iginality and boldness of his views, the
inexhaustible fecundity of his lesser inventions, Law holds an
undisputed place among the great imaginative minds.

III

We said above that commerce, in its higher manifestations, is a kind of
war.[135] Here, then, would be the place to study the military
imagination. The subject cannot be treated save by a man of the
profession, so I shall limit myself to a few brief remarks based on
personal information, or gleaned from authorities.

Between the various types of imagination hitherto studied we have shown
great differences as regards their external conditions. While the
so-called forms of pure imagination, whence esthetic, mythic, religious,
mystic creations arise, can realize themselves by submitting to material
conditions that are simple and not very exacting, the others can become
embodied only when they satisfy an _ensemble_ of numerous, inevitable,
rigorously determined conditions; the goal is fixed, the materials are
rigid, there is little choice of the appropriate means. If there be
added to the inflexible laws of nature unforeseen human passions and
determinations, as in political or social invention, or the offensive
combination of opponents, as in commerce and war; then the imaginative
construction is confronted with problems of constantly growing
complexity. The most ingenious inventor cannot invent an object as a
whole, letting his work develop through an immanent logic:--the early
plan must be continually modified and readapted; and the difficulty
arises not merely from the multiple elements of the problem to be
solved, but from ceaseless changes in their positions. So one can
advance only step by step, and go forward by calculations and strict
examination of possibilities. Hence it results that underneath this
thick covering of material and intellectual conditions (calculation,
reasoning), spontaneity (the aptness for finding new combinations, "that
art of inventing without which we hardly advance"[136]) reveals itself
to few clear-sighted persons; but, in spite of everything, this creative
power is everywhere, flowing like subterranean streams, a vivifying
agency.

These general remarks, although not applicable exclusively to the
military imagination, find their justification in it, because of its
extreme complexity. Let us rapidly enumerate, proceeding from without
inwards, the enormous mass of representations that it has to move and
combine in order to ma