| THE LIFE of nations is not contained in the life of a few men, since the connection between those few men and the nations has not been found. The theory that this connection is based on the delegation of the combined will of a people to its historical leaders is an hypothesis, not supported by the testimony of history. The theory of the delegation of the combined will of the masses to historical personages may perhaps explain a great deal in the domain of the science of law, and is possibly essential for its purposes. But in its application to history, as soon as revolutions, wars, civil disturbances arise, as soon as history begins in fact—this theory explains nothing. This theory appears irrefutable, just because the act of delegating the will of the people can never be verified, since it has never existed. Whatever event might take place, and whoever might be taking the lead in such an event, the theory can always say that such a person took the lead in bringing about that event because the combined will was vested in him. The answers given by this theory to historical questions are like the answers of a man who, watching the movements of a flock, should pay no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different parts of the field, nor to the actions of the shepherd, but should look for the causes of the flock taking this or that direction simply in the animal that happened to be foremost in it. ‘‘The flock moves in this direction because the animal in front leads it, and the combined will of all the other animals is delegated to the leader of the flock.’’ Such is the answer given by the first class of historians, who suppose an unconditional delegation of will to the authority. ‘‘If the animals leading the flock are changed for others, it is due to the fact that the combined will of all the beasts is transferred from one leader to another owing to the fact that the first leader did not follow the direction chosen by all the flock.’’ Such is the reply of those historians who assume that the combined will of the masses is vested in their rulers on conditions which they regard as unknown. (With this method of observation it very often happens that the observer, judging from the direction chosen by him, reckons as leaders those who, when the direction of the masses is changed, are not in front, but on one side, and even sometimes the hindmost.) ‘‘If the beasts that are foremost are constantly being changed, and the direction taken by the flock too is continually changing, that is due to the fact that to attain a certain direction known to us the beasts delegate their wills to those beasts which attract our attention, and to study the movements of the flock we ought to observe all the noticeable animals that are moving on all sides of the flock.’’ So say the third class of historians, who accept all historical characters as the expression of their age from monarchs to journalists. The theory of the transference of the will of the masses to historical characters is only a paraphrase—only a restatement of the question in other words. What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is Power? Power is the combined will of the masses vested in one person. On what conditions are the wills of the masses vested in one person? On condition of that person’s expressing the will of all men. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which is beyond our comprehension. If the domain of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning alone, then, after subjecting the explanation of power given by science to criticism, humanity would come to the conclusion that power is only a word, and that it has no existence in reality. But for the knowledge of phenomena, man has besides abstract reasoning another instrument—experience—by which he verifies the results of reasoning. And experience tells him that power is not merely a word, but an actually existing phenomenon. To say nothing of the fact that not a single account of the combined action of men can omit the conception of power, the reality of power is shown us, not only by history, but by observation of contemporary events. Whenever an event takes place, a man or men appear by whose will the event is conceived to have been accomplished. Napoleon III. gives an order, and the French go to Mexico. The Prussian King and Bismarck give certain orders, and troops go to Bohemia. Napoleon I. gives a command, and soldiers march into Russia. Alexander I. gives a command, and the French submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever takes place, it is always connected with the will of one or of several men, who decreed it should be so. Historians, from the old habit of recognising divine intervention in the affairs of humanity, are inclined to look for the cause of events in the exercise of the will of the person endowed with power; but this conclusion is not confirmed either by reason or by experience. On one side reason shows that the expression of the will of a man—his words, in fact, are only a part of the general activity expressed in an event, such as a revolution or a war, and therefore without the assumption of an incomprehensible, supernatural force—a miracle—it cannot be admitted that these words can be the immediate cause of the movements of millions of men. On the other side, even if one admits that words may be the cause of an event, history shows us that the expression of the will of historical personages in the great majority of cases does not lead to any effect at all—that is, that their commands are often not carried out, and, in fact, sometimes the very opposite of what they have commanded is done. Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity, we cannot accept power as a cause of events. Power, from the point of view of experience, is only the dependence existing between the expression of the will of a person and the carrying out of that will by others. To explain the conditions of that dependence, we have, first of all, to reinstate the conception of the expression of will, referring it to man, and not to the Deity. If the Deity gives a command, expresses His will, as the history of the ancients tell us, the expression of that will is independent of time, and is not called forth by anything, as the Deity is not connected with the event. But when we speak of commands that are the expression of the will of men, acting in time and connected with one another, we must, if we are to understand the connection of the command with the event, restore (1) the conditions of all the circumstances that took place, the dynamic continuity in time both of the event and of the person commanding it; and (2) the condition of the inevitable connection in which the person commanding stands with those who carry out his command. | 