n a great and distinguished
Commander of contracted mind, but very numerous are the instances of men
who, after serving with the greatest distinction in inferior positions,
remained below mediocrity in the highest, from insufficiency of
intellectual capacity. That even amongst those holding the post of
Commander-in-Chief there may be a difference according to the degree of
their plenitude of power is a matter of course.

46. SCIENCE MUST BECOME ART.

Now we have yet to consider one condition which is more necessary for
the knowledge of the conduct of War than for any other, which is, that
it must pass completely into the mind and almost completely cease to be
something objective. In almost all other arts and occupations of life
the active agent can make use of truths which he has only learnt once,
and in the spirit and sense of which he no longer lives, and which he
extracts from dusty books. Even truths which he has in hand and uses
daily may continue something external to himself, If the architect takes
up a pen to settle the strength of a pier by a complicated calculation,
the truth found as a result is no emanation from his own mind. He had
first to find the data with labour, and then to submit these to an
operation of the mind, the rule for which he did not discover, the
necessity of which he is perhaps at the moment only partly conscious of,
but which he applies, for the most part, as if by mechanical dexterity.
But it is never so in War. The moral reaction, the ever-changeful form
of things, makes it necessary for the chief actor to carry in himself
the whole mental apparatus of his knowledge, that anywhere and at every
pulse-beat he may be capable of giving the requisite decision from
himself. Knowledge must, by this complete assimilation with his own
mind and life, be converted into real power. This is the reason
why everything seems so easy with men distinguished in War, and why
everything is ascribed to natural talent. We say natural talent, in
order thereby to distinguish it from that which is formed and matured by
observation and study.

We think that by these reflections we have explained the problem of a
theory of the conduct of War; and pointed out the way to its solution.

Of the two fields into which we have divided the conduct of War, tactics
and strategy, the theory of the latter contains unquestionably, as
before observed, the greatest difficulties, because the first is almost
limited to a cir