Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly led by the yill of the Deity, modern history has set up either heroes, endowed with xtraordinary, superhuman powers, or simply men of the most varied haracteristics, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses. Instead f the old aim, the will of the Deity, that to the old historians seemed he end of the movements of peoples, such as the Gauls, the Greeks, and he Romans, modern history has advanced aims of its own—the welfare if the French, the German, or the English people, or its highest pitch of generalisation, the civilisation of all humanity, by which is usually meant he peoples inhabiting a small, northwestern corner of the great mother- :arth.
Modern history has rejected the faiths of the ancients, without putting my new conviction in their place; and the logic of the position has forced he historians, leaving behind them the rejected, divine right of kings tnd fate of the ancients, to come back by a different path to the same xiint again: to the recognition, that is (i), that peoples are led by in-
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dividual persons; and (2) that there is a certain goal towards whi humanity and the peoples constituting it are moving.
In all the works of the more modern historians, from Gibbon Buckle, in spite of their apparent differences and the apparent novel of their views, these two old inevitable positions lie at the basis of t argument.
In the first place the historian describes the conduct of separate persoi who, in his opinion, lead humanity (one regards as such only monarch military generals, and ministers of state; another includes besides, moi archs, orators, scientific men, reformers, philosophers, and poets). Se< ondly, the goal towards which humanity is being led is known to tl historian. To one this goal is the greatness of the Roman, or the Spanis! or the French state; for another, it is freedom, equality, a certain soi of civilisation in a little corner of the world called Europe.
In 1789 there was a ferment in Paris: it grew and spread, and foun expression in the movement of peoples from west to east. Several time that movement is made to the east, and comes into collision with a counter movement from east westwards. In the year 1812 it reaches its furthes limit, Moscow, and then, with a remarkable symmetry, the counter movement follows from east to west; drawing with it, like the firs movement, the peoples of Central Europe. The counter-movement reache the starting-point of the first movement—Paris—and subsides.
During this period of twenty years an immense number of fields an not tilled; houses are burned; trade changes its direction; millions 0 men grow poor and grow rich, and change their habitations; and million' of Christians, professing the law of love, murder one another.
What does all this mean? What did all this proceed from? What induced these people to burn houses and to murder their fellow-creatures? What were the causes of these events? What force compelled men to act in this fashion? These are the involuntary and most legitimate questions that, in all good faith, humanity puts to itself when it stumbles on memorials and traditions of that past age of restlessness.
To answer these questions the common-sense of humanity turns to the science of history, the object of which is the self-knowledge of nations and of humanity.
Had history retained the view of the ancients, it would have said: The Deity, to reward or to punish His people, gave Napoleon power, and guided his will for the attainment of His own divine ends. And that answer would have been complete and clear. One might believe or disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon. For one who believed in it, all the history of that period would have been comprehensible, and there would have been nothing contradictory in it.
But modern history cannot answer in that way. Science does not accept the view of the ancients as to the direct participation of the Deity in the affairs of mankind, and therefore must give other answers.
Modern history, in answer to these questions, says: ‘You want to
low what this movement means, what it arose from, and what force pduced these events? Listen.
