BY STEWART SLATER

The Zuangzhi (or The Book of Chuang Tzu if you still call Beijing, Peking) is not found on many Western nightstands. Which is a pity. For, the second great work of Daoism (Taoism if you prefer), and the first to be written by a historical human being, is a wonderful book, full of stories, fables and metaphors designed to illuminate but not explain The Way That Cannot Be Named.

Early in the book, we meet Chef Ding, whose knife skills so impress Lord Wenhui that the latter demands an explanation. Early in his career, the cook says, he saw the animal as a single unit and so would hack away at it, with the result that he had to change his knife every month. Later, as he began to understand how animals are put together, he learned how to cut with the grain and only needed to change his knife once a year. Finally, however, he learned that there were minute gaps between the muscles and, if he could slide his knife in there, the animal would just fall apart. It had been nineteen years since this insight had struck him and he was still using the same knife.

For a belief system which prizes “going with the flow”, this is obviously a valuable metaphor, but it remains a valid insight even for those who would not call themselves Daoists. Often, what appears to be a magnificent achievement is really the result of being in the right place and allowing events to take their course.

Cinema-goers of recent times have been able to watch Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, the badly-reviewed biopic of the Corsican corporal while television watchers (or at least those willing to stomach Shami Chakrabati’s transformation from Corbyn-apologist into ancient historian) have been able to treat themselves to a series on Julius Caesar and the fall of the Roman Republic, a coincidence which has led some to proclaim the return of the “Great Man” theory of history.

Never particularly popular in the modern academy perhaps because it denies midwit scholars the ability to say, “Actually, it’s a bit more complex than that..” before launching into a long diatribe about balances of payments, innovation, sexism, racism, slavery, colonialism, transgenderism or whatever they think will make them appear both clever and right-on, it has long exercised a hold on the popular imagination (the ancients loved it). History is not a story of impersonal forces inexorably working their way through time but of recognisably human characters daring to greatness and bending events to their will.

But there is great and there is great.

The Roman Republic had lasted almost 500 years by Caesar’s time. It had encompassed the city’s rise from small Italian settlement, no different to many others, to the mistress of the Mediterranean. But for the preceding century, the rules by which it had operated had started to fray. Tribunes of the Plebs had been granted personal inviolacy by the constitution – even to touch one was a sin. In the 130’s and 120’s B.C., two of the holders of the office, the brothers Gracchi, were murdered. There was supposed to be a ten year gap between consulships to avoid the risk of tyranny – between 107 and 86 B.C., Gaius Marius held the office seven times. His one-time subordinate, Sulla, marched on Rome, defeated the forces of the Senate and set himself up as dictator, purging his enemies in one of the many occasions when the streets of the city ran red with blood, before refounding the institution along more congenial lines and retiring.

Politician jostled with politician, having a rival put on trial (preferably for a capital offence) was a favoured tactic. Catiline failed to win the consulate so tried to mount a coup. All the time, the rich grew richer (all that booty from empire- governorships were a licence to mint denarii – and property bought cheap from the estates of dead rivals) while the poor did not.

Did Caesar really end the Roman Republic, or, like chef Ding’s ox, did it just fall apart around him? The American Founding Father, John Adams, said, “Our constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” It is clear that the Romans, or at least their elite, were no longer religious and moral. Should we expect, therefore, in Caesar’s absence that the Republic would have persisted or rather that we would have a month named after some other Roman, a Metellus or a Caecilius, perhaps, who would have contrived to be the last man standing when it all fell apart?

This is not to decry Caesar, nor to indulge in some modern project of abasing the great to flatter the mediocre. I am, despite the foregoing, a fan. But if it is true greatness we seek in Rome, Caesar’s nephew and heir, Octavian/Augustus seems a much better bet. Thrust into politics while still a teenager, he took an inchoate world of flux and uncertainty and melded it into a system which lasted, more or less unchanged, for 400 years. Rome’s Republic would, I think, have fallen without Caesar. Without Octavian, it is far from certain it would have become an empire (Alexander’s empire had, within a few short years of his death been carved up by his generals).

Napoleon seems a far more Augustan figure. The philosopher Hegel may have described him as the “world-spirit on horseback”, seeing him as the culmination of the impersonal forces of history, but Hegel said many things, few of which survive first contact with reality. It is hard to see how, absent the little Corsican, the events of his reign would have occurred. There was no historical inevitability about France invading Russia, nor inventing the particular set of laws which became the Code Napoleon, still less invading Egypt with a cohort of scholars, kick-starting Egyptology. If Caesar surfed the tide of history, Napoleon dammed it and bent it in a new direction.

At one level, this is an intellectual parlour game. We can spend all day arguing over who was truly great and who benefited from circumstance. Would any Greek but Alexander have conquered Persia? Probably not (mainly because no other Greek would have tried). Would any admiral but Themistocles have defeated the Persians at Salamis? Quite possibly, small nimble triremes had a huge advantage in those tight, shallow waters.

But when we inflate the number of great figures in history, we make it appear easier than it is to become one. And we turn politics into a magnet for those with more self-belief than self-awareness. David Cameron is famously held to have said, “How hard can it be?” when asked if he thought he would be a good Prime Minister. As I argued here, that didn’t entirely work out. Sadiq Khan may be everyone’s favourite short-arsed incompetent, but judging by his Covid testimony, in his own mind, he bestrides narrow London like a colossus. Had he merely been invited to that Cobra meeting, no-one would have died. In the mirror, Andy Burnham sees the commander of the legions of the North, the only thing stopping him from unleashing Hell on the barbarians of Westminster being an ungrateful party and his fondness for chips and gravy. Everyone else (particularly those who know) breathes a sigh of relief he will only mess up Manchester.

It is easy to mock them for this (which is, of course, no reason not to) but in this they reflect the rest of us. We all have an “agency” bias – we believe things happen because individual people do them and ignore the deeper forces at work. The Covid inquiry is currently looking for someone to blame because someone has to be at fault. But an approach which prioritises the personal (and the personnel) is unlikely to leave us better off when the next pandemic hits (if for no other reason than that they will have shuffled on, replaced by the next bunch whose egos write cheques their talents cannot pay).

We would do well to remember that “There is a tide in the affairs of men” which only sometimes “leads on to success”. And if it does so, individuals often have nothing to do with it.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.