War and Peace Lesson Plan

At the beginning of Book 4 Part 2 Tolstoy writes: "The human mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in the human soul. And the human mind, without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, seizes the first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible, and says: "This is the cause!" Do you think it is possible through research and analysis to assign causes to events? What are the implications of this position? What is the process that historians or analysts must go through to make sense of events?

Tolstoy’s point...