The original recording has disappeared so I am posting the quote referred to in Dave's comment:

Quote from: Dave T on August 28, 2018, 06:47:58 AMHuxley quote on mental illness is very interesting. It is hard to tell what is truly "normal" anymore, because normal is so distorted.

"The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

https://archive.org/details/confession_1505_librivox

LibriVox recording of My Confession by Leo Tolstoy.
Read in English by Expatriate
"My Confession" is a brief autobiographical story of Leo Tolstoy's struggle with a mid-life existential crisis of melancholia. It describes his search for answers to the profound questions "What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?", without answers to which life, for him, had become "impossible." Tolstoy reflects on the arc of his philosophical life until then: his childhood abandonment of his Russian orthodox faith; his mastery of strength, will, power, and reason; and how, after he had achieved tremendous financial success and social status, life to him seemed meaningless. After despairing of his attempts to find answers in science, philosophy, eastern wisdom, and his fellow men of letters, he describes his turn to the wisdom of the common people and his attempts to reconcile their instinctive faith with the dictates of his reason. The main body of the text ends with the author reaching a compromise: faith, he realizes, is a necessity, but it must be constrained by reason. However, an epilogue that describes a dream he had some time after completing the body of the text suggests that he has undergone a radical personal and spiritual transformation. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Found this graphic that shows the writings of Paul in chronological order...

I plan to read in this order to see if it adds clarity.

This pdf is CLV presented in this order:
http://DeBurger.com/vestibule/concordant/Evangel.pdf

The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that's when you met me.

"What... what happened?" You asked. "Where am I?"

"You died," I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

"There was a... a truck and it was skidding..."

"Yup," I said.

"I... I died?"

"Yup. But don't feel bad about it. Everyone dies," I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. "What is this place?" You asked. "Is this the afterlife?"

"More or less," I said.

"Are you god?" You asked.

"Yup," I replied. "I'm God."

"My kids... my wife," you said.

"What about them?"

"Will they be all right?"

"That's what I like to see," I said. "You just died and your main concern is for your family. That's good stuff right there."

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn't look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

"Don't worry," I said. "They'll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn't have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it's any consolation, she'll feel very guilty for feeling relieved."

"Oh," you said. "So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?"

"Neither," I said. "You'll be reincarnated."

"Ah," you said. "So the Hindus were right,"

"All religions are right in their own way," I said. "Walk with me."

You followed along as we strode through the void. "Where are we going?"

"Nowhere in particular," I said. "It's just nice to walk while we talk."

"So what's the point, then?" You asked. "When I get reborn, I'll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won't matter."

"Not so!" I said. "You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don't remember them right now."

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. "Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It's like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it's hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you've gained all the experiences it had.

"You've been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven't stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you'd start remembering everything. But there's no point to doing that between each life."

"How many times have I been reincarnated, then?"

"Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives." I said. "This time around, you'll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD."

"Wait, what?" You stammered. "You're sending me back in time?"

"Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from."

"Where you come from?" You said.

"Oh sure," I explained "I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you'll want to know what it's like there, but honestly you wouldn't understand."

"Oh," you said, a little let down. "But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point."

"Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don't even know it's happening."

"So what's the point of it all?"

"Seriously?" I asked. "Seriously? You're asking me for the meaning of life? Isn't that a little stereotypical?"

"Well it's a reasonable question," you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. "The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature."

"You mean mankind? You want us to mature?"

"No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect."

"Just me? What about everyone else?"

"There is no one else," I said. "In this universe, there's just you and me."

You stared blankly at me. "But all the people on earth..."

"All you. Different incarnations of you."

"Wait. I'm everyone!?"

"Now you're getting it," I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

"I'm every human being who ever lived?"

"Or who will ever live, yes."

"I'm Abraham Lincoln?"

"And you're John Wilkes Booth, too," I added.

"I'm Hitler?" You said, appalled.

"And you're the millions he killed."

"I'm Jesus?"

"And you're everyone who followed him."

You fell silent.

"Every time you victimized someone," I said, "you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you've done, you've done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you."

You thought for a long time.

"Why?" You asked me. "Why do all this?"

"Because someday, you will become like me. Because that's what you are. You're one of my kind. You're my child."

"Whoa," you said, incredulous. "You mean I'm a god?"

"No. Not yet. You're a fetus. You're still growing. Once you've lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born."

"So the whole universe," you said, "it's just..."

