f 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.

If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth
century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been
accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If
the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained
without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the aim was the
dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have accomplished that
much better than warfare. If the aim was the progress of civilization,
it is easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing civilization
more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.

Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?

Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius utilized
it," says history.

But what is chance? What is genius?

The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and
therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of
understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I
think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about
chance. I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary
human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of
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 goes into
a special enclosure where there are oats--that this very ram, swelling
with fat, is killed for meat.

But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to them
happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only
admit that what happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken,
and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened
to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not know for what purpose
they are fattened, they will at least know that all that happened to the
ram did not happen accidentally, and will no longer need the conceptions
of