1 He noted this down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic importance.
2 Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.
3 A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance.
4 In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.
5 And so the question whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.
6 It appears so to us because we see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all the personal human interests that people had.
7 In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable.
8 Only unconscious action bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never understands its significance.
9 But the assignment of these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic facts.
10 Only then, expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.
11 And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations.
12 In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his power is itself a force producing events.
13 Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown to us.
14 In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very clearly and definitely understood without any sense of contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly free and partly compulsory.
15 By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will.