Excerpt from War and Peace, Vol. 5 This new branch of mathematics, which was unknown to the ancients, and applies so admirably to the problems of motion, by admitting infinitesimally small quantities, - that is, those by which the principal condition of motion is reestablished, - namely, absolute continuity, in itself corrects the inevitable error which the human mind is bound to make when it contemplates the sepa rate units of motion instead of continuous motion. In searching for the laws of historical movements precisely the same things must be observed. The prog ress of humanity, arising from an infinite collection of human wills, is continuous. The apprehension of the laws of this onward march is the aim of history. But in order to discover the laws of continuous motion in the sum of all the volitions of men, human reason assumes arbitrary and separate units. History first studies an arbitrary series of uninterrupted events, and contemplates it separate from the others, albeit there is and can be no beginning of an event, but every event is the direct outgrowth of its predecessor. Secondly, history studies the deeds of a single man, a tsar, a colonel, as representing the sum of men's voli tions, when in reality the sum of men's volitions is never expressed in the activities of any one historical personage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.