other road, that is, to recognize (1) nations guided
by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to which these
nations and humanity at large are tending.

At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon to
Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent novelty of
their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.

In the first place the historian describes the activity of individuals
who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian considers
only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men, while another
includes also orators, learned men, reformers, philosophers, and poets).
Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward which humanity is being led
is known to the historians: to one of them this goal is the greatness of
the Roman, Spanish, or French realm; to another it is liberty, equality,
and a certain kind of civilization of a small corner of the world called
Europe.

In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is expressed
by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it moves
eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east westward.
In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with remarkable
symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west, attracting to
it, as the first movement had done, the nations of middle Europe. The
counter movement reaches the starting point of the first movement in the
west--Paris--and subsides.

During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left
untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions
of men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions
of Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one
another.

What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people burn
houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these events?
What force made men act so? These are the instinctive, plain, and
most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it encounters the
monuments and tradition of that period.

For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns to the
science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity to know
themselves.

If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have
said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and
directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that reply,
would