Her success as a beautiful and elegant woman did not surprise Pierre, because with the years she had become still more beautiful than before. But what did surprise him was that in these two years his wife had succeeded in acquiring a reputation “d'une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle.”* ‘The famous prince de Ligne wrote eight-page letters to her. Bilibin saved up his mots so as to speak them for the first time in front of the countess Bezukhov. To be received in the countess Bezukhov’s salon was considered a diploma in intelligence; young men read books before Héleéne’s soirées so as to have something to talk about in her salon, and embassy secretaries, and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that Héléne was a power in a certain sense. Pierre, who knew that she was very stupid, sometimes, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, attended her soirées and dinners, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these soirées, he experienced a feeling similar to what a conjurer experiences, expecting each time that his trick will be exposed. But either because stupidity was precisely necessary for keeping such a salon, or because those who were tricked found pleasure in the trick itself, the trick was not exposed, and the reputation of Elena Vassilievna Bezukhov as une femme charmante et spirituelle was so firmly established that she could utter the greatest banalities and stupidities, and still they all admired her every word and sought for a deep meaning in them, which she herself never suspected.
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a prolonged, instructive conversation alone with brother V., who advised me to hold on to brother A. Much has been revealed to me, unworthy though I am. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim is the name of the ruler over all. The third name, the unutterable name, has the meaning of All. Conversations with brother V. strengthen, refresh, and confirm me on the path of virtue. In his presence there is no room for doubt. The difference between the poor teaching of social science and our holy, all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills everything in order to examine it. In the order’s holy science, everything is one, everything is known in its entirety and life. The Trinity —the three basic elements of things—sulfur, mercury, and salt. Sulfur has the properties of oil and fire; united with salt, by its fiery quality, it arouses a craving in it through which it attracts mercury, seizes it, retains it, and together they produce separate bodies. Mercury is a liquid and volatile spiritual essence—Christ, the Holy Spirit, He.
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Atter dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrei's request, went to the clavichord and began to sing. Prince Andrei stood by the window, talking with the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrei fell silent and suddenly felt choked with tears, which he did not know was possible for him. He looked at the singing Natasha and something new and happy occurred in his soul. He was happy, but at the same time he felt sad. He had decidedly nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. About what? His former love? The little princess? His disappointments? . . . His hopes for the future? .. . Yes and no. The main thing he wanted to weep about was a sudden, vivid awareness of the terrible opposition between something infinitely great and indefinable that was in him, and something narrow and fleshly that he himself, and even she, was. This opposition tormented him and gladdened him while she sang.
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Biblical tradition says that absence of work—idleness was the condition of the first man’s blessedness before his fall. The love of idleness remained the same in fallen man, but the curse still weighs on man, and not only because we must win our bread in the sweat of our face," but because our moral qualities, are such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice tells us that we should feel guilty for being idle. If man could find a condition in which, while idle, he felt that he was being useful and was fulfilling his duty, he woul have found one side of primordial blessedness. And this state of obligatory ang irreproachable idleness is enjoyed by an entire class—the military. In this obligatory and irreproachable idleness consists and will consist the chief attraction of military service. Nikolai Rostov experienced this blessedness to the full as he continued serving after 1807 in the Pavlogradsky regiment, where he was already a squadron commander, having taken over from Denisov.
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow acquaintances would have found slightly mauvais genre,* but who was loved and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and who was content with his life. Lately —that is, in 1809—in letters from home, he often found complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling into worse and worse disorder, and that it was time for him to come home, to bring joy and peace to his old parents.
Reading these letters, Nikolai experienced a fear that they wanted to make him leave the milieu in which he lived calmly and peacefully, protected from life’s confusion. He felt that sooner or later he would have to enter the deep water of life again, with its affairs disordered and straightened out, with its stewards’ accounts, with its quarrels, intrigues, connections, with its society, with Sonya’s love and his promise to her. All this was terribly difficult, confused, and he answered his mother’s letters with cold, classical ones that begat “Ma chere maman” and ended “votre obéissant fils,”t and omitted saying when he intended to return.
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On an empty stomach, in the morning, all the old questions seemed as insoluble and frightening as ever, and Pierre would hastily seize a book and was glad when somebody came to see him.
Sometimes Pierre remembered stories he had heard about how soldiers at war, taking cover under enemy fire, when there is nothing to do, try to find some occupation for themselves so as to endure the danger more easily. And to Pierre all people seemed to be such soldiers, saving themselves from life: some with ambition, some with cards, some with drafting laws, some with women, some with playthings, some with horses, some with politics, some with hunting, some with wine, some with affairs of state. “Nothing is either trivial of important, it’s all the same; only save yourself from it as best you can!” thought Pierre. “Only not to see it, that dreadful it!”
