[PREV - KUTUZOV]    [TOP]

DIFFERENTIAL_OF_HISTORY

                                                         WAR_AND_PEACE

Quoting from Tolstoy's
"War and Peace" (1865-1869):

                                                        Towards a science
                                                        of history...

     It needs no critical exertion to reduce
     utterly to dust any deductions drawn from
     history.  It is merely necessary to select
     some larger or smaller unit as the subject
     of observation -- as criticism has every
     right to do, seeing that whatever unit
     history observes must always be arbitrarily
     selected.

     Only by taking an infinitesimally small
     unit for observation (the differential of
     history, that is, the individual tendencies
     of men) and attaining to the art of
     integrating them (that is, finding the sum
     of these infinitesimals) can we hope to
     arrive at the laws of history.

       Book XI, Chapter I, p. 4 (WC)


     To study the laws of history we must
     completely change the subject of our
     observation, must leave aside kings,
     ministers, and generals, and study the
     common, infinitesimally small elements by
     which the masses are moved.  No one can say
     in how far it is possible for man to
     advance in this way towards an
     understanding of the laws of history; but
     it is evident that only along that path
     does the possibility of discovering the
     laws of history lie; and that as yet not a
     millionth part as much mental effort has
     been applied in this direction by
     historians as has been devoted to
     describing the actions of various kings ...

       Book XI, Chapter I, p. 6 (WC)



     A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the
     child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist
     to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from
     the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the
     fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee
     collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive,
     says that it exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper
     who has studied the life of the hive more closely says
     that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young
     bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to
     perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee
     flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil
     fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of
     the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration
     of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work,
     and may say that in this lies the purpose of the
     bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not
     exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the
     processes the human mind can discern. The higher the
     human intellect rises in the discovery of these
     purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the
     ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.

          First Epiloque, Chapter IV, p. 431 (WC, text here GP)

--------
[NEXT - TREED]