ief.

The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section of
the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing, hacking,
burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for these actions
from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The noncommissioned
officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the action itself less
frequently than the soldiers, but they already give commands. An
officer still less often acts directly himself, but commands still more
frequently. A general does nothing but command the troops, indicates the
objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon himself. The commander in chief
never takes direct part in the action itself, but only gives general
orders concerning the movement of the mass of the troops. A similar
relation of people to one another is seen in every combination of men
for common activity--in agriculture, trade, and every administration.

And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to the
highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action, combine
in such relations that the more directly they participate in performing
the action the less they can command and the more numerous they are,
while the less their direct participation in the action itself, the more
they command and the fewer of them there are; rising in this way from
the lowest ranks to the man at the top, who takes the least direct share
in the action and directs his activity chiefly to commanding.

This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.

Having restored the condition of time under which all events occur,
we find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest part
in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively directed to
commanding.

CHAPTER VII

When an event is taking place people express their opinions and wishes
about it, and as the event results from the collective activity of
many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure to be
fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions expr