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“Yes,” Pierre went on with a smile, “and this young man now behaves himolf in such a way that, wherever there’s a rich bride, he’s there, too. I can read at like a book. He’s undecided now whom to attack: you or Mile Julie Kara nll est trés assidu aupres delle.”
Does he visit them?”
“Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?” Pierre said gith a merry smile, clearly being in that merry mood of good-natured mockery for which he reproached himself so often in his diary.
“No,” said Princess Marya.
“Nowadays, in order to please Moscow girls, il faut étre mélancolique. Et lest tres mélancolique auprés de mademoiselle Karagine,”t said Pierre.
“Vraiment? ” said Princess Marya, looking into Pierre’s kind face and never ceasing to think about her grief.
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Since the end of the year 1811 an intense arming and concentration of western European forces had begun, and in the year 1812 those forces—millions of men (including those who transported and fed the army)—moved from west co east, to the borders of Russia, towards which, since the year 1811, the forces of Russia had been drawn in exactly the same way. On the twelfth of June, the forces of western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began—that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature. Millions of people committed against each other such a countless number of villainies, deceptions, betrayals, thefts, forgeries and distributions of false banknotes, robberies, arsons, and murders as the annals of all the law courts in the world could not assemble in whole centuries, and which, at that period of time, the people who committed them did not look upon as crimes.
What produced this extraordinary event? What were its causes? Historians _ say with naive assurance that the causes of this event were the offense inflicted upon the duke of Oldenburg, the non-observance of the Continental System, ! Napoleon’s love of power, Alexander's firmness, diplomatic mistakes, and g0 on.
Consequently, it needed only that Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between levee and rout, make a little better effort and write a more skillful dispatch, or that Napoleon write to Alexander: Monsieur, mon frére, je consens a rendre le duché au duc d’Oldenbourg*—and there would have been no war.
Understandably, that was how the matter presented itself to contemporaries. Understandably, it seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by the intrigues of England (as he said, in fact, on the island of St. Helena2); understandably, to the members of the English Parliament it seemed that the war was caused by Napoleon’s love of power; to Prince Oldenburg it seemed that the war was caused by the violence done him; to the merchants it seemed that the war was caused by the Continental System, which was ruining Europe; to the old soldiers and generals it seemed that the chief cause was the need to use of them: to the legitimists of that time, that it was necessary to Restore les bons principes;* and to the diplomats of that time, that it had al} happened because the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had noe been concealed skillfully enough from Napoleon and because memorandum no. 178 had been clumsily worded. Understandably, these and a countless, endless number of other causes, the number of which depends on countless dif. ferent points of view, presented themselves to contemporaries; but for us, the descendants, who contemplate the enormity of the event in all its scope and delve into its simple and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. For us it is not understandable that millions of Christians killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was a lover of power, Alexander was firm, English policy cunning, and the duke of Oldenburg offended. It is impossible to understand what connection there is between these circumstances and the fact of killing and violence; why, because the duke of Oldenburg was offended, thousands of men from the other end of Europe should kill and ravage the people of Smolensk and Moscow provinces and be killed by them.
For us descendants—who are not historians, who are not carried away by the process of research and therefore can contemplate events with unobscured common sense—a countless number of causes present themselves. The deeper we go in search of causes, the more of them we find, and each cause taken singly or whole series of causes present themselves to us as equally correct in themselves, and equally false in their insignificance in comparison with the enormity of the event, and equally false in their incapacity (without the participation of all other coinciding causes) to produce the event that took place. The willingness or unwillingness of one French corporal to enlist for a second tour of duty appears to us as good a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his army beyond the Vistula and give back the duchy of Oldenburg; for if he had been unwilling to serve, and another had been unwilling, and a third, and a thousandth corporal and soldier, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon’s army, and there could have been no war.
If Napoleon had not been insulted by the demand to withdraw beyond the Vistula, and had not ordered his troops to advance, there would have been no war; but if all the sergeants had been unwilling to enlist for a second tour of duty, there also could have been no war. There also could have been no war if there had been no intrigues of the English, and if there had been no prince of Oldenburg and insulted feelings in Alexander, and if there had been no autocratic power in Russia, and if there had been no French revolution and subsequent dictatorship and empire, and all that produced the French revolution, and so on. Without any one of these causes, nothing could have happened. Therefore, all these causes—billions of causes—coincided so as to bring about what happened. And consequently none of them was the exclusive cause of the event, but the event had to take place simply because it had to take place. Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and their reason, had to go from west to east and kill their own kind, just as, several centuries earlier, hordes of men had gone from east to west, killing their own kind.
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose word it seems to have depended whether the event took place or not, were as little willed as the action of each soldier who went into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, because for the will of Napoleon and Alexander (the men on whom the event seemed to depend) to be fulfilled, the coincidence of countless circumstances was necessary, without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men, in whose hands the actual power lay, the soldiers who shot, transported provisions and cannon—it was necessary that they agree to fulfill this will of isolated and weak men and be brought to that by a countless number of complex, diverse causes.
