Page 2282 - war-and-peace

concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs
of humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be in-
dubitably the doing of all the known participants, but with
a more remote event we already see its inevitable results
which prevent our considering anything else possible. And
the farther we go back in examining events the less arbi-
trary do they appear.
The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the
result of the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Na-
poleonic wars still seem to us, though already questionably,
to be the outcome of their heroes’ will. But in the Crusades
we already see an event occupying its definite place in his-
tory and without which we cannot imagine the modern
history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the Crusades
that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain peo-
ple. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not
enter anyone’s head today to suppose that the renovation of
the European world depended on Attila’s caprice. The far-
ther back in history the object of our observation lies, the
more doubtful does the free will of those concerned in the
event become and the more manifest the law of inevitabil-
ity.
The third consideration is the degree to which we appre-
hend that endless chain of causation inevitably demanded
by reason, in which each phenomenon comprehended, and
therefore man’s every action, must have its definite place as
a result of what has gone before and as a cause of what will
follow.
The better we are acquainted with the physiological, psy-

2282 War and Peace