Volume III, Part 1, Chapter 1
The famous opening of Volume III: "When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall?" — Tolstoy's manifesto against historical causation by great men.
Read in Books4Free →Theme: History, Free Will, and Necessity
From War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy's most controversial preoccupation: history is not made by leaders' decisions but by the infinitesimal actions of millions, and individual freedom is largely an illusion.
Epilogue, Part 2
The extended philosophical essay arguing that the historian's task is to find the laws governing collective human action.
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