Fatalism in history is inevitable for the explanation of senseless phenomena (that is, those whose sense we do not understand). The more we try to explain sensibly these phenomena of history, the more senseless and incomprehensible they become for us.
Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-andsuch an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible and makes itself the property of history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
There are two sides to each man’s life: his personal life, which is the more free the more abstract its integests, and his elemental, swarmlike life, where man inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals. An action once committed is irrevocable, and its effect, coinciding in time with millions of actions of other people, acquires historical significance. The higher a man stands on the Social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more Power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action.
“The hearts of kings are in the hands of God.”4
Kings are the slaves of history.
History, that is, the unconscious, swarmlike life of mankind, uses every Moment of a king’s life as an instrument for its purposes.
Napoleon, though now, in 1812, it seemed to him more than ever that it depended on him verser or not verser le sang de ses peuples* (as Alexander wrote in his last letter to him), had never been more subject than now to those inevitable laws which forced him (acting by his own free will, as it seemed to him, with respect to himself) to do for the common cause, for history, that which had to be accomplished.
Men of the west moved towards the east in order to kill each other. And by the law of the coincidence of causes, the thousands of minute causes of this movement and of the war fitted into and coincided with the event: reproaches for the non-observance of the Continental System, and the duke of Oldenburg, and the movement of troops into Prussia, undertaken (as it seemed to Napoleon) only to achieve an armed peace,5 and the French emperor’s love and habit of war, which coincided with his nation’s disposition, the enthusiasm for grandiose preparations, and the expense of the preparations, and the need to obtain advantages that would recover the expenses, and the intoxicating honors in Dresden,* and diplomatic negotiations which, according to the views of contemporaries, were conducted with a sincere desire to achieve peace and which only wounded the vanity of both sides, and millions and millions of other causes which fitted into the event that was to be accomplished, coinciding with it.
When an apple ripens and falls —what makes it fall? Is it that it is attracted to the ground, is it that the stem withers, is it that the sun has dried it up, that it has grown heavier, that the wind shakes it, that the boy standing underneath wants to eat it?
No one thing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions under which every organic, elemental event of life is accomplished. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue degenerates, and so on, will be as right and as wrong as the child who stands underneath and says that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. As he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander wanted him to perish, will be both right and wrong, so he will be right and wrong who says that an undermined hill weighing a million pounds collapsed because the last worker struck it a last time with his pick. In histortcal events the so-called great men are labels that give the event a name, which, just as with labels, has the least connection of all with the event itself.
Their every action, which to them seems willed by themselves, in the historical sense is not willed, but happens in connection with the whole course of history and has been destined from before all ages.
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“Ah, my God! My God!” he said. “And to think of who—of what nonentities—can be the cause of people’s unhappiness!” he said with a malice hat frightened Princess Marya.
She understood that, in referring to the people he called nonentities, he had in mind not only Mlle Bourienne, who had ruined her happiness, but also the man who had ruined his own.
“André, I ask you one thing, I beg you,” she said, touching his elbow and looking at him through the tears in her shining eyes. “I understand you” (Princess Marya lowered her eyes). “Don’t think that grief is caused by people. People are His instruments.” She looked slightly over Prince Andrei’s head with that confident, habitual look with which one looks at the place of a familiar portrait. “Grief is sent by Him, not by people. People are His instruments, they’re not to blame. If it seems to you that someone is to blame before you, forget it and forgive. We have no right to punish. And you will know the happiness of forgiveness.”
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Pierre still went into society, still drank as much and led the same idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the Rostovs’, he had the rest of the time to spend, and the habits and acquaintances he had acquired in Moscow drew him irresistibly to the life he was caught up in. But lately, when ever more alarming rumors kept coming from the theater of war, and Natasha’s health began to improve, and she ceased to arouse in him the former feeling of protective pity, an anxiety he found more and more incomprehensible began to come over him. He felt that the ‘situation in which he found himself could not continue for long, that a catastrophe was coming which was bound to change his whole life, and he impatiently sought signs of this approaching catastrophe in everything. One of his brother Masons revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon and derived from the Apocalypse of St. John.
In the Apocalypse, chapter 13, verse 18, it was said: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”
And in verse 5 of the same chapter: “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to conjinue forty and two months.”
