Briggs: Causation is complex. Retrospective explanations are too convenient.
VII.
When is committed some event, people express their opinions about the willingness of the event, and so as the event follows from the aggregate action of many people, then one of the expressed opinions or desires are indispensably carried out, although about it. When one of the expressed opinions is executed, this opinion is bound in our mind with the event, as the previous to it order.
People drag a log. Everyone expresses their opinion about how and where to drag it. People drag out the log, and it turns out that this is done so, as said one of them. He ordered. Here order and power the primitive sees in him.
Those, who more worked with their hands, could less ponder that what he did, and consider that what may exit from general activities, and order. That, who more ordered, owing to their activities of words, obviously could act less with their hands. In the more bunches of people, directing the activity in one objective, still sharper separates the discharge of people that by that the less accepting direct participation in general activities, the more their activity is directed in ordering.
A person, when he acts alone, always carries himself in the known row of considerations, leading, as to him it seems, his past activity serves for him as a justification for his present activities and leads him in assumptions about his future acts.
Exactly that same do bunches of people, leaving by that which do not participate in actions, inventing considerations, excuses and assumptions about their aggregate of activities.
By famous or not famous to us reasons, the French began to drown and cut each other. And this event corresponds and accompanies his excuse in the expressed wills of people about that this is necessary for the good of France, for freedom, for equality. People stop cutting each other, and this event accompanies an excuse, consisting in the need of the unity of authorities, rebuffing Europe and etc. People go from west to east, killing the similar to themselves, and this event accompanies the words about the glory of France, the baseness of England and etc. History shows us that these excuses of events have no common sense, contradict themselves, as the killing of humans, owing to the recognition of their right, and the killing of a million in Russia for the humiliation of England. Yet these excuses in the modern sense have necessary matters.
These excuses take off moral liability from the people producing events. These temporary goals are similar to brushes, going for the cleansing of the way by the rails ahead of trains: they cleanse the way of the moral responsibility of people. Without these justifications could not be explained the most searched question, present in considering each event: in what way do millions of people commit the aggregate crimes, wars, killings and etc.?
In the present, complicated forms of state and public life in Europe, is it possible to figure out what would be an event, which would not be prescribed, pointed, ordered by sovereigns, ministers, parliaments, and newspapers? Is there some aggregate action, which would find in itself excuses in the state of unity, in nationality, in the balance of Europe, in civilizations? So that all the accomplished events inevitably match with some expressed desire and, received himself as an excuse, present as the composition of the commitment of one or several people.
Where would be directed the move of a ship, ahead of it will always be a visible stream cutting their waves. For people, being on the ship, the moving of this flow will be the only noticeable move.
Only keeping near, moment behind moment, behind the movement of this flow, and comparing this move with the movement of the ship, we are convinced that every moment the movements flow define the movement of the ship, and that we are introduced in the delusion that what we ourselves did not notice the moving.
That very same we see, keeping moment behind moment, behind the movement of historical persons (i.e. recovering the necessary condition of the only ongoing — the condition of the continuity of movements in time) and not omitting from view the necessary communication of the historical persons with the masses.
When a ship is going by one direction, then ahead of it is only that same stream; when it often changes direction, then often changes the running ahead of it flow. Yet where would it turn, everywhere will be a stream, previous to its movement.
What would be subjected, always manifests that this was very foreseen and ordered. Where would be directed a ship, a stream, not leading, not intensifying its movements, seethes ahead of it and will be issued to present us not only as arbitrarily moving, but leading the movement of the ship.
Looking at only those expressions of the commitment of historical persons that could be attributed to events as orders, historians impose that the events are found out in the addictions from orders. Looking at the very same events and that is recognized with the masses, in which finds out a historical face, we find that a historical face and their orders are found out in addictions from events. This undoubted proof of withdrawal serves in that how much would there be orders, the event will not happen, if there are no other reasons; but as soon as will happen an event — what would be or was, — that from the number of all continuously expressed wills of institutional persons find out which meaning and time can carry off an event as orders.
Having come to this conclusion, we can all and positively answer those two essential issues of history:
1) What is power?
2) How does power produce the movement of peoples?
1) Power is such an attitude of a famous face to another face, in which this face is by that less accepted in the participation in the action the more it expresses opinions, assumptions and justification of the ongoing aggregate action.
2) The movement of peoples produces not power, not mental activity, even not in the compound of this and another, as think historians, but the activity of all people, hosting participation in an event and connecting always so that those that accept the greatest direct participation in an event, accept in themselves the smallest liability; and vice versa.
In the moral regards the reason of events presents power; in physical regards, — those that obey authorities. Yet so as moral activity is unthinkable without the physical, then the cause of events is not located in that, or in another, but is located only in the connection of both.
Or, in other words, to the phenomenon, which we examine, the concept of causes is inapplicable.
In the last analysis we come to the circle of eternity, to that extreme facet, to which in every area of thinking comes the mind of a human, if not playing his subject. Electricity produces heat, heat produces electricity. Atoms are attracted, atoms repel.
Speaking about the simplest actions of warmth, electricity or atoms, we cannot say why happens this action, and say what such is the nature of these phenomena, what their law is. That very same applies to historical phenomena. Why is going on a war or revolution? We do not know; we only know what for is committed this or another action, people form in famous compounds and participate in all; and we say that such is the nature of people and that this is a law.
Locations:
Mentioned: France (also French), Europe, West, East, England, Russia
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: The analogy of men dragging a log is developed to show how people explain events by looking at the orders that were actually followed rather than the opinions of those who were not followed. "These justifications take away the moral responsibility of the people who produce events."
Using the analogy of a ship and the swirl of movement around it, we are given the "necessary connection of historical figures with the masses." He is ready to answer what power is by saying that it is "that relation of a certain person to other persons in which the person takes the less part in the action the more he expresses opinions, suppositions, and justifications for the jointly accomplished action."
Our answer as to why actions happen is that it is unthinkable to us that they can happen otherwise.
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 *):
(men dragging a log together are mentioned, as are the French and Russians in general. Also historians.)
Abridged Versions: Line break after "directing the movement of the ship" in Dole. Line break in the same place in Wiener, Maude, Mandelker, Garnett, Briggs, Edmonds, Dunnigan, and Bell.
No chapter break in Bell.
Gibian: Line break after "govern the ship's movement also." Line break instead of chapter break at the end.
Additional Notes:
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