War and Peace
by
Leo Tolstoy
Part 34 out of 34
differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they
coincided with the course of events that led the French army into
Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not
because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but
because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the
stencil.
So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the
events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event,
but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two.
To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not
from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the
command himself takes part in
This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what
is called power. This relation consists in the following:
For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in
which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common
action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the
same.
Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations
toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,
and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action
for which they have combined.
Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one
of the most striking and definite examples is an army.
Every army is composed of lower grades of the service- the rank
and file- of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next
higher military rank- corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom
there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are
still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is
concentrated in one person.
A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,
of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and
file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of
the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point
of which will represent the commander in chief.
The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section
of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,
hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for
these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The
noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the
action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give
commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but
commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the
troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon
himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the
action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement
of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another
is seen in every combination of men for common activity- in
agriculture, trade, and every administration.
And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to
the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,
combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in
performing the action the less they can command and the more
numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there
are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,
who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his
activity chiefly to commanding.
This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.
Having restored the condition of time under which all events
occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
directed to commanding.
CHAPTER VII
When an event is taking place people express their opinions and
wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity
of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure
to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions
expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event
as a command preceding it.
Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to
how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens
that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have
command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most
with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or
reflect on or command what would result from the common activity;
while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his
hands on account of his greater verbal activity.
When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a
common aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their
activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part
in the direct work.
When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections
which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his
present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just
the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not
take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,
justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.
For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and
kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification
appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare
of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one
another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the
necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and
so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,
and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,
the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these
justifications of the events have no common sense and are all
contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of
recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for
the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very
necessary significance in their own day.
These justifications release those who produce the events from moral
responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front
of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they
clear men's moral responsibilities from their path.
Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest
question that presents itself when examining each historical event.
How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes- make war,
commit murder, and so on?
With the present complex forms of political and social life in
Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by
monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is
there any collective action which cannot find its justification in
political unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in
civilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides
with some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presents
itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.
In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts
will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship
the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.
Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that
flow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince
ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement
of the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that we
ourselves were imperceptibly moving.
We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of
historical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable
condition of all that occurs- the continuity of movement in time)
and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historical
persons with the masses.
When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same
wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also
turns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the
wave anticipating its movement.
Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen
and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither
directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a
distance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the
ship's movement also.
Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons
which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed
that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events
themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to
the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on
events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however
many commands were issued, the event does not take place unless
there are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs- be it
what it may- then out of all the continually expressed wishes of
different people some will always be found which by their meaning
and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.
Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively
to these two essential questions of history:
(1) What is power?
(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?
(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in
which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and
justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is
his participation in that action.
(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by
intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as
historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who
participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that
those taking the largest direct share in the event take on
themselves the least responsibility and vice versa.
Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;
physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral
activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event
is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.
Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to
the phenomena we are examining.
In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity- that final
limit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it
is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat
produces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one
another.
Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we
cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is
inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law.
The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we
do not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,
people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and
we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in
other words that it is a law.
CHAPTER VIII
If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment
of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have
finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A
particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of
attraction or repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is
the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not
subject to the law.
The presence of the problem of man's free will, though
unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.
All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered
this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and
the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the
lack of a solution of that question.
If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act
as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected
incidents.
If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely,
that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that
man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy
the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of
humanity.
If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will
cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.
In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most
ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most
ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.
The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from
whatever point of view- theological, historical, ethical, or
philosophic- we find a general law of necessity to which he (like
all that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves
as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.
This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from
and independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself,
but only through consciousness does he know himself.
Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of
reason is conceivable.
To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of
all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of
himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is
conscious of his volition. But his will- which forms the essence of
his life- man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.
If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed
by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking
food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this
never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation
of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to
him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as
free.
You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let
it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an
irrefutable demonstration of freedom.
That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not
subject to reason.
If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and
independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to
reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not
exist and is inconceivable.
A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he,
as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man
submits to them and never resists the laws of gravity or
impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same
series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete
freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that
his every action depends on his organization, his character, and the
motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the deductions of
these experiments and arguments. Having learned from experiment and
argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this
and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled.
But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws,
he does not and cannot believe this.
However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the
same conditions and with the same character he will do the same
thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the
same character he approaches for the thousandth time the action that
always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before
the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or
sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him
that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in
precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational
conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot
imagine life. He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so,
for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable
to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single
moment.
He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to
life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame
and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness,
health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion
and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of
freedom.
A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of
life.
If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless
contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one
and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that
only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.
This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,
uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and
felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which
no conception of man is possible constitutes the other side of the
question.
Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing
God. What is sin, the conception of which arises from the
consciousness of man's freedom? That is a question for theology.
The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed
in statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception
of which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question
for jurisprudence.
Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives
acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and
wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom?
That is a question for ethics.
Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears
subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from
that connection appears to free. How should the past life of nations
and of humanity be regarded- as the result of the free, or as the
result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for
history.
Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge-
thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of
printed matter- has the question of the freedom of will been put on
a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the
majority of so-called advanced people- that is, the crowd of
ignoramuses- have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with
one side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.
They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,
for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular
movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul
and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we
sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that
thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such
ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative
zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the
thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role
of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an
instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact
that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are
merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law
may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of
time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands
of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories- that
from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of
necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of
the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the
consciousness of freedom.
If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is
as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at
a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is
the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of
how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of
necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative
physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can
observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe
consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.
The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this
question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls
of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief
superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over
the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should
be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything
is now so smooth and regular.
CHAPTER IX
For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability,
history has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which
the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not
refer to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the
past and under certain conditions.
In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences
as experimental science stands to abstract science.
The subject for history is not man's will itself but our
presentation of it.
And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the
incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it
does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a
presentation of man's life in which the union of these two
contradictions has already taken place.
In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very
clearly and definitely understood without any sense of
contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly free
and partly compulsory.
To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined
and what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the
philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that
taken by other sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions
of freedom and inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the
phenomena of life under those definitions, history should deduce a
definition of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves
from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and
that always appear dependent on these two elements.
Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an
individual we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly
of man's free will and partly of the law of inevitability.
Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the
incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of
someone's action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of
several for his walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The
degree of freedom and inevitability governing the actions of these
people is clearly defined for us.
Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to
differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but
every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom
and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure
of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more
freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive,
and the more inevitability the less freedom.
The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases
according to the point of view from which the action is regarded,
but their relation is always one of inverse proportion.
A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry
mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man
trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a
defenseless man- seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject
to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which
these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know
that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that
the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed
a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly
in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of
inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty
years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was
committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated,
or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who
knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and
seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In
all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished
and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or
increased, according to the point of view from which the action is
regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the
smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.
Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,
and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity
and freedom.
All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and
necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:
(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the
deeds.
(2) His relation to time.
(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.
The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the
man's relation to the external world and the greater or lesser
clearness of our understanding of the definite position occupied by
the man in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what
makes it evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject
to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the
actions of a man closely connected with others in a thickly
populated district, or of one bound by family, official, or business
duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity than
those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.
If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything
around him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his
relation to anything around him, if we see his connection with
anything whatever- with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads,
the work on which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or
the light that falls on the things about him- we see that each of
these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some
side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the
more our conception of his freedom diminishes and the more our
conception of the necessity that weighs on him increases.
The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation
of the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the
place the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which
makes the fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the
human race, appear evidently less free than a man's entry into
marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity of people
who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot
seem to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences
of which are still unknown to me.
The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends
in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the
performance of the action and our judgment of it.
If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the
same circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me
undoubtedly free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago,
then being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing
that if that act had not been committed much that resulted from it-
good, agreeable, and even essential- would not have taken place. If
I reflect on an action still more remote, ten years ago or more,
then the consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I
find it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not
been performed. The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same
thing the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful
becomes my belief in the freedom of my action.
In history we find a very similar progress of conviction
concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs of
humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing
of all the known participants, but with a more remote event we already
see its inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else
possible. And the farther we go back in examining events the less
arbitrary do they appear.
The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of
the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still
seem to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their
heroes' will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying
its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine
the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the
Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain
people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not enter
anyone's head today to suppose that the renovation of the European
world depended on Attila's caprice. The farther back in history the
object of our observation lies, the more doubtful does the free will
of those concerned in the event become and the more manifest the law
of inevitability.
The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that
endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which
each phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must
have its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a
cause of what will follow.
The better we are acquainted with the physiological,
psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation and by which
man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the
physiological, psychological, and historical causes of the action, and
the simpler the action we are observing and the less complex the
character and mind of the man in question, the more subject to
inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of others
appear.
When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a
crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we
ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we
most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of
a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case
we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and
independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act
is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are
less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of
the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently
original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors
mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or
mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more
comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems
less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The
founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when
we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we
have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly
directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's
actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less
free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If
we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under
observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still
greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the
misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's
relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less
free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we
are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a
child, a madman, or a simpleton- then, knowing the causes of the act
and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we
see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as
soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the
result.
On these three considerations alone is based the conception of
irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted
by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less
according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in
which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according
to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of
the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or
lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.
