plants deviate from the theory. A third class of historians says that the will of the masses is conditionally transferred to historical figures, but we do not know those conditions.They say that historical figures have power only because they fulfilled the will of the masses that was handed over to them. But, then, what is the value of historical figures if the power that moves them is not in their hands, but in the hands of the nations themselves?

These historians say that historical figures express the will of the masses; their actions represent the actions of the masses. However, in this way, a question arises: Are all the activities of historical figures the expression of the will of the masses, or are only some of them the expression of the will of the masses?If, as some historians think, all the activities of historical figures are expressions of the will of the masses, then all court scandals in the biographies of Napoleons and Catherines are expressions of national life—so It is obviously quite absurd to say; but if, as some other pseudo-philosophers and historians think, only one aspect of the actions of historical figures is the expression of people's lives, then, in order to determine which aspect of the actions of historical figures The aspect expresses the life of the people, we must first know the content of the life of the nation. When faced with these difficulties, historians of this type try to formulate some of the vaguest, most elusive, most general abstractions applicable to the vast majority of events, and say that this abstraction is the object of human activity: The most common abstractions used by almost all historians are: Liberty, Equality, Education, Progress, Civilization, Culture.While the historian regards some abstraction as the object of human activity, he studies the deeds of those who left for themselves the greatest number of monuments—kings, ministers, generals, writers, reformers, popes, journalists, according to Their opinion is to study the extent to which these characters facilitate or hinder some abstraction.But because it cannot be proved that the end of man is liberty, equality, education, or civilization, because the relation of the masses to the rulers and enlighteners of mankind rests entirely on this arbitrary assumption: , Therefore, in the records about the activities of ten people who do not burn houses, do not farm, and do not kill their own kind, we will never see the activities of millions of people migrating, burning houses, abandoning agriculture, and killing each other. History has proved this time and again.Can the uproar of the nations of the West at the end of the eighteenth century and their eastward advance be explained by the activities of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their mistresses, and ministers?Can it be illustrated by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others? Is the eastward movement of the Russian people into Kazan and Siberia reflected in the details of Ivan IV's morbid character and in his correspondence with Kulbsky? Can the movement of peoples in the time of the Crusades be explained by a study of the lives of the Godfreys, Louises, and their mistresses?That national movement from west to east, without any purpose, without a leader, just a mob and a hermit Peter, remains incomprehensible to us.The suspension of that movement is especially incomprehensible at a time when historical figures had clearly set a legitimate and sacred goal for the Crusades—the liberation of Jerusalem.Popes, kings, and knights urge the people to liberate the holy places; but the people do not go, because the unknown reason that had impelled them to go before has ceased to exist.The history of Godfrey and the troubadours obviously does not include the lives of peoples.The history of Godfrey and the lyric singers remains the history of Godfrey and the lyric singers, and the history of the lives of the peoples and their motives remains unknown. -------- ① Diderot (1713-1784), French Enlightenment thinker, idealist philosopher, writer, editor-in-chief of "Encyclopedia". ② Beaumarchais (1712～1799), French comedy writer. ③ Duke Andrei Kulbsky is one of the main nobles under Ivan IV.He fled to Lithuania, from where he wrote to Ivan, accusing him of cruelty, hypocrisy, and arbitrariness.Ivan wrote back: defending himself "according to the law of God". ④ Godfrey was the leader of the First Crusade at the end of the seventeenth century. ⑤Peter was a French monk and an ascetic. According to legend, he inspired the first Crusade. ⑥ Lyric singers appeared in Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They sang love songs everywhere and also sang crusader songs. The history of writers and reformers tells us even less of the lives of nations. Cultural history tells us the motives and characteristics of the life and thought of a writer or a reformer.We know that Luther was short-tempered and said such and such things; we know that Rousseau was suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not know why peoples slaughtered each other after the Reformation, nor did we know that during the French Revolution , why people put death sentences on each other. If we combine these two histories, as historians of our time do, we shall have a history of kings and writers, and not of the life of nations.