French letters, given numerical values like the Hebrew, in which the first nine jetters represent units, and the rest tens, will have the following significance:
50 60 70 80 90 100 {10 £20 130 140 150 160
Writing the words l'empereur Napoléon in this alphabet of numbers, it turns out that the sum of the figures equals 666 and that Napoleon is therefore that beast prophesied in the Apocalypse. Moreover, if the word quarante-deux, that is, the term fixed for the beast “to speak great things and blasphemies,” is written in the same alphabet, the sum of these figures representing quarante-deux again equals 666, from which it follows that the term of Napoleon's power was reached in the year 1812, when the French emperor turned fortywo. Pierre was very struck by this prophecy, and he often posed the question for himself of precisely what would set a limit to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon, and on the basis of the same correspondence of word numbers and calculations, he tried to find an answer to his question. In answer to the question, Pierre wrote out: L’empereur Alexandre? La nation russe? He counted up the letters, but the sum of the numbers came out much larger or smaller than 666. Once, taken up with these calculations, he wrote his own name—Comte Pierre Besouhoff; the sum of the numbers was also far from the right one. He changed the orthography, putting z in place of s, added de, added the article le, and still did not get the desired result. Then it occurred to him that, if the answer to the question he was seeking was contained in his name, then the answer would certainly mention his nationality. He wrote Le russe Besubof and, counting up the numbers, got 671. It was only five too much; five was e, the same e that was dropped from the article in the words Lempereur. Having dropped the e in the same way, albeit incorrectly, Pierre got the sought-for answer: L’russe Besubof, which equalled 666. This discovery excited him. He did not know how, by what connection he was bound up with that great event which had been predicted in the Apocalypse; but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His love for Miss Rostov, the Antichrist, Napoleon’s invasion, the comet, 666, l’empereur Napoléon and Vrusse Besuhof—all that together must ripen, burst, and lead him out of that Spellbound, worthless world of Moscow habits in which he felt himself umprisOned, and bring him to a great deed and great happiness.
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While this was going on in Petersburg, the French had already passed Smolensk and were moving closer and closer to Moscow. Napoleon’s historian Thiers, like his other historians, says, trying to justify his hero, that Napoleon was lured to the walls of Moscow involuntarily. He is right, as all historians are ’ right who seek explanations of historical events in the will of one man; he is right, just as the Russian historians are right who maintain that Napoleon [ was lured to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here, besides the law of retrospection, which presents all the past as a preparation for the accomplished fact, there is also a reciprocity that confuses the whole matter. A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced that he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at every step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it: How much more complex is the game of war, which takes place in certain conditions of time and where no single will is guiding lifeless mechanisms, but everything is the result of numberless collisions of various wills?
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“No, he hasn’t died, it can’t be!” Princess Marya said to herself, went up to him, and, overcoming the horror that seized her, pressed her lips to his cheek. But she drew back from him at once. Instantly the whole force of the tender. ness for him which she felt in herself vanished and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay before her. “No, he’s no more! He’s no more, and in the place where he was there is something alien and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repulsive mystery . . .” And, covering her face with her hands, Princess Marya fell into the arms of the doctor, who supported her.
In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor, the women washed what had been he, bound his head with a handkerchief so that the open mouth would not stiffen, and with another handkerchief bound together the legs, which were beginning to spread. Then they dressed the small, shriveled body in the uniform with decorations and laid it out on the table. God knows who took care of it or when, but everything got done as if by itself. Towards nighttime candles were burning around the coffin, on the coffin lay a pall, the floor was strewn with juniper boughs, under the dead man’s withered head a printed prayer had been placed, and in the corner sat a beadle reading the psalter.
As horses shy, crowd, and snort over a dead horse, so people crowded around the coffin in the drawing room—strangers and familiars, the marshal, and the headman, and peasant women—and all with a fixed and frightened gaze crossed themselves and bowed, and kissed the cold and stiffened hand of the old prince.'
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Many historians say that the battle of Borodino was not won by the French because Napoleon had a cold, that if he had not had a cold, his instructions before and during the battle would have been of still greater genius, and Russia would have perished, et la face du monde eut été changée.” For historians who accept that Russia was shaped by the will of one man—Peter the Greatand that France was turned from a republic into an empire and French troops went to Russia by the will of one man—Napoleon—such an argument, that Russia remained a power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twentysixth, such an argument for such historians is inevitably consistent.
If it had depended on Napoleon’s will whether or not to fight the battle of Borodino, and if it had depended on his will whether to give this or that instruction, then it is obvious that a cold, having an influence on the expression of his will, could have caused the salvation of Russia, and therefore the valet who forgot to give Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth was the savior of Russia. By that way of thinking, this conclusion is indubitable, as indubitable as the conclusion which Voltaire drew jokingly (not knowing at what himself) when he said that the night of St. Bartholomew was the result of Charles IX having an upset stomach. But for people who do not admit that Russia was shaped by the will of one man—Peter I—and that the French empire arose and the war with Russia began by the will of one man—Napoleon~ this argument seems not only incorrect, unreasonable, but also contrary to all human essence. To the question of what constitutes the cause of historical events, a different answer presents itself, which is that the course of world events is predestined from on high, depends on the coincidence of all the wills of the people participating in those events, and that Napoleon’s influence on the course of those events is only external and fictitious.
