different degrees on the road to perfection, the one inferior to the other; they are entitled to be treated as on an equality, and it must rest with the judgment to estimate their relative fitness for use in each particular case.
To enumerate these different manners which may spring from the particular nature of an army, of a country, or of circumstances, is not our object here; the influence of these things generally we have already noticed.
We acknowledge, therefore, that in this chapter we are unable to give any maxims, rules, or methods, because history does not furnish the means; and on the contrary, at almost every moment, we there meet with peculiarities such as are often quite inexplicable, and often also surprise us by their singularity. But it is not on that account unprofitable to study history in connection with this subject also. Where neither system nor any dogmatic apparatus can be found, there may still be truth, and this truth will then, in most cases, only be discovered by a practised judgment and the tact of long experience. Therefore, even if history does not here furnish any formula, we may be certain that here as well as everywhere else, it will give us exercise for the judgment.
We shall only set up one comprehensive general principle, or rather we shall reproduce, and present to view more vividly, in the form of a separate principle, the natural presupposition of all that has now been said.
All the means which have been here set forth have only a relative value; they are all placed under the legal ban of a certain disability on both sides; above this region a higher law prevails, and there is a totally different world of phenomena. The general must never forget this; he must never move in imaginary security within the narrower sphere, as if he were in an absolute medium; never look upon the means which he employs here as the necessary or as the only means, and still adhere to them, even when he himself already trembles at their insufficiency.