Chapter 7 Chapter VII

When an event occurs, people express their opinions and wishes about that event, because the event is produced by the collective actions of many people, and one of these expressed opinions or wishes must be realized, or almost realized.When one of these opinions is fulfilled, in our minds this opinion is associated with the event as a pre-issued command. Many people drag a log.Everyone has an opinion: how and where to drag.They hauled the wood away, and it was later revealed that it had done as one of them said.He gave the order.This is the original form of command and power. The man who works more with his hands thinks less of what he is doing, is unable to consider the consequences of joint action, and cannot give orders.The man who is more engaged in directing, since he uses his mouth, obviously uses his hands less.When a larger group is working together on a goal, the ranks of those who are less directly involved in the common activity and more involved in calling the shots are more distinct.

When a man works alone, he always has ideas which he thinks guide his past actions, justify his present actions, and guide his plans for future actions. Crowds, too, allow their collective actions to be considered, justified, and proposed by those not directly involved in the action. For reasons known or unknown to us, the French started drowning each other, killing each other.And corresponding to that event, the will of the people justifies it: it is necessary for the good of France, for liberty, for equality.People stopped killing each other and justified the event: it was necessary for unity of power, resistance to Europe, etc.Men went from west to east to kill their own kind, and with this event came the glory of France, the baseness of England, and so on.History tells us that the justifications given for these events shared no common ideas, were contradictory, such as the murders in recognition of his power, and the killing of millions in Russia to humiliate England.But these justifications had necessary significance at the time.

These justifications are intended to remove the moral responsibility of those who caused the events.These temporary purposes are like brushes that sweep the track ahead, and they also clear the way for people's moral responsibilities.Without these justifications, it is impossible to answer the simplest questions that arise when examining every historical event: the mass crimes, wars, murders, etc., of millions of people. Is any event conceivable in the present complex form of state affairs and social life in Europe, which is not directed and ordered by those princes, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers?What collective action cannot be justified in terms of national unity, patriotism, European balance of power, or civilization?Every event that occurs must therefore correspond to a certain desire and be justified, appearing as the product of the will of one or several persons.

No matter which direction a ship sails, the waves it cuts can always be seen in front of it.To those on board, the movement of these waves is the only visible motion. Only by carefully observing the movement of those waves moment by moment, and comparing the movement of the waves with the movement of the ship, will we understand that the movement of the waves is caused by the movement of the ship moment by moment, because we do not feel that we are In motion, so there is an illusion. We will see the same thing if we look at the movement of historical figures moment by moment (that is, to restore the necessary condition for everything that happens - the continuity of movement in time), without neglecting the necessary connection between historical figures and the masses.

When the boat moves in one direction, the same wave is ahead of it, and when it changes direction frequently, the wave in front of it also changes direction frequently.But no matter how it changes course, its motion is always accompanied by waves. No matter what happened, people always felt that it was what they expected, what they were ordered to do.Wherever the ship goes, the wave is always surging ahead of it, yet it neither directs nor enhances its motion, and from a distance we feel that the spray of the wave not only moves by itself, but directs the ship as well. sports. Historians only examine the will performance of historical figures—it is related to the way of order and events, so they think that events are transferred by orders.However, once we examine the relationship between the event itself and the masses, including historical figures, we find that historical figures and their orders depend on the event.The indisputable proof of this conclusion is that no matter how many orders are given, the event would not have happened if for no other reason; Among the various wills that come out, find some expressions of will that are related to events in an orderly manner in meaning and time.

Having reached this conclusion, we can answer directly and positively two great historical questions. 1. What is power? 2. What forces create national movements? 1. Power is the relationship between a famous person and other people in which the more this person voices, prophesies, and justifies ongoing collective action, the less he participates in it. 2. The movement of nations is not caused by power, nor by intellectual activity, nor even, as historians think, by a combination of the two, but by the activity of all who have a part in the event Yes, the people are always united in this way: those who have the most direct part in the event bear the least responsibility; those who have the least direct part in the event bear the greatest responsibility.

Spiritually, power is the cause of events; materially, those who obey power are the cause of events.But since mental activity is inconceivable without material activity, the cause of the event is neither the former nor the latter, but the combination of the two. Or, to put it another way, the concept of a cause is inapplicable to the phenomenon under consideration. When we analyze it to the end, we can reach infinite circles, as far as human intelligence can reach in all spheres of thought, if intelligence does not take a playful attitude towards the objects it studies.Electricity generates heat, and heat generates electricity.Atoms attract each other and atoms repel each other.

When it comes to the simplest actions of heat, electricity, or atoms, we cannot say why these actions occur, we say that the nature of these phenomena is such that this is their law.The same goes for historical events.Why do wars or revolutions happen?We don't know; we only know that in order to perform a certain action, men form a certain group, and they all belong to that group; we say that human nature is so, it is a law.