Strange as it may seem at first glance to suggest that the night of St. Bartholomew, the order for which was given by Charles IX, did not occur by his will, but that it only seemed to him that he had called for it, and that the slaughter of eighty thousand men at Borodino did not occur by the will of Napoleon (though he gave the orders for the beginning and the course of the battle), but that it only seemed to him that he called for itstrange as this suggestion may seem, human dignity, which tells me that each of us is, if not more, then certainly no less of a human being than the great Napoleon, calls for the allowance of this solution to the problem, and historical research abundantly confirms this suggestion.
In the battle of Borodino, Napoleon did not shoot at anyone and did not kill anyone. That was all done by the soldiers. Which means it was not he who killed people.
The soldiers of the French army went to kill Russian soldiers in the battle of Borodino not as the result of Napoleon’s orders but by their own will. The whole army—the French, the Italians, the Germans, the Poles, hungry, ragged, and exhausted by the campaign—on seeing the army that blocked their way to Moscow, felt that “le vin est tiré et qwil faut le boire.”* If Napoleon had now forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and gone to fight the Russians, because it was necessary for them.
When they heard the order of Napoleon, who, in return for their mutilation and death, presented them in consolation with the words of posterity about their having been at the battle of Moscow, they cried “Vive l’Empereur!” just as they cried “Vive l’Empereur!” on seeing the depiction of the boy skewering the terrestrial globe with a bilboquet stick; just as they would cry “Vive l’Emperenr’ ” to any nonsense that was told them. They had nothing left to do bur cry “Vive ’Empereur!” and go to fight, in order to find food and rest as victors in Moscow. Which meant it was not as the result of Napoleon’s order that they tilled their own kind.
And it was not Napoleon who ordained the course of the battle, hecaus¢ nothing of his disposition was carried out and during the battle he did not know what was happening in front of him. Which meant also that the way shese people were killing each other occurred not by the will of Napoleon, but went on independently of him, by the will of the hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action. To Napoleon it only seemed that she whole thing happened by his will. And therefore the question whether Napoleon had or did not have a cold is of no greater interest to history than the question of the last convoy soldier having a cold.
Napoleon’s cold on the twenty-sixth of August has still less significance, since the evidence of writers that, owing to Napoleon’s cold, his disposition and his instructions during the battle were not as good as previously, is totally incorrect.
The disposition quoted above was not at all worse, but even better than all the previous dispositions by which his battles had been won. His imaginary instructions during the battle were also no worse than previous ones, but exactly the same as ever. But the disposition and the instructions seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodino was the first that Napoleon did not win. All the most excellent and profoundly conceived dispositions and instructions seem very bad, and every military expert criticizes them with a significant air, when the battle is not won through them, and the worst dispositions and instructions seem very good, and serious men write whole volumes Proving the merits of bad instructions, when the battle is won through them.
The disposition drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz was the Picture of perfection in works of that sort, but all the same it was condemned, Condemned for its perfection, for being excessively detailed.
In the battle of Borodino, Napoleon fulfilled his function as the representative of power just as well and even better than in other battles. He did nothing to harm the course of the battle; he bowed to the more well-reasoned opinions; he caused no confusion, did not contradict himself, did not get frightened, and Wid not run away from the battlefield, but with his great tact and experience of War calmly and worthily fulfilled his role of seeming to command.
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Rapp answered that he had conveyed the sovereign’s orders about the rice, but Napoleon shook his head in displeasure, as if he did not believe that his order had been carried out. A servant came in with punch. Napoleon called for snother glass to be served to Rapp and silently sipped from his own.
¢[ have no taste or smell,” he said, sniffing the glass. “I’m tired of this cold. They talk about medicine. What good is medicine, if they can’t cure a cold? Corvisart gave me these lozenges, but they don’t help at all. What can they are? It’s impossible to cure. Notre corps est une machine a vivre. II est organisé pour cela, c’est sa nature; laissez-y faire' (Our body is a machine for living, Ir is organized for that, such is its nature; leave life alone there ‘ad let it defend itself: it will do more than if you paralyze it by loading it down with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that must run for a certain time; the watchmaker is not able to open it, hecag only handle it by feel and blindfolded. Our body is a machine for living, that’s all.)
And as if entering on the path of definitions, définitions, which Napoleon liked, he suddenly made a new definition. “Do you know, Rapp, what the art of war is?” he asked. “It’s the art of being stronger than the enemy at a certain moment. Voila tout.”
Rapp said nothing.
“Demain nous allons avoir affaire a Koutouzoff!”S said Napoleon. “We'll see! Remember, he was in command of the army in Braunau and in three weeks never once got on a horse to inspect the fortifications. We'll see!”
He glanced at his watch. It was only four o’clock. He did not want to sleep, the punch was finished, and there was still nothing to do. He stood up, paced back and forth, put on a warm tunic and a hat, and left the tent. The night was dark and damp; a barely perceptible dampness fell from above. Low fires bumed nearby, among the French guards, and glimmered far off...
