1 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.
2 In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens.
3 There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of all causes.
4 The historical figures at the head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.
5 In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the reaction.
6 The books he read were chiefly historical, and on these he spent a certain sum every year.
7 According to this view the power of historical personages, represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events.
8 But why intellectual activity is considered by the historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole historical movement is hard to understand.
9 And so these historians also see and admit historical events which are exceptions to the theory.
10 They say that historical personages have power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has been delegated to them.
11 The theory that this connection is based on the transference of the collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.
12 So say the third class of historians who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to journalists, as the expression of their age.
13 Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest question that presents itself when examining each historical event.
14 Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed that the events depended on those commands.
15 But examining the events themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on events.