E OF
EXERTION.

Now, if we want to overcome the enemy by the duration of the contest, we
must content ourselves with as small objects as possible, for it is in
the nature of the thing that a great end requires a greater expenditure
of force than a small one; but the smallest object that we can propose
to ourselves is simple passive resistance, that is a combat without any
positive view. In this way, therefore, our means attain their greatest
relative value, and therefore the result is best secured. How far now
can this negative mode of proceeding be carried? Plainly not to absolute
passivity, for mere endurance would not be fighting; and the defensive
is an activity by which so much of the enemy's power must be destroyed
that he must give up his object. That alone is what we aim at in each
single act, and therein consists the negative nature of our object.

No doubt this negative object in its single act is not so effective
as the positive object in the same direction would be, supposing it
successful; but there is this difference in its favour, that it succeeds
more easily than the positive, and therefore it holds out greater
certainty of success; what is wanting in the efficacy of its single
act must be gained through time, that is, through the duration of the
contest, and therefore this negative intention, which constitutes the
principle of the pure defensive, is also the natural means of overcoming
the enemy by the duration of the combat, that is of wearing him out.

Here lies the origin of that difference of OFFENSIVE and DEFENSIVE, the
influence of which prevails throughout the whole province of War. We
cannot at present pursue this subject further than to observe that from
this negative intention are to be deduced all the advantages and all the
stronger forms of combat which are on the side of the Defensive, and in
which that philosophical-dynamic law which exists between the
greatness and the certainty of success is realised. We shall resume the
consideration of all this hereafter.

If then the negative purpose, that is the concentration of all the means
into a state of pure resistance, affords a superiority in the contest,
and if this advantage is sufficient to BALANCE whatever superiority in
numbers the adversary may have, then the mere DURATION of the contest
will suffice gradually to bring the loss of force on the part of the
adversary to a point at which the political object can no longer be an
equivale