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For human reason, absolute continuity of movement is incomprehensible Man begins to understand the laws of any kind of movement only when he examines the arbitrarily chosen units of that movement. But at the same time if ‘s from this arbitrary division of continuous movement into discrete units that he greater part of human errors proceeds.
A well-known so-called sophism of the ancients posits that Achilles can never overtake a tortoise that is walking ahead of him, even though Achilles walks ten times faster than the tortoise: while Achilles covers the distance that separates him from the tortoise, the tortoise will get ahead of him by one enth of that distance; Achilles covers that one tenth, the tortoise gets ahead by one hundredth, and so on to infinity. The ancients considered this problem insoluble. The nonsensical conclusion (that Achilles will never overtake the tortoise) resulted only from the fact that discrete units of movement were introduced arbitrarily, while the movement of both Achilles and the tortoise was continuous.
By taking smaller and smaller units of ‘movement, we only approach the solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only by allowing for an infinitesimal quantity and the ascending progression from that up to one tenth, and by taking the sum of that geometrical’ progression, do we arrive at the solution of the problem. A new branch of mathematics, having attained to the art of dealing with infinitesimal quantities in other, more complex problems of movement as well, now gives answers to questions that used to seem insoluble.
This new branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, in examining questions of movement, allows for infinitesimal quantities, that is, such as réstore the main condition of movement (absolute continuity), and thereby Corrects the inevitable error that human reason cannot help committing when it examines discrete units of movement instead of continuous movement.
The same thing happens in the search for the laws of historical movement.
The movement of mankind, proceeding from a countless number of human Wills, occurs continuously.
To comprehend the laws of this movement is the goal of history. But in order ‘0 comprehend the laws of the continuous movement of the sum of all individ. \al wills, human reason allows for arbitrary, discrete units. The first method of history consists in taking an arbitrary series of continuous events and examining it separately from others, whereas there is not and cannot be a beginning tq any event, but one event always continuously follows another. The second method consists in examining the actions of one person, a king, a commander as the sum of individual wills, whereas the sum of individual wills is neve, expressed in the activity of one historical person.
Historical science in its movement always takes ever smaller units for examination, and in this way strives to approach the truth. But however small the units that history takes, we feel that allowing for a unit that is separate from another, allowing for the beginning of some phenomenon, and allowing for the notion that all individual wills are expressed in the actions of one historical person, is false in itself.
Any conclusion of historical science, without the least effort on the part of criticism, falls apart like dust, leaving nothing behind, only as a result of the fact that criticism selects as an object for observation a larger or smaller discrete unit, which it always has the right to do, because any chosen historical unit is always arbitrary.
Only by admitting an infinitesimal unit for observation—a differential of history, that is, the uniform strivings of people—and attaining to the art of integrating them (taking the sums of these infinitesimal quantities) can we hope to comprehend the laws of history.
The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an extraordinary movement of millions of people. People abandon their usual occupations, rush from one side of Europe to the other, plunder, kill each other, triumph and despair, and the whole course of life is altered for several years and presents an intense movement, which initially increases, then weakens. Human reason asks, what was the cause of this movement, or according to what laws did it occur?
Historians, in answer to this question, lay before us the deeds and speeches of several dozen men in one of the buildings in the city of Paris, calling these deeds and speeches by the name of revolution; then they give a detailed biography of Napoleon and of some persons sympathetic or hostile to him, tell of the influence of some of these persons on others, and say: here is the origin of this movement, and here are its laws.
But human reason not only refuses to believe in this explanation, but says straight out that this method of explaining is incorrect, because in this explanation a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger one. The sum of individual human wills produced the revolution and Napoleon, and only the yum of those wills endured them and then destroyed them.
“But every time there were conquests, there were conquerors; every time there were upheavals in the state, there were great men,” says history. Indeed, each time conquerors appeared, there were wars, human reason replies, but that does not prove that the conquerors were the cause of the wars, and that if is possible to find the laws of war in the personal activity of one man. Every ime I look at my watch and see the hand approaching ten, I hear the bells start o ring in the neighboring church, yet from the fact that the bells start to ring gvery time the hand reaches ten, I have no right to conclude that the position of che hand is the cause of the movement of the bells.
Every time I see the movement of a locomotive, I hear a whistling sound, I see the opening of the valve and the movement of the wheels; but I have no ight to conclude from this that the whistling and the movement of the wheels are the cause of the movement of the locomotive.
Peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the leaf buds of the oak are sprouting, and indeed a cold wind blows every spring when the oak is sprouting. But though the cause of the cold wind that blows as the oak sprouts is unknown to me, I cannot agree with the peasants about the sprouting of the oak being the cause of the cold wind, if only because the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the leaf buds. I only see the coincidence of condiaons that occurs in every phenomenon of life, and I see that however long and thoroughly I observe the hand of my watch, the valve and wheels of the locomotive, and the leaf buds, I will not learn the cause of the bells ringing, the movement of the train, and the spring wind. For that I must change my point of observation completely, and study the laws of the movement of steam, bells, and the wind. Historical science must do the same. And attempts at it have already been made.
