ut nobody is deceived by
tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle. As gold is
gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange but also for use,
so universal historians will be valuable only when they can reply to
history's essential question: what is power? The universal historians
give contradictory replies to that question, while the historians of
culture evade it and answer something quite different. And as counters
of imitation gold can be used only among a group of people who agree to
accept them as gold, or among those who do not know the nature of
gold, so universal historians and historians of culture, not answering
humanity's essential question, serve as currency for some purposes of
their own, only in universities and among the mass of readers who have a
taste for what they call "serious reading."

CHAPTER IV

Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine
subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the subjection
of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without contradictions
take a single step till it has chosen one of two things: either a return
to the former belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in human
affairs or a definite explanation of the meaning of the force producing
historical events and termed "power."

A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been destroyed; and
so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.

Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so
accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the question:
why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon uttered
certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and so what he
ordered was done.

This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was given
him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes essential to
determine what is this power of one man over others.

It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak
one--a domination based on the application or threat of physical force,
like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect of moral
force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say that the
leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted with a
special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power cannot be
based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to mention heroes
such as Napoleon about