Page 2259 - war-and-peace

Chapter VI

Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not depen-
dent on time, can relate to a whole series of events occurring
over a period of years or centuries, and only the Deity, in-
dependent of everything, can by His sole will determine the
direction of humanity’s movement; but man acts in time
and himself takes part in what occurs.
Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we
see that no command can be executed without some pre-
ceding order having been given rendering the execution of
the last command possible.
No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself cov-
ers a whole series of occurrences; but each command follows
from another, and never refers to a whole series of events
but always to one moment only of an event.
When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies
to go to war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a
whole series of consecutive commands dependent one on
another. Napoleon could not have commanded an invasion
of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered such and such
papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg;
tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army,
the fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so onmillions of
commands, which formed a whole series corresponding to a
series of events which brought the French armies into Rus-

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