To study the laws of history, we must change completely the object of observation, leave kings, ministers, and generals alone, and study the uniform, infinitesimal elements that govern the masses. No one can tell to what extent it is given to man to achieve in this way an understanding of the laws of history; but it is obvious that the possibility of grasping historical laws lies only on this path, and that on this path human reason has not yet made one millionth of those efforts the historians have made in describing the deeds of various kings, Commanders, and ministers, and in setting forth their reflections on the occasion of those deeds.
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The forces of rwo-and-ten European nations burst into Russia. The Russian irmy and populace retreat, avoiding a confrontation as far as Smolensk, and from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army, with an ever-increasing force of omentum, races on to Moscow, the goal of its movement. The force of its momentum increases as it nears its goal, just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it nears the earth. Behind are thousands of miles of famished, hostile country; ahead are a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier of Napoleon's army feels that, and the invasion pushes on of itself, by the mere force of its momentum.
In the Russian army, as it retreats, the spirit of hostility towards the enemy flares up more and more; as it falls back, it concentrates and increases. At Borodino a confrontation takes place. Neither army falls apart, but immedi. ately after the confrontation, the Russian army retreats of necessity, just as a ball rebounds of necessity after colliding with another ball coming towards ix at a greater speed; and also of necessity (though losing all its force in the collision) the swiftly rolling ball of the invasion rolls on for a certain distance.
The Russians retreat another eighty miles beyond Moscow; the French reach Moscow and stop there. During the five weeks after that, there is not a single battle. The French do not move. Like a mortally wounded beast, which, losing blood, licks its wounds, they remain in Moscow for five weeks without undertaking anything, and suddenly, with no new cause, flee back: they rush down the Kaluga high road (and that after a victory, for the field remains theirs again after Maloyaroslavets), without entering a single serious battle, flee sll more quickly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond Vilno, beyond the Berezina, and further. .
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, both Kutuzov and the whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino had been won. Kutuzov wrote as much to the sovereign. Kutuzov ordered preparations for a new battle to finish off the enemy, not because he wanted to deceive anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was defeated, just as every participant in the battle knew it.
But that same evening and the next day, reports came in one after another about unheard-of losses, about the loss of half the army, and a new bartle turned out to be physically impossible.
It was impossible to offer battle when not all the information had been gathered, when the wounded had not been taken away, the charges had not been replenished, the dead had not been counted, new commanders had not been appointed to replace those killed, and the men had not had enough food or sleep.
And at the same time, immediately after the battle, the next morning, the French army (by that impetuous force of movement, now increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance) was of itself already making for the Russian army. Kutuzov had wanted to attack the next day, and the whole army had wanted it. But in order to attack, the wish to do so is not enough; what 1s needed is the possibility of doing so, and that possibility was not there. It was impossible not to retreat by one march, then it was just as impossible not to retreat by anothers, and by a third march, and finally, on the first of September, when the army got as far as Moscow, despite the strength of feeling that arose jn the ranks of the army, the force of things demanded that those troops go beyond Moscow. And the troops retreated by one last march and surrendered Moscow to the enemy.
For those people who are accustomed to think that the plans of wars and battles are drawn up by the commanders, just as each of us sitting in his study over a map makes reflections on how he would have disposed such and such battles, questions present themselves as to why Kutuzov, as he retreated, did not act thus and so, why did he not take up a position before Fili, why did he not retreat directly to the Kaluga road, why did he abandon Moscow, and so on. People who are accustomed to think that way forget or do not know those inevitable conditions in which the activity of every commander in chief always takes place. The activity-of a commander does not have the slightest resemblance to the activity we imagine to ourselves, sitting at ease m our study, analyzing some campaign on a map with a known number of troops on one side and the other, and on known terrain, and beginning our reflections from some certain moment. A commander in chief is never in those conditions of the beginning of some event, in which we always consider events. A commander in chief always finds himself in the middle of a shifting series of events, and in such a way that he is never able at any moment to ponder all the meaning of the ongoing event. Imperceptibly, moment by moment, an event is carved into its meaning, and at every moment of this consistent, ceaseless carving of the event, a commander in chief finds himself in the center of a most complex play of intrigues, cares, deperidency, power, projects, advice, threats, deceptions, finds himself constantly in the necessity of responding to the countless number of questions put to him, which always contradict each other.
