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HISTORYS_SLAVE

Quotation from Tolstoy's "War and Peace".           WAR_AND_PEACE


     There are two sides to the life of every man, his
     individual life which is the more free the more
     abstract its interests, and his elemental swarm-life
     in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

     Man lives consciously for himself, but is an
     unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
     historic, universal aims of humanity.  A deed done
     is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time
     with the actions of millions of other men assumes
     an historic significance.  The higher a man stands
     on the social ladder, the more people he is
     connected with and the more power he has over
     others, the more evident is the predestination and
     inevitability of his every action.

     'The king's head is in the hands of the Lord.'

     A king is history's slave.

     History, that is, the unconscious, general, swarm-life
     of mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as
     a tool for it's own purposes.

        Book IX, Chapter I, p. 258
        About 'Great Men' Napoleon, Alexander, etc.

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