"An egg." I answered. "Now it's time for you to move on to your next life."

And I sent you on your way.

I just came across this helpful program:

Scripture 4 All
Greek / Hebrew interlinear Bible software

overcome the language barrier and get in touch with the original

Download: http://scripture4all.org/download/download_ISA3.php

A Case Against Random Acts of Kindness
by Lexy Bader • January 30, 2014 •

I came across this article early in 2014 and saved a bookmark to it because I greatly enjoyed the sentiment it it shares. After visiting the bookmark I was disappointed to discover it was no longer being offered by TheRockAtBC Fortunately I was able to recover it from The Internet Archive's "WayBack" machine and am re-posting here for posterity.

---

Random acts of kindness are truly beautiful. One Christmas Day a few years ago, a stranger paid for my breakfast, and I felt the kind of warmth that comes in response to a reminder that humanity is, after all, good. But that gives rise to a question: why should I need a reminder? Why am I not constantly aware that humanity is good?


Presumably because humanity is not always good. This idea is not novel, I realize. Miley Cyrus, in fact, referenced our allegedly inherently flawed nature a few years back, singing the line, "Nobody's perfect!", and then movin' her hips like yeah to reiterate the concept. But that gives rise to another question: why is humanity not always good?

Is it that we lack the capacity? Some say yes. Augustine, for example, chalks up his sexual indiscretions to the fact that he is flawed. Thus he cannot be expected to break his sinful habit without the grace of God.

But I beg to differ. My father once passed onto me a story he'd heard from a therapist whose first client was a physically abusive husband.

"I just can't help it," said the man. "I'm hard-wired to respond violently when she disobeys me."

"Now, tell me," asked the psychiatrist. "Would you respond that way if a policeman angered you by giving you a ticket, or if a Patriots linebacker sideswiped your car and refused to pay for the damage?"

"Well, no. I guess not."

"Perhaps, then," the psychiatrist filled in, "you can help it."

Perhaps, then, we can all help it. Think for a moment of the person in this world whom you love the most. Think about how well you treat that person, and how much you would be willing to give up for that person. A lot of us have the good fortune of having at least one friend for whom we would, in a second, undertake to die--in a touching scene in Macbeth, Lady Macduff points out that even "the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl." Many of us are lucky enough to know what it means to love like that.

So no, we do not lack the capacity to love absolutely. Clearly, we have the ability to be completely selfless and give away the one thing that allows us all of the other pleasures we have: our lives. Why? Because we value love more life, and nothing else matters to us more. The peerless value of love is also not a novel idea.

But try this: why not treat everyone the way we treat that one beloved person?


That, of course, is an equally worn-out topic: charities, welfare, and basic politeness exist for that purpose. But I don't think we take the right approach to it. Contemporary culture pushes for the idea of moderation. Take care of yourself, and then use your excess to take care of others. Make a lot of money during the week, and then drop a twenty in the offering basket on Sundays. Give money to charity, but make sure that you yourself can live comfortably. Be good to people, and make as many friends as you can, but drop them if the friendships begin to bring you more anxiety than happiness. Don't lose your temper, but still demand respect. You deserve proper treatment. Go on a service trip or do a little volunteering here and there; it'll be good for you. Diet, but in such a way that you can still eat some of the foods you love. Use proper consumer ethics most of the time, but if you really love a piece of clothing, break your rigid buyer morality. You've earned it. Do random acts of kindness every now and then. Everything in moderation.

Too much of anything is bad, people say. And I think our culture has officially reached the point of excess moderation.

We are better than that.

We need not stoop to random acts of kindness; no, we have the ability to commit perpetual acts of kindness. This idea that we can only do so much without endangering ourselves is an excuse. At no point in my life have I found that using the phrase "I'm doing the best I can!" has provided a satisfactory response to anyone demanding more of me. Why?

Because we never do the best we can.

I decided to try to take apart my average day, piece by piece. First, I wake up, and change my clothes.

Stop. How much clothing do I own? Too much. Do I need all of it? No. Could I give some of it away? I know I certainly could. Often in the past, I've made the excuse that I have no time, but I know that if the person in my life whom I loved the most asked me if I had five minutes to talk, I would drop everything and find five minutes. So, yes, I most certainly have time.

Next, I brush my teeth.


Stop. Do I always remember to turn off the water while I'm in the brushing process? No. Could I not conserve a good deal of water by doing so? Yes. So why don't I? Because I don't think about it.

