War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a menace than to strike the running animal on the head.

When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone—to the other side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible than this side of life where everything was either emptiness and desolation, or suffering and indignity.

In 1812 and 1813 Kutúzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutúzov was a cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at Krásnoe and the Berëzina he deprived the Russian army of the glory of complete victory over the French.132 Such is the fate, not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals, who discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punishes such men for discerning the higher laws. For Russian historians, strange and terrible

But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim towards which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodinó, from which time his disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle of Borodinó was a victory and repeated this both verbally and in his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s proposal of peace, he said: there can be no peace, for such is the people’s will. He alone during the retreat of the French said that all our manoeuvres are useless, everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could desire, that the enemy must be offered “a golden bridge”; that neither the Tarútino, the Vyázma, nor the Krásnoe battles were necessary, that we must keep some force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten Frenchmen.

“But it’s strange, friends,” continued the man who had wondered at their whiteness, “the peasants at Mozháysk were saying that when they began burying the dead—where the battle was you know—well, those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and, says the peasant, ‘they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a puff of powder smoke.’” “Was it from the cold?” asked someone. “You’re a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. ‘But,’ he says, ‘go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,’ he says, ‘we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,’ he says, ‘are white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.’” All were silent.

The war of 1812, besides its national significance dear to every Russian heart, was to assume another, a European, significance. The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing from of Kutúzov and moved by different motives. Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutúzov had been for the salvation and glory of Russia. Kutúzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or Napoleon, meant. He could not understand it. For the representative of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the representative of the national war but to die, and Kutúzov died.

The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he had continually sought to find—the aim of life—no longer existed for him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared temporarily; he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at this time. He could not see an aim, for he now had faith—not faith in any kind of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God, and suddenly in his captivity he had learnt, not by words or reasoning but by direct feeling, what his nurse had told him long ago: that God is here and everywhere.

They had evidently both formed the same resolution, the eyes of both shone with satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy. “Do you take vodka, Count?” asked Princess Mary, and those words suddenly banished the shadows of the past.

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness.

This assumption is all the more natural and inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that every year, and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind changes, so that what once seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice versa.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.

If we assume as the historians do, that great men lead humanity to the attainment of certain ends—the greatness of Russia or of France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the Revolution, general progress, or anything else—then it is impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the conceptions of chance and genius.

To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a special enclosure to feed, and that becomes twice as fat as the others, must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every evening gets into a special enclosure where there are oats—this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.

Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of historic characters, and perceive the cause of the effect they produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities) and then the words chance and genius become superfluous.

In Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost unarmed inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially their leader, assure themselves that this is admirable, this is glory—it resembles Caesar and Alexander the Great, and is therefore good. This ideal of glory and grandeur—which consists not merely in considering nothing wrong that one does, but in priding oneself on every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural significance—that ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates had scope for its development in Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash, uncalled-for and ignoble departure from Africa, leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again the enemy’s fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the dissolution of the Republican government, which a year earlier might have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there now, as a newcomer free from party entanglements, can only serve to exalt him—and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for his new role.

And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as long as an unseen hand directed his actions. The manager, having brought the drama to a close and stripped the actor, shows him to us. “See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was not he, but I, who moved you?” But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people understood this.

Alexander I—the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early years had striven only for his people’s welfare, the originator of the liberal innovations in his Fatherland—now that he seemed to possess the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing about the welfare of his peoples—at the time when Napoleon in exile was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made mankind happy had he retained power—Alexander I, having fulfilled his mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognises the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying only: “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name! . . . I too am a man like the rest of you. Let me live like a man, and think of my soul and of God.”

“I can’t understand how it is you don’t see the charm of these delicious marvels.” “I don’t and can’t,” replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. “A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!” “And yet he’s such an affectionate father,” said Countess Mary, vindicating her husband, “but only after they are a year old or so .

The question, how did individuals make nations act as they wished and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the ancients met by recognising a Divinity which subjected the nations to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so as to accomplish ends that were predestined.

At the end of the XVIIIth century there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He conquered everybody everywhere—that is, he killed many people because he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarrelled and again began killing many people.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: What is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history labouriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books. All that may be so, and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of all, absolutely all, those who take part in an event, it is quite impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception of a force compelling men to direct their activity towards a certain end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of power.

Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it, that the question why six hundred thousand men went to fight when Napoleon uttered certain words seems to us senseless. He had the power and so what he ordered was done. This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes essential to determine what is this power one man had over others. It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak one—a domination based on the application or threat of physical force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think, who say that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength for, not to mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a Metternich who ruled over millions of people, had any particular moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker than any of the millions they ruled over. If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for elsewhere—in the relations of the man who wields the power to the people.

Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.

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, freewill cannot exist, for man’s will would be subject to that law.

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 the 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 the question for ethics. Man in connexion with the general life of humanity appears subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from that connexion appears to be 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 the question for history.

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 defenceless 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.

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.

All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of freewill 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.

History examines the manifestations of man’s freewill in connexion 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 freewill is defined by those laws.

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognise a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognise a dependence of which we are not conscious.