War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [735]
But the sheep need only stop thinking that everything that happens to them occurs only to achieve their sheep purposes; they need only allow that what happens to them may have purposes incomprehensible to them—and they will immediately see the unity, the consistency in what happens to a fattened-up sheep. Even if they do not know the purpose for which he is being fattened up, they will at least know that all that happened to the sheep did not happen by chance, and they will no longer need the notions of chance or of genius.
Only by renouncing the knowledge of an immediate, comprehensible purpose and admitting that the final purpose is inaccessible to us, will we see the consistency and expediency in the life of historical figures; the cause will be revealed to us of that effect incommensurate with common human qualities which they produce, and we will not need the words chance and genius.
We need only admit that the purpose of the upheavals of the European peoples is unknown to us, while we know only facts, which consist in murders, first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain, in Russia, and that the movements from west to east and from east to west constitute the essence and purpose of these events, and not only will we not need to see anything exceptional and marked by genius in the characters of Napoleon and Alexander, but it will be impossible for us to picture these figures otherwise than as the same people as all the rest; and not only will we no longer need to explain by chance those small events that made these men what they were, but it will be clear that all those small events were necessary.
In renouncing knowledge of the final purpose, we will clearly understand that, just as it is impossible to invent for any plant a flower and seed that correspond to it more than those it produces, so it is impossible to invent two other persons, with all their past, who would correspond to such a degree, in such minute detail, to the purpose they were meant to fulfill.
III
The fundamental, essential meaning of the European events of the beginning of the present century is the military movement of masses of European peoples from west to east and then from east to west. The initial movement was from west to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to perform that military movement to Moscow which they did perform, it was necessary (1) that they form a military group of such size as to be able to withstand a clash with the military group of the east; (2) that they renounce all established traditions and customs; and (3) that, in performing their military movement, they have at their head a man who could justify both to himself and to them the deceptions, robberies, and murders which were to be performed and which accompanied that movement.
And starting with the French revolution, the old, insufficiently large group is destroyed; old customs and traditions are obliterated; step by step a group of a new size is produced, along with new customs and traditions, and that man is prepared who is to stand at the head of the future movement and bear upon himself all the responsibility for what is to be performed.
A man without convictions, without customs, without traditions, without a name, not even a Frenchman, seemingly by the strangest chances, moves among all the parties stirring up France, and, without attaching himself to any of them, is borne up to a conspicuous place.
The ignorance of his associates, the weakness and insignificance of his opponents, the sincerity of his lies, and the brilliant and self-confident limitedness of this man move him to the head of the army. A brilliant complement of soldiers from the Italian army, the reluctance