Is “History” a force, or do people decide the course of events? It’s a big question with profound implications. Tolstoy wrote War and Peace to try to figure out whether human beings set their own destinies or are swept along by Hegelian processes beyond their control. Later, under the neo-Hegelianism of communism—whether of the national socialist or international socialist strains—human beings were bronzed in the Party, which in turn was under the control of a Napoleon-type leader who was himself, all the same, merely a function of History’s ineffable will. This is History as Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos all in one. Men are at the mercy of cosmic disturbances and reorderings that they but very dimly understand.
The alternative view sees history not as a transcendent power but as people muddling along and deciding from moment to moment how to proceed. Paul Johnson, one of the twentieth century’s Olympian historians who wrote richly detailed, and yet panoramic, books on subjects as diverse as Christianity and modern art, argued in Modern Times, that History is nothing; there are only men and women acting. This is history as the tale of fallible humans, operating from hearts badly wounded by original sin and often twisted with pride, anger, and desire for revenge.
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