till has also its value. If a young man to show his skill in
horsemanship leaps across a deep cleft, then he is bold; if he makes
the same leap pursued by a troop of head-chopping Janissaries he is only
resolute. But the farther off the necessity from the point of action,
the greater the number of relations intervening which the mind has to
traverse; in order to realise them, by so much the less does necessity
take from boldness in action. If Frederick the Great, in the year 1756,
saw that War was inevitable, and that he could only escape destruction
by being beforehand with his enemies, it became necessary for him to
commence the War himself, but at the same time it was certainly very
bold: for few men in his position would have made up their minds to do
so.

Although Strategy is only the province of Generals-in-Chief or
Commanders in the higher positions, still boldness in all the other
branches of an Army is as little a matter of indifference to it as their
other military virtues. With an Army belonging to a bold race, and in
which the spirit of boldness has been always nourished, very different
things may be undertaken than with one in which this virtue, is unknown;
for that reason we have considered it in connection with an Army. But
our subject is specially the boldness of the General, and yet we have
not much to say about it after having described this military virtue in
a general way to the best of our ability.

The higher we rise in a position of command, the more of the mind,
understanding, and penetration predominate in activity, the more
therefore is boldness, which is a property of the feelings, kept in
subjection, and for that reason we find it so rarely in the highest
positions, but then, so much the more should it be admired. Boldness,
directed by an overruling intelligence, is the stamp of the hero: this
boldness does not consist in venturing directly against the nature of
things, in a downright contempt of the laws of probability, but, if
a choice is once made, in the rigorous adherence to that higher
calculation which genius, the tact of judgment, has gone over with the
speed of lightning. The more boldness lends wings to the mind and the
discernment, so much the farther they will reach in their flight, so
much the more comprehensive will be the view, the more exact the result,
but certainly always only in the sense that with greater objects greater
dangers are connected. The ordinary man, not to spe