ntrols people's actions, for that view is not confirmed by
such facts as the very cruel murders of the French Revolution resulting
from the doctrine of the equality of man, or the very cruel wars and
executions resulting from the preaching of love.

But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments with
which these histories are filled--admitting that nations are governed by
some undefined force called an idea--history's essential question still
remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs and to the
influence of advisers and other people introduced by the universal
historians, another, newer force--the idea--is added, the connection of
which with the masses needs explanation. It is possible to understand
that Napoleon had power and so events occurred; with some effort one may
even conceive that Napoleon together with other influences was the cause
of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat social, had the effect of making
Frenchmen begin to drown one another cannot be understood without an
explanation of the causal nexus of this new force with the event.

Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live contemporaneously,
and so it is possible to find some connection between the intellectual
activity of men and their historical movements, just as such a
connection may be found between the movements of humanity and commerce,
handicraft, gardening, or anything else you please. But why intellectual
activity is considered by the historians of culture to be the cause or
expression of the whole historical movement is hard to understand.
Only the following considerations can have led the historians to such
a conclusion: (1) that history is written by learned men, and so it is
natural and agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class
supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a similar
belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists, and soldiers
(if they do not express it, that is merely because traders and soldiers
do not write history), and (2) that spiritual activity, enlightenment,
civilization, culture, ideas, are all indistinct, indefinite conceptions
under whose banner it is very easy to use words having a still less
definite meaning, and which can therefore be readily introduced into any
theory.

But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this kind
(which may possibly even be of use to someone for something) the
histories of cultu