re of action, and that when we reach those ranks where we can look
for no other notions but those which the regulations of the service and
experience afford, we must help them with the methodic forms bordering
on those regulations. This will serve both as a support to their
judgment and a barrier against those extravagant and erroneous views
which are so especially to be dreaded in a sphere where experience is so
costly.

Besides this absolute need of method in action, we must also acknowledge
that it has a positive advantage, which is that, through the constant
repetition of a formal exercise, a readiness, precision, and firmness
is attained in the movement of troops which diminishes the natural
friction, and makes the machine move easier.

Method will therefore be the more generally used, become the more
indispensable, the farther down the scale of rank the position of the
active agent; and on the other hand, its use will diminish upwards,
until in the highest position it quite disappears. For this reason it is
more in its place in tactics than in strategy.

War in its highest aspects consists not of an infinite number of little
events, the diversities in which compensate each other, and which
therefore by a better or worse method are better or worse governed, but
of separate great decisive events which must be dealt with separately.
It is not like a field of stalks, which, without any regard to the
particular form of each stalk, will be mowed better or worse, according
as the mowing instrument is good or bad, but rather as a group of large
trees, to which the axe must be laid with judgment, according to the
particular form and inclination of each separate trunk.

How high up in military activity the admissibility of method in action
reaches naturally determines itself, not according to actual rank, but
according to things; and it affects the highest positions in a less
degree, only because these positions have the most comprehensive
subjects of activity. A constant order of battle, a constant formation
of advance guards and outposts, are methods by which a General ties
not only his subordinates' hands, but also his own in certain cases.
Certainly they may have been devised by himself, and may be applied
by him according to circumstances, but they may also be a subject of
theory, in so far as they are based on the general properties of troops
and weapons. On the other hand, any method by which definite plans
for w