War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [795]
This passage, taken separately, strikes one by its deafening, one cannot say immorality, but sheer meaninglessness; but within the book as a whole it does not strike one, because it corresponds perfectly to the high-flown, solemn tone, lacking in any direct meaning, of its overall style.
And so the tasks of the artist and the historian are completely different, and the disagreements with historians in the description of events and figures in my book should not strike the reader.
But the artist should not forget that the notion of historical figures and events formed among people is based not on fantasy, but on historical documents, insofar as historians have been able to amass them; and therefore, while understanding and presenting these figures and events differently, the artist ought to be guided, like the historian, by historical materials. Wherever in my novel historical figures speak and act, I have not invented, but have made use of the materials, of which, during my work, I have formed a whole library, the titles of which I find it unnecessary to set down here, but for which I can always give the reference.
(6) Finally, the sixth and for me the most important consideration concerns the small significance which, to my mind, so-called great men have in historical events.
In studying an epoch so tragic, so rich in the enormity of its events, and so near to us, of which such a variety of traditions still live, I arrived at the obviousness of the fact that the causes of the historical events that take place are inaccessible to our intelligence. To say (which seems quite simple to everyone) that the causes of the events of the year twelve are the conquering spirit of Napoleon and the patriotic firmness of the emperor Alexander Pavlovich, is as meaningless as to say that the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire are that such-and-such barbarian led his people to the west, and such-and-such Roman emperor ruled his people badly, or that an immense mountain that was being leveled came down because the last workman drove his spade into it.
Such an event, in which millions of men set about killing each other and killed half a million, cannot have the will of one man as its cause: just as one man alone could not undermine a mountain, so one man cannot make five hundred thousand die. But what then were the causes? Some historians say that the cause was the conquering spirit of the French, the patriotism of Russia. Others speak of the democratic element that Napoleon’s host spread about, and of the necessity for Russia to enter into relations with Europe, and so on. But how is it that millions of men set about killing each other? Who ordered them to do it? It seems clear to everyone that no one would be the better for it, but all would be the worse; why then did they do it? A countless number of retrospective conjectures can be made and are being made about the causes of this senseless event; but the enormous number of these explanations and their convergence on one goal only proves that there is a countless multitude of these causes and that none of them can be called the cause.
Why did millions of men set about killing each other, if it has been known ever since the world began that it is both physically and morally bad?
Because it was so inevitably necessary that, in fulfilling it, men were fulfilling that elementary zoological law which the bees fulfill by exterminating each other in the fall, and according to which male animals exterminate each other. No other answer can be given to this terrible question.
This truth is not only obvious, but is so innate in every man that it would not be worth proving, if there were not another feeling and consciousness in man, which convinces him that he is free at every moment as he performs some action.
Examining history from a general point of view, we are unquestionably convinced of the pre-eternal law according to which events take place. Looking from a personal point of view, we