Status Updates From War And Peace

“During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left infilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of Christian’s men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one another.
What does all this mean? Why did it happen? […] What were the causes of these events? What force made men act so?”

“As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.”

“The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen before, were now visible in the distance.”

End of book eleven. Man’s inhumanity…Moscow begins to burn.

The death of Vereshchágin.

“To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.”

“A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely small […] Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.”

this is taking a while, but im ready for it to be SUPER worth it... right? guys...