Then I go for a run. I come back and shower.

Stop. How long did I spend in the shower? Probably longer than necessary.

After that, I go to breakfast.

Stop. Did I smile at the cashier, say "please" to the person filling my order? I hope so. But I don't know.

The list goes on. And yes, it's absolutely insane to break down every moment of every day like that. But think about all the great men, those whom history has chosen to remember. Were any of them "sane"? Did they live in moderation? Or did they instead do good in unprecedented amounts?

And think for a moment of Christ, the man whom so many of us hail as Savior and Teacher. Did He ever plead the right to fair treatment, or insist upon owning just one or two expensive togas? Did He desire to lay down His life for a few people whom He loved? No, He died for "all men" and did so "while we were yet sinners." Thus He gave all He had and asked nothing in return.

But surely, surely He doesn't expect the same from us helpless humans, weak and worthless since the Fall. We can't be expected to do good all the time. Why, then, should we bother to try?

Because we can.

"Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect."

There's a famous hymn called, "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love."

Look at your life, and ask yourself. Will anyone know?

No more moderation. We shortchange ourselves, and we treat the people most in need of our love with half-hearted compassion.


As Marianna Williamson once said, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." For the longest time, I wondered why that should be a fear--until one day I looked at my own life and saw the great gap between who I am and who I have the ability to become. Realizing that I have the ability to be more than what I currently am compels me to ask more of myself than what I currently give.

The verse goes, "from those to whom much is given, much will be expected." Or, of course, the pop culture reference, "with great power comes great responsibility," expresses the same idea. If we stop seeing ourselves as weak, flawed, helpless, and incapable of rising above moderation, then, yes, we have to change our lifestyles radically.

Society might see us as insane, but that too is our fault to begin with and our responsibility to change. Someone once told me that one of the most common misconceptions people have is that they are "stuck in traffic." "You fools!" he declared. "You're not stuck in traffic; you are the traffic!" This invisible force called "society" is made up of millions of little parts we refer to as individuals. We ourselves are society. Society, then, does not oppress us; we oppress us. And to change society, we must each change ourselves by forgetting the concept of normal and instead embracing the concept of right. We must cease to comfort ourselves with the delusion that we are inadequate and must instead grab hold of the terrifying and beautiful truth:

We are powerful beyond moderation.

In reply to a blogging friend of mine I offered the following (by way of comments) to their "Year in Review / Looking Forward to the New Year" type article.

(January 8, 2019)
There is never any shortage of advice about love and to prove that point I will dare to offer what I feel to be essential to finding the "one" - since you have expressed a desire to modify your views in this regard:

I myself was the victim of serial heartbreak until venturing into a mental exercise that prepared me to recognize my soul-mate when she walked into my life. In desperation I reviewed those individuals I had felt compelled to love more deeply than - in hind-sight - I wish I had. I thought long and hard about what characteristics about each I most missed in their absence. I thought about what do I desire from a relationship that I have yet to encounter. In short I mentally prepared a "girl of my dreams" based on aspects of love I had gleaned from my life. I looked at my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors - good and bad...

As heartless as this may sound; until I was able to describe to myself this person, in detail, I felt as though I was adrift in hopelessness. However, once I had the 'template' - remarkably soon after - an angel stepped right into this halo I had already prepared.

I find myself increasingly growing into a believer of predestination and am quite certain the person you seek can only be seeking after you. Of course, we know not what the future may hold - "best laid plans" and all that...

...Do you think love is rational?...

(January 11, 2019)
Sounds like an innocent enough question doesn't it: "Do you think love is rational?" I must say it set the windmills of the mind a-turning...

Love is multifaceted and it could be said that some aspects appear rational where others seem without a doubt irrational. The task of explaining what love is so easily plunges one into the poetical that even the attempt to do so is akin to chasing butterflies (and all the imagery that that act might inspire.)

I believe it is us, the creatures, who prefer to think ourselves rational. We seek for an explanation of Love before we can commit to it. Love - it is said - is an emotion (which I find to be a misleading notion.) Holy scripture tells us that Love is God's essence. We like to think that we are the arbiters of Love and it is ours to do with what we will... this too is a mistake. I think it is a blurring of the lines between "Love" and "Will" that lead to much in the way of disappointment.

