Book Description

Excerpt from War and Peace, Vol. 3 The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words it seemed to depend whether the event was to take place or not, were as little arbitrary as the action of any soldier who went into the campaign by lot or by recruit ment. It could not have been otherwise because, in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (of those people on whom the event seemed to have depended) should be fulfilled, there was needed the coincidence Of an endless number Of circumstances, without one of which the event could not have occurred. It was necessary for millions of people, in the hands of whom was the real power, for the soldiers who fired, and who transported the provisions and the guns, to agree to do the will of a few weak individuals, and to be brought to do this by an endless number of complicated, complex causes. Fatalism in history is necessary for the explanation of unreasonable events, that is, of such as we do not compre hend the reason. The more reasonably we attempt to explain these phenomena in history, the more unreason able and unintelligible they become to us. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.