y succeed to a certain degree in placing himself in the
position of the person whose act he has under review. In many cases
he can do so sufficiently near for any practical purpose, but in
many instances it is the very reverse, and this fact should never be
overlooked.

But it is neither necessary nor desirable that criticism should
completely identify itself with the person acting. In War, as in all
matters of skill, there is a certain natural aptitude required which
is called talent. This may be great or small. In the first case it may
easily be superior to that of the critic, for what critic can pretend to
the skill of a Frederick or a Buonaparte? Therefore, if criticism is not
to abstain altogether from offering an opinion where eminent talent is
concerned, it must be allowed to make use of the advantage which its
enlarged horizon affords. Criticism must not, therefore, treat the
solution of a problem by a great General like a sum in arithmetic; it
is only through the results and through the exact coincidences of events
that it can recognise with admiration how much is due to the exercise
of genius, and that it first learns the essential combination which the
glance of that genius devised.

But for every, even the smallest, act of genius it is necessary that
criticism should take a higher point of view, so that, having at command
many objective grounds of decision, it may be as little subjective as
possible, and that the critic may not take the limited scope of his own
mind as a standard.

This elevated position of criticism, its praise and blame pronounced
with a full knowledge of all the circumstances, has in itself nothing
which hurts our feelings; it only does so if the critic pushes himself
forward, and speaks in a tone as if all the wisdom which he has obtained
by an exhaustive examination of the event under consideration were
really his own talent. Palpable as is this deception, it is one which
people may easily fall into through vanity, and one which is naturally
distasteful to others. It very often happens that although the critic
has no such arrogant pretensions, they are imputed to him by the
reader because he has not expressly disclaimed them, and then follows
immediately a charge of a want of the power of critical judgment.

If therefore a critic points out an error made by a Frederick or a
Buonaparte, that does not mean that he who makes the criticism would not
have committed the same error; he may