War and Peace
Overview
The makers of Encyclopaedia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.
Top Highlights
“What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naïve 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.” (Page 342)
“They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.” (Page 389)
“What science can there be in a matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one knows when?” (Page 365)
“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.” (Page 343)
“But to men who do not admit that Russia was formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French Empire was formed and the war with Russia begun by the will of one man, Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of human events is predetermined from on high—depends on the coincidence of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon’s influence on the course of these events is purely external and fictitious.” (Page 447)
- Title: War and Peace
- Author: Leo Tolstoy
- Edition: Second Edition
- Series: Great Books of the Western World
- Volume: 51
- Publishers: Encyclopedia Britannica, Robert P. Gwinn
- Print Publication Date: 1990
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Russia › History--Alexander I, 1801-1825--Fiction; Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815 › Campaigns--Russia--Fiction; Russian fiction › Translations into English
- ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
- Resource ID: LLS:GBWW51
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:11:46Z
