the sum of the components, that is,
the interactions of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the
others, evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon
of millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That Chateaubriand,
Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to one another only
affected their mutual relations but does not account for the submission
of millions. And therefore to explain how from these relations of theirs
the submission of millions of people resulted--that is, how component
forces equal to one A gave a resultant equal to a thousand times A--the
historian is again obliged to fall back on power--the force he had
denied--and to recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he
has to admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is
just what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only
contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.

Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to
whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the clouds
away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the same way the
universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with
their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes,
when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.

A third class of historians--the so-called historians of
culture--following the path laid down by the universal historians who
sometimes accept writers and ladies as forces producing events--again
take that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is
called culture--in mental activity.

The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their
progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical
events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one
another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that
such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of
indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these historians select
the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is
the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove that the cause of events
lies in intellectual activity, only by a great stretch can one admit
that there is any connection between intellectual activity and the
movement of peoples, and in no case can one admit that intellectual
activity co