20. Chapter XX: Characteristics Of Historians In Democratic
Ages
Historians who write in aristocratic ages are wont to refer
all occurrences to the particular will or temper of certain
individuals; and they are apt to attribute the most important
revolutions to very slight accidents. They trace out the smallest
causes with sagacity, and frequently leave the greatest
unperceived. Historians who live in democratic ages exhibit
precisely opposite characteristics. Most of them attribute
hardly any influence to the individual over the destiny of the
race, nor to citizens over the fate of a people; but, on the
other hand, they assign great general causes to all petty
incidents. These contrary tendencies explain each other.
When the historian of aristocratic ages surveys the theatre
of the world, he at once perceives a very small number of
prominent actors, who manage the whole piece. These great
personages, who occupy the front of the stage, arrest the
observation, and fix it on themselves; and whilst the historian
is bent on penetrating the secret motives which make them speak
and act, the rest escape his memory. The importance of the
things which some men are seen to do, gives him an exaggerated
estimate of the influence which one man may possess; and
naturally leads him to think, that in order to explain the
impulses of the multitude, it is necessary to refer them to the
particular influence of some one individual.
When, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent of
one another, and each of them is individually weak, no one is
seen to exert a great, or still less a lasting power, over the
community. At first sight, individuals appear to be absolutely
devoid of any influence over it; and society would seem to
advance alone by the free and voluntary concurrence of all the
men who compose it. This naturally prompts the mind to search
for that general reason which operates upon so many men's
faculties at the same time, and turns them simultaneously in the
same direction.
I am very well convinced that even amongst democratic
nations, the genius, the vices, or the virtues of certain
individuals retard or accelerate the natural current of a
people's history: but causes of this secondary and fortuitous
nature are infinitely more various, more concealed, more complex,
less powerful, and consequently less easy to trace in periods of
equality than in ages of aristocracy, when the task of the
historian is simply to detach from the mass of general events the
particular influences of one man or of a few men. In the former
case the historian is soon wearied by the toil; his mind loses
itself in this labyrinth; and, in his inability clearly to
discern or conspicuously to point out the influence of
individuals, he denies their existence. He prefers talking about
the characteristics of race, the physical conformation of the
country, or the genius of civilization, which abridges his own
labors, and satisfies his reader far better at less cost.
M. de Lafayette says somewhere in his "Memoirs" that the
exaggerated system of general causes affords surprising
consolations to second-rate statesmen. I will add, that its
effects are not less consolatory to second-rate historians; it
can always furnish a few mighty reasons to extricate them from
the most difficult part of their work, and it indulges the
indolence or incapacity of their minds, whilst it confers upon
them the honors of deep thinking.
For myself, I am of opinion that at all times one great
portion of the events of this world are attributable to general
facts, and another to special influences. These two kinds of
cause are always in operation: their proportion only varies.
General facts serve to explain more things in democratic than in
aristocratic ages, and fewer things are then assignable to
special influences. At periods of aristocracy the reverse takes
place: special influences are stronger, general causes weaker -unless indeed we consider as a general cause the fact itself of
the inequality of conditions, which allows some individuals to
baffle the natural tendencies of all the rest. The historians
who seek to describe what occurs in democratic societies are
right, therefore, in assigning much to general causes, and in
devoting their chief attention to discover them; but they are
wrong in wholly denying the special influence of individuals,
because they cannot easily trace or follow it.
The historians who live in democratic ages are not only
prone to assign a great cause to every incident, but they are
also given to connect incidents together, so as to deduce a
system from them. In aristocratic ages, as the attention of
historians is constantly drawn to individuals, the connection of
events escapes them; or rather, they do not believe in any such
connection. To them the clew of history seems every instant
crossed and broken by the step of man. In democratic ages, on
the contrary, as the historian sees much more of actions than of
actors, he may easily establish some kind of sequency and
methodical order amongst the former. Ancient literature, which
is so rich in fine historical compositions, does not contain a
single great historical system, whilst the poorest of modern
literatures abound with them. It would appear that the ancient
historians did not make sufficient use of those general theories
which our historical writers are ever ready to carry to excess.
Those who write in democratic ages have another more
dangerous tendency. When the traces of individual action upon
nations are lost, it often happens that the world goes on to
move, though the moving agent is no longer discoverable. As it
becomes extremely difficult to discern and to analyze the reasons
which, acting separately on the volition of each member of the
community, concur in the end to produce movement in the old mass,
men are led to believe that this movement is involuntary, and
that societies unconsciously obey some superior force ruling over
them. But even when the general fact which governs the private
volition of all individuals is supposed to be discovered upon the
earth, the principle of human free-will is not secure. A cause
sufficiently extensive to affect millions of men at once, and
sufficiently strong to bend them all together in the same
direction, may well seem irresistible: having seen that mankind
do yield to it, the mind is close upon the inference that mankind
cannot resist it.
Historians who live in democratic ages, then, not only deny
that the few have any power of acting upon the destiny of a
people, but they deprive the people themselves of the power of
modifying their own condition, and they subject them either to an
inflexible Providence, or to some blind necessity. According to
them, each nation is indissolubly bound by its position, its
origin, its precedents, and its character, to a certain lot which
no efforts can ever change. They involve generation in
generation, and thus, going back from age to age, and from
necessity to necessity, up to the origin of the world, they forge
a close and enormous chain, which girds and binds the human race.
To their minds it is not enough to show what events have
occurred: they would fain show that events could not have
occurred otherwise. They take a nation arrived at a certain
stage of its history, and they affirm that it could not but
follow the track which brought it thither. It is easier to make
such an assertion than to show by what means the nation might
have adopted a better course.
In reading the historians of aristocratic ages, and
especially those of antiquity, it would seem that, to be master
of his lot, and to govern his fellow-creatures, man requires only
to be master of himself. In perusing the historical volumes
which our age has produced, it would seem that man is utterly
powerless over himself and over all around him. The historians
of antiquity taught how to command: those of our time teach only
how to obey; in their writings the author often appears great,
but humanity is always diminutive. If this doctrine of
necessity, which is so attractive to those who write history in
democratic ages, passes from authors to their readers, till it
infects the whole mass of the community and gets possession of
the public mind, it will soon paralyze the activity of modern
society, and reduce Christians to the level of the Turks. I
would moreover observe, that such principles are peculiarly
dangerous at the period at which we are arrived. Our
contemporaries are but too prone to doubt of the human free-will,
because each of them feels himself confined on every side by his
own weakness; but they are still willing to acknowledge the
strength and independence of men united in society. Let not this
principle be lost sight of; for the great object in our time is
to raise the faculties of men, not to complete their prostration.