“There can be no cause of a historical event other than the one cause of all causes.”Lev Tolstoi · Război și pace · 1869 · volumul 4, partea 1, capitolul 2
No historical event has a single culprit, only a web of causes sustaining each other.
Tolstoi attacks the illusion that history can be explained by a single reason: a leader, a decision, a date. He sees events as the product of countless small wills, none of them decisive. That is why the only final term remains the metaphysical one, the cause of all causes. Example: the fall of an empire cannot be reduced to one weak emperor, but to decades of decisions, droughts, ideas, and mistakes that sustain one another.
Why it matters It is an antidote to the simple explanations in news and public debate, where everything gets a single culprit.