and discoveries. It is the great few who transform society; the multitude follows them. Modern democracy, he believed, has produced millions of fools who vote, other men who go to Parliament and palaver, and, inevitably, the few who act. TOLSTOI 'S INFINITESIMAL ELEMENTS By contrast, Count Leo Tolstoi asserted that there is no greater fool than he who thinks he makes history and believes others when they assure him he does. Not even a leader like Napoleon Bonaparte, according to Tolstoi, has any
The term constantif, which Metz borrowed from Austin, should be rendered by "constantive" and not by "ascertaining" (p. 25). Finally, "actor" to translate Greimas 's concept of actant is misleading and actant is usually kept (see Ducrôt and Todorov, Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, p. 224), and discours image when translated as "image discourse" is not very
E SSAYS ON TWENTIETH-C ENTURY H ISTORY In the series Critical Perspectives on the Past, edited by Susan Porter Benson, Stephen Brier, and Roy Rosenzweig Also in this series: Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes, eds., Oral History and Public Memories Tiffany Ruby Patterson, Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life Lisa M. Fine, The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. Van Gosse and Richard Moser, eds., The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in