Briggs: Free will is an illusion. There are laws, and history must find them.
Translation:
XI.
History examines the manifestations of the freedom of a human in communication with the outside world and time and in addictions from reasons, i.e. defines these freedom laws of intelligence, and because of it history is only so much a science, in how much this freedom defines these laws.
For history the acknowledgement of the freedom of people as a force powerful in influencing historical events, i.e. not subordinate to laws, is the same as that for astronomy the acknowledgement of free force of movements in heavenly forces.
This acknowledgement destroys the opportunity of the existence of laws, i.e. which would be that or was knowledge. If exists though one free moving body, then does not exist anymore the laws of Kepler and Newton and does not exist anymore the presentation about the movement of heavenly bodies. If exists one free act of a human, then does not exist one historical law or any presentation about historical events.
For in history exists the lines of the movements of human will, one end which is hiding in the unknown, but at the other end which moves in space, in time and in addictions from reasons of consciousness of the freedom of people in the present.
The more bifurcating before our eyes is this field of movements, by that is obvious the laws of these movements. To catch and to determine these laws forms the task of history.
From that point of view, with which science is watching now on their subject, by that way by which it is going, looking for the causes of phenomena in the free will of people, the expression of laws for science is impossible, for as we would limit the freedom of people, as only we recognized it for a force not subject to laws, the existence of the law is impossible.
Only limiting this freedom to infinity, i.e. looking at it as an infinitely small magnitude, we are convinced in perfect inaccessibile reasons, and then, instead of finding reasons, history places its task in finding laws.
Finding these laws already a long time ago began, and those new tricks of thinking that should assimilate history itself, generating at the same time with self-destruction, to which, all splitting and splitting causes of phenomena, goes the old history.
By this way went all the sciences of humanity. Coming to the infinitely-small, mathematics, the most accurate of the sciences, leaves the process of crushing and begins the new process of the summation of the unknown and infinitely-early. Stepping back from the idea about reason, mathematics seeks out a law, i.e. properties, general to all the unknown and infinitely-little elements.
Although in a different form, but by that same way of thinking went other sciences. When Newton expressed the law of attraction, he did not say that the sun or land has the property to attract; he said that all bodies, from the largest to the slightest, has the property so to attract one another, i.e., leaving to the side the question about the reason of the movements of bodies, he expressed the property, common to all bodies, from the infinitely-great to the infinitely-early. That same does natural science: leaving the question about reason, they find laws. In this same way stands history. And if history has the subject of learning the movements of peoples and of humanity, but not the description of episodes of the life of people, then it should, removing the concept of reasons, look for laws, general to all equal and inextricably related between themselves infinitely-little elements of freedom.
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Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Historical laws cannot exist if there is a single free human act. The task of history is to "grasp and determine those laws". All science follows this, looking for laws rather than causes. "if history has for its subject of study the movements of peoples and of mankind, and not the description of episodes from people's lives, it should set aside the notion of causes and seek for the laws common to all the equal and inseparably bound together infinitely small elements of freedom."
Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):
(the Kepler and Newton laws are mentioned. Newton is talked about a little bit more.)
Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 5 in Bell. No break.
Gibian: Line break instead of chapter break.
Additional Notes:
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