At the risk of getting "preachy" I think it is important to remember that there is purpose to all that is. There will never be an Earthly (rational) explanation for any of it. If you can accept there are forces at work, greater that we can possibly imagine, then given the statement "God is Love" we must conclude that True Love is the only rational thing there is...

As we live our lives we must recognize that in our current reality we are perpetually experiencing consecutive "now" moments in time; a seemingly endless series of "nows" that give the perception of movement, much like the advancing frames of a film trick us into perceiving action before us. We are constituted with memories which serve to prove our existence in our own minds. We tend to remember our past but are powerless to do anything to change it. It truly "Is, What It Is" (or "Was" if you prefer.)

The mental exercise I suggested in my previous comment has incumbent upon it acceptance of the notion that the future is as equally immutable as the past. While we never really know what the future will bring, it is often surprising when things come to pass just as we perceive them. Very often humanity gets caught up in chasing the realizations of their own preconceptions; they lose sight of the joy that is promised by living life in the will of Wills. Trust that you are granted only the power to glimpse the future as it _truly is_ and will never see what will never be. Things will happen that will cause you to question your very existence at times but just wait for it... you will very often find yourself in "one moment in time" that will shine unmistakable clarity on all that came before, and that light will be shining from the truth set directly before you.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly was not of this mindset "back in the day," when I met the lady who would ultimately become my wife. Nor was I walking "the straight and narrow" path to enlightenment... but enlightenment will come to those who seek it. Enlightenment will most certainly come to all, regardless... seek contentment - you will find it only on the path to Love.


(January 16, 2019)
The concepts I have expressed here are not typically offered freely to family and friends but they were the frequent underpinnings for the occasional lecture to my children (when the situation warranted - the memory of which would induce eye-rolls in them to this day) ??
...
Perhaps it is our interactions with love that are always completely irrational. We like to think of love as though it were a solid, an object for our consumption. Viewing love as a sort of luminiferous aether might begin to approach a truer simile. The power of love being a driving force; the rejection of the same - wherein the bulk of humanity finds its heroes - being the general state of affairs.

As war and peace continues to entertain, I am taken by yet another chapter. This one offers thoughtful observations on the "science" of history.

If you have not ventured into this massive tome, please consider reading the following chapter for  a taste of this infamous bit of literature...

---

WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy
BOOK Eleven: 1812
CHAPTER I

Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements. There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever. This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.

By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only approach a solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical progression with a common ratio of one tenth, and have found the sum of this progression to infinity, do we reach a solution of the problem.

A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.

This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing with problems of motion admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements of motion instead of examining continuous motion.

In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous.

To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event always flows uninterruptedly from another.

The second method is to consider the actions of some one man- a king or a commander- as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a single historic personage.

Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the units it takes, we feel that to take any unit disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.

It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation- as criticism has every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must always be arbitrarily selected.

Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.

The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave their customary pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other, plunder and slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some years the whole course of life is altered and presents an intensive movement which first increases and then slackens. What was the cause of this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the mind of man.

The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings and doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, calling these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a detailed biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on others, and say: that is why this movement took place and those are its laws.

But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, but plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious, because in it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. The sum of human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.

"But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state there have been great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a single man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten, I hear the bells of the neighboring church; but because the bells begin to ring when the hands of the clock reach ten, I have no right to assume that the movement of the bells is caused by the position of the hands of the watch.

Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to conclude that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of the movement of the engine.

The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold winds to blow when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I must entirely change my point of view and study the laws of the movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made.

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it is evident that only along that path does the possibility of discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various kings, commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians' own reflections concerning these actions.

---

The Complete Book Has Been Made Available on Friends-Partners.org

I am about halfway through War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and for the most part find it very enjoyable.
Chapter One of Book Nine (reprinted here) has proven to be a most excellent, insightful exposition on the concept of free will.

If you have not ventured into this massive tome, please consider reading the following chapter for a taste of this infamous bit of literature...

---

WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy
BOOK NINE: 1812
CHAPTER I

From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces- millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army- moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence- apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes- to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and the war could not have occurred.

Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing could have happened. So all these causes- myriads of causes- coincided to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes.

We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

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 hive 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 heart is in the hands of the Lord."

A king is history's slave.

History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.

Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples * - as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him- he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history- whatever had to be performed.

* "To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."

The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was happening or coincided with it.

When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?

Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.

Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.

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