History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly, the life of humanity or even of a single nation appears impossible. The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe and seize the apparently elusive—the life of a people. They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the whole nation. The question, how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided?
