re, to which all general histories tend more and more
to approximate, are significant from the fact that after seriously
and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and political
doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to describe an
actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for instance, they
involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise of power--and
say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will. Speaking so,
the historians of culture involuntarily contradict themselves, and show
that the new force they have devised does not account for what happens
in history, and that history can only be explained by introducing a
power which they apparently do not recognize.

CHAPTER III

A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant says
the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because its
wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement lies in
the smoke which the wind carries away.

The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation. To
refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no devil,
or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is not the devil
but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as a result of the
contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong. But the man who
says that the movement of the wheels is the cause refutes himself, for
having once begun to analyze he ought to go on and explain further why
the wheels go round; and till he has reached the ultimate cause of the
movement of the locomotive in the pressure of steam in the boiler, he
has no right to stop in his search for the cause. The man who explains
the movement of the locomotive by the smoke that is carried back has
noticed that the wheels do not supply an explanation and has taken the
first sign that occurs to him and in his turn has offered that as an
explanation.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the locomotive is
that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.

The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples is that
of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the peoples.

Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of
different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement
observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the
peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a fo