War and Peace By Leo Tolstoy Summary and Analysis Book XI:
Chapters 1–12   Tolstoy introduces this section by showing the
error of applying scientific analysis to history. As a
mathematician takes arbitrary small units and by integral
calculus develops a system of dynamics to understand the
continuity of motion, so does a historian take small units of
history to understand the continuity of history. But we fall
into error, Tolstoy says, when the"unit" we choose to examine is
the career of a great man or the effects of a particular
political crisis. What we fail to realize, he continues, is that
these"units" are made up of still smaller forces operating upon
the great man or the political phenomenon. As we establish a
unit of"absolute motion," so must we examine the"homogeneous
elements" of history: single human beings and their daily lives.
For, he says, it is"the sum of men's individual wills [that]
produced both the revolution and Napoleon; and only the sum of
those wills endured them and then destroyed the