If the Deity gives a command, expresses His will, as the history of the ancients tell us, the expression of that will is independent of time, and is not called forth by anything, as the Deity is not connected with the event. But when we speak of commands that are the expression of the will of men, acting in time and connected with one another, we must, if we are to understand the connection of the command with the event, restore (1) the conditions of all the circumstances that took place, the dynamic continuity in time both of the event and of the person commanding it; and (2) the condition of the inevitable connection in which the person commanding stands with those who carry out his command.
Chapter 6
ONLY THE EXPRESSION of the will of the Deity, not depending on time, can relate to a whole series of events that have to take place during several years or centuries; and only the Deity, acting by His will alone, not affected by any cause, can determine the direction of the movement of humanity. Man acts in time, and himself takes part in the event.
Restoring the first condition that was omitted, the condition of time, we perceive that no single command can be carried out apart from preceding commands that have made the execution of the last command possible.
Never is a single command given quite independently and arbitrarily, nor does it cover a whole series of events. Every command is the sequel to some other; and it never relates to a whole course of events, but only to one moment in those events.
When we say, for instance, that Napoleon commanded the army to go to fight, we sum up in one single expression a series of consecutive commands, depending one upon another. Napoleon could not command a campaign against Russia, and never did command it. He commanded one day certain papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to Petersburg; next day certain decrees and instructions to the army, the fleet, and the commissariat, and so on and so on—millions of separate commands, making up a whole series of commands, corresponding to a series of events leading the French soldiers to Russia.
Napoleon was giving commands all through his reign for an expedition to England. On no one of his undertakings did he waste so much time and so much effort, and yet not once during his reign was an attempt made to carry out his design. Yet he made an expedition against Russia, with which, according to his repeatedly expressed conviction, it was to his advantage to be in alliance; and this is due to the fact that his commands in the first case did not, and in the second did, correspond with the course of events.
In order that a command should certainly be carried out, it is necessary that the man should give a command that can be carried out. To know what can and what cannot be carried out is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon’s campaign against Russia, in which millions took part, but even in the case of the simplest event, since millions of obstacles may always arise to prevent its being carried out. Every command that is carried out is always one out of a mass of commands that are not carried out. All the impossible commands are inconsistent with the course of events and are not carried out. Only those which are possible are connected with consecutive series of commands, consistent with series of events, and they are carried out.
Our false conception that the command that precedes an event is the cause of an event is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and those few out of thousands of commands, which happen to be consistent with the course of events, are carried out, we forget those which were not, because they could not be carried out. Apart from that, the chief source of our error arises from the fact that in the historical account a whole series of innumerable, various, and most minute events, as, for instance, all that led the French soldiers to Russia, are generalised into a single event, in accordance with the result produced by that series of events; and by a corresponding generalisation a whole series of commands too is summed up into a single expression of will.
We say: Napoleon chose to invade Russia and he did so. In reality we never find in all Napoleon’s doings anything like an expression of that design: what we find is a series of commands or expressions of his will of the most various and undefined tendency. Out of many series of innumerable commands of Napoleon not carried out, one series of commands for the campaign of 1812 was carried out; not from any essential difference between the commands carried out and those not carried out, but simply because the former coincided with the course of events that led the French soldiers into Russia; just as in stencil-work one figure or another is sketched, not because the colours are laid on this side or in that way, but because on the figure cut out in stencil, colours are laid on all sides.
So that examining in time the relation of commands to events, we find that the command can never in any case be the cause of the event, but that a certain definite dependence exists between them. To understand of what this dependence consists, it is essential to restore the other circumstance lost sight of, a condition accompanying any command issuing not from the Deity, but from man. That circumstance is that the man giving the command is himself taking part in the event.
That relation of the commanding person to those he commands is indeed precisely what is called power. That relation may be analysed as follows.
For common action, men always unite in certain combinations, in which, in spite of the difference of the objects aimed at by common action, the relation between the men taking a part in the action always remains the same.
Uniting in these combinations, men always stand in such a relation to one another that the largest number of men take a greater direct share, and a smaller number of men a less direct share in the combined action for which they are united. Of all such combinations in which men are organised for the performance of common action, one of the most striking and definite examples is the army.
Every army is composed of members of lower military standing—the private soldiers, who are always the largest proportion of the whole, of members of a slightly higher military standing—corporals and non-commissioned officers, who are fewer in number than the privates; of still higher officers, whose numbers are even less; and so on, up to the chief military command of all, which is concentrated in one person.
The military organisation may be with perfect accuracy compared to the figure of a cone, the base of which, with the largest diameter, consists of privates; the next higher and smaller plane, of the lower officers; and so on up to the apex of the cone, which will be the commander-in-chief.
The soldiers, who are the largest number, form the lowest plane and the base of the cone. The soldier himself does the stabbing and hacking, and burning and pillaging, and always receives commands to perform these acts from the persons in the plane next above. He himself never gives a command. The non-commissioned officer (these are fewer in number) more rarely performs the immediate act than the soldier; but he gives commands. The officer next above him still more rarely acts directly himself, and still more frequently commands. The general does nothing but command the army, and hardly ever makes use of a weapon. The commander-in-chief never takes direct part in the action itself, and simply makes general arrangements as to the movements of the masses. A similar relation exists in every combination of persons for common action—in agriculture, commerce, and in every department of activity.
