ould use them, that is, merely as aids to judgment. If
it is an acknowledged principle in tactics that in the usual order of
battle cavalry should be placed behind infantry, not in line with it,
still it would be folly on this account to condemn every deviation from
this principle. Criticism must investigate the grounds of the deviation,
and it is only in case these are insufficient that it has a right to
appeal to principles laid down in theory. If it is further established
in theory that a divided attack diminishes the probability of success,
still it would be just as unreasonable, whenever there is a divided
attack and an unsuccessful issue, to regard the latter as the result of
the former, without further investigation into the connection between
the two, as where a divided attack is successful to infer from it the
fallacy of that theoretical principle. The spirit of investigation which
belongs to criticism cannot allow either. Criticism therefore supports
itself chiefly on the results of the analytical investigation of theory;
what has been made out and determined by theory does not require to be
demonstrated over again by criticism, and it is so determined by theory
that criticism may find it ready demonstrated.

This office of criticism, of examining the effect produced by certain
causes, and whether a means applied has answered its object, will be
easy enough if cause and effect, means and end, are all near together.

If an Army is surprised, and therefore cannot make a regular and
intelligent use of its powers and resources, then the effect of the
surprise is not doubtful.--If theory has determined that in a battle
the convergent form of attack is calculated to produce greater but
less certain results, then the question is whether he who employs that
convergent form had in view chiefly that greatness of result as his
object; if so, the proper means were chosen. But if by this form he
intended to make the result more certain, and that expectation was
founded not on some exceptional circumstances (in this case), but on the
general nature of the convergent form, as has happened a hundred times,
then he mistook the nature of the means and committed an error.

Here the work of military investigation and criticism is easy, and it
will always be so when confined to the immediate effects and objects.
This can be done quite at option, if we abstract the connection of the
parts with the whole, and only look at things in