What are the motifs in To the Finland Station; a Study in the Writing and Acting of History by Edmund Wilson?

Intellectual pursuit is a recurring idea. Another theme of the book is that of intellectual pursuit. This is evident in the works of all the writers discussed in the book. They weren't writing just for the sake of writing; they were looking for something in their intellectual activities. Written history wasn't just a list of events and what happened; there were reasons for what happened and this is what the writers were trying to understand. They could analyze the reasons and apply them to other situations in the present. Marx and Engels were the first to say that active intervention could influence the outcome of events.