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At that time when Russia was half conquered and the inhabitants of Moscow were fleeing to the distant provinces, and one popular militia after another was rising to the defense of the fatherland, we, who were not living at that time, involuntarily imagine that all Russian people, great and small, were taken up only with sacrificing themselves, saving the fatherland, or weeping over its loss. The stories and descriptions of that time all speak without exception of selfsacrifice, love of the fatherland, despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. In reality, ic was not like that. It seems so to us only because all we see in the past is the general historical interest of the time, and we do not see all those personal, human interests that the peuflle of that time had. And yet reality the personal interests of the day are so much more significant than the general interests that as a result the general interests are never felt (or ever noticed a all). The majority of the people of that time paid no attention to the genera| course of things, but were guided only by the personal interests of the day. And those people were the most useful figures of that time.
Those, however, who tried to understand the general course of things and wanted to take part in it with self-sacrifice and heroism, were the most useless members of society; they saw everything inside out, and everything they did to be useful rurned out to be useless nonsense, like Pierre’s and Mamonov’s regiments, which looted Russian villages, like the lint that young ladies plucked and that never got to the wounded, and so on. Even those who were fond of being clever and expressing their feelings, when discussing the present situation of Russia, involuntarily gave their speeches the stamp either of pretense and falseness, or of useless condemnation and spite against the people, accusing them of something no one could be guilty of. in historical events what is most obvious is the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Only unconscious activity bears fruit, and a man who plays a role in a historical event never understands its significance. If he attempts to understand it, he is struck with fruitlessness.
The significance of the event that was then taking place in Russia was the less conspicuous the closer a man’s participation in it was. In Petersburg and in provincial towns far from Moscow, ladies and men in militia uniform wept over Russia and the capital and spoke of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army that was retreating beyond Moscow, there was almost no talk or thought of Moscow and, looking at it burning, no one swore revenge on the French, but they thought of the next pay day, of their next halt, of Matryoshka the suf fer, and the like...
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“It's that, it’s that . . .” Sonya said with a pale face and trembling lips. »
Natasha quietly closed the door and stepped to the window with Sonya, still not understanding what was being said to her.
“Do you remember,” Sonya said with a frightened and solemn face, “do you remember when I looked into the mirror for you . .. In Otradnoe, at Christmas... Do you remember what I saw? .. .”
“Yes, yes!” said Natasha, opening her eyes wide, vaguely recalling that Sonya had said something then about seeing Prince Andrei lying down.
“Do you remember?” Sonya went on. “I saw it then and told everybody, you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed,” she said, making a gesture with her raised finger at each detail, “and his eyes were closed, and he was covered precisely with a pink quilt, and his hands were folded,” Sonya said, becoming convinced, as she described the details she had just seen, that she bad seen those same details then. Then she had seen nothing, but had told that she saw whatever came into her head; but what she had invented then seemed to her as real as any other memory. What she had said then, that he had glanced at her and smiled, and was covered with something red, she remembered, but she was also firmly convinced that then, too, she had said and seen that he was covered with pink, precisely a pink quilt, and that his eyes were closed.
“Yes, yes, precisely pink,” said Natasha, who also now seemed to remember the mention of “pink,” and in this she saw the chief extraordinariness and mysteriousness of the prediction.
“But what does it mean?” Natasha asked thoughtfully.
“Ah, I don’t know, it’s all so extraordinary!” said Sonya, clutching her head.
A few minutes Later Prince Andrei rang, and Natasha went to his room; and Sonya, feeling an agitation and a tenderness she had rarely felt, stayed by the window, shinking over all the extraordinariness of what had happened.
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The totality of causes of phenomena is inaccessible to the human mind. But the need to seek causes has been put into the soul of man. And the human mind, without grasping in their countlessness and complexity the conditions of phenomena, of which each separately may appear as a cause, takes hold of the first, most comprehensible approximation and says: here is the cause. In historical events (where the subject of observation is the actions of people), the most primordial approximation appears as the will of the gods, then as the will of those people who stand in the most conspicuous historical place—the historical heroes. But we need only inquire into the essence of any historical event, that is, into the activity of the entire mass of people who took part in the event, to become convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not guide the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided. It would seem to make no difference whether we understand the meaning of historical events this way or that. But between a man who says that the people of the west went to the east because Napoleon wanted it, and the man who says that it happened because it had to happen, there is the same difference as between the people who maintained that the earth stood still and the planets moved around it and those who said that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew that there were laws governing its movement and that of the other planets. There are not and cannot be any causes of a historical event, except for the one cause of all causes. But there are laws that govern events, which are partly unknown, partly groped for by us. The discovery of these laws is possible only when we wholly give up looking for causes in the will of one man, just as discovering the laws of planetary movement became possible only when people gave up the notion that the earth stands still.
After the battle of Borodino, the occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its burning, historians recognize as the most important episode of the war of 1812. the movement of the Russian army from the Ryazan to the Kaluga road and towards the Tarutino camp—the so-called flanking march beyond Krasnaya Pakhra.' Historians ascribe the glory of this feat of genius to various persons and argue over whom it essentially belongs to.
