[full size]Unknown To Us, NYC, 2025

To the intellect of man the totality of the causes of phenomena is inaccessible. But the need to search for causes is inherent in the spirit of man. And the human intellect, renouncing the attempt to penetrate the infinity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, each of which, taken separately, could be regarded as a cause, fastens on the first, the most comprehensible association, and immediately says: ‘This is the cause.’ In historical events, where the object of observation is the actions of men, the first association that comes is the will of the gods; then comes the will of those who occupy a historically important position—the heroes of history. But it is enough to take a deeper look at the substance of any historical event, that is, at the activity of all the men who take part in it, to be convinced that the will of the hero of history not only does not guide the actions of the masses, but is in its turn continually guided. It may seem that it is a matter of indifference how a historical event is conceived, but between the man who asserts that the peoples of the West moved eastward because Napoleon willed it, and the man who says that it happened because it was bound to happen, there is the same difference as there was between those who asserted that the earth is immovable and the planets revolve around it, and those who said that they did not know how the earth was supported, but knew that there are laws which govern the movements of the earth and of the planets. There are no causes of a historical event, and there cannot be any other than that which is the cause of all causes. But there are laws which events obey, some of which are unknown to us, and others are within our experience. The discovery of these laws will only be possible when we renounce the search for causes in the will of one individual, just as the discovery of the laws of planetary motion became possible only when the theory of the immobility of the earth was abandoned.

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