War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [789]
But just as the force of gravity, unfathomable in itself but sensed by every man, is only comprehensible to us insofar as we know the law of necessity it is subject to (from the primitive knowledge that all bodies are heavy, to Newton’s law), so, too, the force of freedom, unfathomable in itself but of which each of us is conscious, is only comprehensible to us insofar as we know the laws of necessity which it is subject to (starting from the fact that every man dies and going as far as the knowledge of the most complex economic or historical laws).
Any knowledge is only the placing of the essence of life under the laws of reason.
Man’s freedom differs from any other force in that man is conscious of this force; but for reason it is no different from any other force. The forces of gravity, electricity, or chemical agents differ from each other only in that they are differently defined by reason. In the same way, for reason the force of man’s freedom differs from all other forces of nature only by the definition which that same reason gives it. Freedom without necessity, that is, without the laws of reason which define it, does not differ in any way from gravity, or heat, or vegetative force—for reason it is only a momentary, undefinable sensation of life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force that moves the heavenly bodies, the undefinable essence of the force of heat, electricity, or chemical agents, or the life force make up the content of astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, so the essence of the force of freedom makes up the content of history. But just as the subject of any science is the manifestation of this unknown essence of life, while the essence itself can only be the subject of metaphysics, so the manifestation of the force of men’s freedom in space, time, and dependence on causes, is the subject of history; freedom itself is the subject of metaphysics.
In experimental science, what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown to us we call the life force. The life force is only the expression of the unknown remainder of what we know about the essence of life.
It is the same with history: what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown—freedom. For history, freedom is only the expression of the unknown remainder of what we know about the laws of human life.
XI
History examines the manifestations of man’s freedom in connection with the external world in time and in dependence on causes, that is, it defines that freedom by the laws of reason, and therefore history is only a science insofar as that freedom is defined by those laws.
For history to recognize men’s freedom as a force capable of influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the same as for astronomy to recognize a free force moving the heavenly bodies.
That recognition destroys the possibility of the existence of laws, that is, of any knowledge whatever. If at least one freely moving body exists, then the laws of Kepler and Newton no longer exist, nor does any notion of the movement of the heavenly bodies. If there exists one free act of man, then not a single historical law exists or any notion of historical events.
For history there exist the lines of movement of human wills, one end of which vanishes into the unknown, but at the other end of which the consciousness of men’s freedom in the present moves in space, in time, and in dependence on causes.
The more this field of movement expands before our eyes, the more obvious are the laws of this movement. To grasp and determine those laws constitutes the task of history.
From the point of view from which historical science now looks at its subject, on the path it follows, seeking the causes of phenomena in the free will of men, it is impossible for it to express laws, for, however much we limit men’s freedom, as soon as we recognize it as a force not subject