War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [778]
If Napoleon, throughout his reign, keeps giving orders about the expedition to England, expends more effort and time on it than on any other of his undertakings, and, despite that, throughout his reign, never once attempts to carry out his intention, but makes an expedition to Russia, with which, by his more than once expressed conviction, he considers it more advantageous to be in alliance, this happens because the first series of orders did not correspond to a series of events and the second series of orders did.
To be certain that an order will be carried out, one must give such orders as can be carried out. But to know what can and cannot be carried out is impossible, not only for Napoleon’s campaign in Russia, in which millions take part, but even for the most uncomplicated event, because the carrying out of the one and the other can always meet with millions of obstacles. Each order carried out is always one of a great many that are not carried out. All the impossible orders are not connected with the event and are not carried out. Only those that are possible are connected in a consecutive series of orders that correspond to a series of events and are carried out.
Our false notion that the order that precedes an event is the cause of the event comes from the fact that, once an event has taken place and out of thousands of orders only those connected with the event were carried out, we forget about those that were not, because they could not be carried out. Besides, the chief source of our error in this sense comes from the fact that, in a historical account, a whole series of countless, diverse, minuscule events, such as all that brought French troops to Russia, is generalized into one event, according to the result this series of events produced, and in correspondence with this generalization, the whole series of orders is also generalized into one expression of will.
We say: Napoleon wanted to and did campaign against Russia. In reality, we will never find in all the activity of Napoleon anything resembling the expression of such a will, but we will see the series of orders or expressions of his will directed in the most diverse and indefinite way. Out of a countless series of Napoleon’s orders that were not carried out, the series of orders carried out for the campaign of the year twelve composed itself, not because those orders were in any way different from the others that were not carried out, but because the series of those orders corresponded to the series of events that brought French troops to Russia; just as in stenciling, some figure or other gets painted, not depending on the direction or manner in which the paint is applied, but because the figure cut out of the stencil is smeared in all directions with paint.
So that, considering the relation of orders to events in time, we will find that orders can in no way be the cause of events, but that there exists a certain dependence between the one and the other.
To understand what this dependence is, it is necessary to restore another omitted condition of any order proceeding not from a divinity, but from a man, which consists in the fact that the man who orders participates in the event himself.
This relation of the one who orders to those whom he orders is precisely what is called power. This relation consists in the following:
For common activity people always form themselves into certain units within which, despite the variety of purposes set for the joint action, the relation among the people participating in the activity is always the same.
In forming these units, people always arrive at such relations among themselves that the largest number of people take the largest direct part and the smallest number of people the smallest direct part in the joint action for