CHAPTER X
Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually
diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser
connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness
of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in
relation to which we contemplate a man's life.
So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the
external world is well known, where the time between the action and
its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are
most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability
and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on
external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the
causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of
a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.
In neither case- however we may change our point of view, however
plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and
the external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long
or short the period of time, however intelligible or
incomprehensible the causes of the action may be- can we ever conceive
either complete freedom or complete necessity.
(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the
influence of the external world, we never get a conception of
freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what
surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My
action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my
arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in
which there was least obstruction to that action either from things
around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out
of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest
obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should
encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must
imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.
(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time
of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I
examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it
as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which
it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself:
could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has
already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next
moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first
moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not
detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now
refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same
that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made
is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and
whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my
arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from
lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that
single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it
as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary
between the past and the future- that is, outside time, which is
impossible.
(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be
increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,
an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of
the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the
first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause,
for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to
perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform
an action without a cause is the cause of my action.
But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,
examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any
cause- we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of
inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at
the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by
the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,
is no longer a man.
In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite
devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.
(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space
in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for
the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of
space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men
are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain
measure of freedom remains.
(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action
we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite,
while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never
be absolute inevitability.
(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any
action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and
so again we never reach absolute inevitability.
But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of
freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case- as for
instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot- complete
absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very
conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there
is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the
action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any
element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a
man's completely free action.
And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of
inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of
an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of
time, and an infinite series of causes.
To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of
inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond
time, and free from dependence on cause.
In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we
should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of
inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.
In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability
we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time,
and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and
unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.
We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's
whole outlook on the universe is constructed- the incomprehensible
essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.
Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it
visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time
is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable
otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no
beginning and can have no end.
Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,
consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the
fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as
living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I
feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.
Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.
Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.
Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's
consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its
three forms.
Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.
Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.
Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one
another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and
separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.
Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.
Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define
one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.
All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation
of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws
of reason.
All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain
relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence
of life to the laws of reason.
The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious
of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,
animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life
in man and we call that freedom.
But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but
felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which
we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the
first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so
too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which
everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know
the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that
every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and
historic laws).
All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the
laws of reason.
Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is
directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way
differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,
electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one
another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the
force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other
forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,
apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that
define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force
that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable
sensation of life.
And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly
bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,
or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of
astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the
same way does the force of free will form the content of history.
But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of
this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the
subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free
will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause
forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of
metaphysics.
In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of
inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital
force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above
what we know of the essence of life.
So also in history what is known to us we call laws of
inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for
history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know
about the laws of human life.
CHAPTER XI
History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection
with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is,
it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a
science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.
The recognition of man's free will as something capable of
influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the
same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the
heavenly bodies would be for astronomy.
That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of
laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body
moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no
conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists.
If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical
law can exist, nor any conception of historical events.
For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end
of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a
consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and
dependence on cause.
The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the
more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define
those laws is the problem of history.
From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards
its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events
in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is
impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon
as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law
becomes impossible.
Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal,
that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we
convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes,
and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of
laws as its problem.
The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of
thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously
with the self-destruction toward which- ever dissecting and dissecting
the causes of phenomena- the old method of history is moving.
All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at
infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons
the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the
integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the
conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property
common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements.
In another form but along the same path of reflection the other
sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity
he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction;
he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the
property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the
question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed
the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the
infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving
aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the
same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement
of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in
the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of
cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably
interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.
CHAPTER XII
From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the
mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth
that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the
ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain
the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without
disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the
Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of
Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.
From the time the first person said and proved that the number of
births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this
or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and
economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to
soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history
had been built were destroyed in their essence.
By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have
been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to
continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will.
For if a certain mode of government was established or certain
migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such
geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will
of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of
government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as
the cause.
And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with
the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative
philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.
The struggle between the old views and the new was long and
stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on
guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation.
But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly
on the new foundation.
Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding
between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the
same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of
subverting revelation.
In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes
passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret
for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the
other is the passion for destruction.
To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical
philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would
destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the
miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of
Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the
laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of
gravitation as a weapon against religion.
Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of
inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and
evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been
built up on those conceptions.
So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of
inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion,
though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus
in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation
on which the institutions of state and church are erected.
As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of
history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the
recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the
measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability
of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free
will.
As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the
earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's
fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the
difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of
space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the
independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new
view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the
earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while
by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,"
so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not
conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we
arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external
world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness
of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did
not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce
a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of
which we are not conscious.
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