Considering the bleakness of the subject matter and the fact that it's one of the longest books available in print, it's fair to assume that a large proportion of people who begin reading the book don't get round to finishing it.
This is a shame, because it means many people will miss out on reading the second epilogue. (That's right - just when you think the damn thing's over, there's two epilogues. And they're both several chapters long.)
My advice is, if you don't have time to read the whole thing, skip through to the second epilogue.
History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put
into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single
nation, appears impossible.
The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe and
seize the apparently elusive – the life of a people. They described the activity
of individuals who ruled the people, and regarded the activity of those men as
representing the activity of the whole nation.
The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by what
was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the ancients met by
recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations to the will of a chosen man,
and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish ends that were
predestined.
For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the direct
participation of the Deity in human affairs.
Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.
It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in man's
subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward which nations are led,
modern history should study not the manifestations of power but the causes that
produce it. But modern history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the
view held by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.
Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided by the will
of God, modern history has given us either heroes endowed with extraordinary,
superhuman capacities, or simply men of very various kinds, from monarchs to
journalists, who lead the masses. Instead of the former divinely appointed aims
of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as
representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own
aims – the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest
abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is
usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a
large continent.
Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without replacing
them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has obliged the
historians, after they had apparently rejected the divine authority of the kings
and the “fate” of the ancients, to reach the same conclusion by another road,
that is, to recognize (1) nations guided by individual men, and (2) the
existence of a known aim to which these nations and humanity at large are
tending.
At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to Buckle,
despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of their outlooks,
lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.
In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals who in
his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers only monarchs,
generals, and ministers as being such men, while another includes also orators,
learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that
the goal toward which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one
of them this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to
another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization of a small
corner of the world called Europe.
In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed by a
movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves eastward and
collides with a countermovement from the east westward. In 1812 it reaches its
extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable symmetry, a countermovement
occurs from east to west, attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the
nations of middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of the
first movement in the west – Paris – and subsides.
During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of men
migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of Christian men
professing the law of love of their fellows slew one another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events? What
force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and most legitimate
questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the monuments and tradition of
that period.
For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
themselves.
If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have said
that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and directed his
will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply, would have been
clear and complete. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance
of Napoleon, but for anyone believing in it there would have been nothing
unintelligible in the history of that period, nor would there have been any
contradictions.
But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit the
conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity in human
affairs, and therefore history ought to give other answers.
Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what this
movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these events? Then
listen:
“Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such
mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His
descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had such and
such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some
books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of
dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This
caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one another. They
killed the king and many other people. At that time there was in France a man of
genius – Napoleon. He conquered everybody everywhere – that is, he killed many
people because he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill
Africans, and killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he
returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him.
Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria, and
Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there was an Emperor,
Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and therefore fought against
Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again
quarreled and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand
men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and
the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe
to arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon's allies suddenly became
his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The
Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent
him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and showing
him every respect, though five years before and one year later they all regarded
him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the
laughingstock both of the French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon,
shedding tears before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile.
Then the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed
to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended the
frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations made the
nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and monarchs nearly
quarreled and were on the point of again ordering their armies to kill one
another, but just then Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the
French, who had been hating him, immediately all submitted to him. But the
Allied monarchs were angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And
they defeated the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand,
sent him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved
France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and bequeathed
his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction occurred and the
sovereigns once again all began to oppress their subjects.”
It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic – a caricature of the
historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of the
contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the historians give,
from the compilers of memoirs and the histories of separate states to the
writers of general histories and the new histories of the culture of that
period.
The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that
modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.
If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of
humanity and of the peoples, the first question – in the absence of a reply to
which all the rest will be incomprehensible – is: what is the power that moves
peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a
great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote
certain books.
All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what
was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine power based
on itself and always consistently directing its nations through Napoleons,
Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore
before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the
connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.
If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should be
explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of history
lies precisely in that force.
History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to
everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone reading
many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously
understood by the historians themselves, is really quite well known to
everybody.