And so without artificially analysing all the converging planes of the cone and ranks of the army or classes or ranks of any department whatever, or public undertaking, from lower to higher, a law comes into existence, by which men always combine together for the performance of common action in such relation that the more directly they take part in the action, the less they command, and the greater their numbers; and the less direct the part they take in the common action, the more they command, and the fewer they are in number; passing in that way from the lower strata up to a single man at the top, who takes least direct share in the action, and devotes his energy more than all the rest to giving commands.
This is the relation of persons in command to those whom they command, and it constitutes the essence of the conception of what is called power.
Restoring the conditions of time under which all events take place, we found that a command is carried out only when it relates to a corresponding course of events. Restoring the essential condition of connection between the persons commanding and fulfilling the commands, we have found that by their very nature the persons commanding take the smallest part in the action itself, and their energy is exclusively directed to commanding.
Chapter 7
WHEN SOME EVENT takes place, men express their opinions and desires in regard to the event, and as the event proceeds from the combined action of many men, some one of the opinions or desires expressed is certain to be at least approximately fulfilled. When one of the opinions expressed is fulfilled, that opinion is connected with the event as the command preceding it.
Men are dragging a log. Every man expresses his opinion as to how and where to drag it. The men drag the log off; and it turns out that it has been done just as one of them advised. He gave the command then. This is commanding and power in its primitive aspect.
The man who did most work with his arms could think least what he was doing, reflect least what might come of the common action, and so command least. The man who commanded most could obviously, from his greater verbal activity, act less vigorously with his arms. In a larger assembly of men, combining their energies to one end, the class of those persons who take the less direct share in the common work the more their energy is turned to command, is still more sharply defined.
When a man acts alone, he always carries within him a certain series of considerations, that have, as he supposes, directed his past conduct, and that serve to justify to him his present action, and to lead him to make projects for his future activity.
Assemblies of men act in the same way, only leaving to those who do not take direct part in the action to invent considerations, justifications, and projects concerning their combined activity.
For causes, known or unknown to us, the French begin to chop and hack at each other. And to match the event, it is accompanied by its justification in the expressed wills of certain men, who declare it essential for the good of France, for the cause of freedom, of equality. Men cease slaughtering one another, and that event is accompanied by the justification of the necessity of centralisation of power, of resistance to Europe, and so on. Men march from west to east, killing their fellow-creatures, and this event is accompanied by phrases about the glory of France, the baseness of England, and so on. History teaches us that those justifications for the event are devoid of all common-sense, that they are inconsistent with one another, as, for instance, the murder of a man as a result of the declaration of his rights, and the murder of millions in Russia for the abasement of England. But those justifications have an incontestable value in their own day.
They remove moral responsibility from those men who produce the events. At the time they do the work of brooms, that go in front to clear the rails for the train: they clear the path of men’s moral responsibility. Apart from those justifications, no solution could be found for the most obvious question that occurs to one at once on examining any historical event; that is, How did millions of men come to combine to commit crimes, murders, wars, and so on?
Under the existing complex forms of political social life in Europe, can any event be imagined which would not have been prescribed, decreed, commanded by some sovereigns, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers? Is there any sort of combined action which could not find justification in political unity, or in patriotism, or in the balance of power, or in civilisation? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides with some expressed desire, and receiving justification, is regarded as the result of the will of one or more persons.
Whichever way the ship steers its course, there will always be seen ahead of it the flow of the waves it cleaves. To the men in the ship the movement of those waves will be the only motion perceptible.
It is only by watching closely, moment by moment, the movement of that flow, and comparing it with the movement of the ship, that we are convinced that every moment that flowing by of the waves is due to the forward movement of the ship, and that we have been led into error by the fact that we are ourselves moving too.
We see the same thing, watching moment by moment the movement of historical personages (that is, restoring the inevitable condition under which all action takes place—the condition of the continuity of motion in time), and not losing sight of the necessary connection of historical figures with the masses.
Whatever happens, it always appears that that was foreseen and decreed. Whichever way the ship turns, the waves gurgle in front of it, and neither guiding nor accelerating its movement, will seem to us at a distance to be moving arbitrarily and guiding the course of the ship.
Examining only those expressions of the will of historical characters which related to events as commands, historians have assumed that the events were dependent on the commands. Examining the events themselves, and that connection in which the historical characters stand with the masses, we have found that historical characters and their commands are dependent on the events. An incontestable proof of this deduction is to be found in the fact that, however many commands may be given, the event does not take place if there is no other cause to produce it. But as soon as an event does take place—whatever it may be—out of the number of all the expressions of the will of different persons, there are always some which, from their meaning and time of utterance, are related to the events as commands.
Having reached this conclusion, we can directly and positively answer these two essential questions of history:—
1. What is power?
2. What force produces the movements of peoples?
1. Power is a relation of a certain person to other persons, in which that person takes the less direct share in an act, the more he expresses opinions, theories, and justifications of the combined action.
2. The movement of peoples is not produced by the exercise of power; nor by intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two, as historians have supposed; but by the activity of all the men taking part in the event, who are always combined in such a way that those who take most direct part in the action take the smallest share in responsibility for it, and vice versa.
