| Author: | Francois Guizot | ISBN: | 1230000250155 |
| Publisher: | Liongate Press | Publication: | July 5, 2014 |
| Imprint: | Language: | English |
| Author: | Francois Guizot |
| ISBN: | 1230000250155 |
| Publisher: | Liongate Press |
| Publication: | July 5, 2014 |
| Imprint: | |
| Language: | English |
Every history, and especially that of France, is one vast, long drama, in which events are linked together according to defined laws, and in which the actors play parts not ready made and learned by heart, parts depending, in fact, not only upon the accidents of their birth, but also upon their own ideas and their own will. There are, in the history of peoples, two sets of causes essentially different, and, at the same time, closely connected; the natural causes which are set over the general course of events, and the unrestricted causes which are incidental. Men do not make the whole of history it has laws of higher origin; but, in history, men are unrestricted agents who produce for it results and exercise over it an influence for which they are responsible. The fated causes and the unrestricted causes, the defined laws of events and the spontaneous actions of man's free agencyherein is the whole of history. And in the faithful reproduction of these two elements consist the truth and the moral of stories from it.
Every history, and especially that of France, is one vast, long drama, in which events are linked together according to defined laws, and in which the actors play parts not ready made and learned by heart, parts depending, in fact, not only upon the accidents of their birth, but also upon their own ideas and their own will. There are, in the history of peoples, two sets of causes essentially different, and, at the same time, closely connected; the natural causes which are set over the general course of events, and the unrestricted causes which are incidental. Men do not make the whole of history it has laws of higher origin; but, in history, men are unrestricted agents who produce for it results and exercise over it an influence for which they are responsible. The fated causes and the unrestricted causes, the defined laws of events and the spontaneous actions of man's free agencyherein is the whole of history. And in the faithful reproduction of these two elements consist the truth and the moral of stories from it.
