39 Great simplification of the knowledge required

That in this manner the number of subjects for theory is much simplified, and the knowledge requisite for the conduct of war much reduced, is easy to perceive. The very great mass of knowledge and appliances of skill which minister to the action of war in general, and which are necessary before an army fully equipped can take the field, unite in a few great results before they are able to reach, in actual war, the final goal of their activity; just as the streams of a country unite themselves in rivers before they fall into the sea. Only those activities emptying themselves directly into the sea of war have to be studied by him who is to conduct its operations.

40 This explains the rapid growth of great generals, and why a general is not a man of learning

This result of our considerations is in fact so necessary, that any other would have made us distrustful of their accuracy. Only thus is explained how so often men have made their appearance with great success in war, and indeed in the higher ranks even in supreme command, whose pursuits had been previously of a totally different nature; indeed how, as a rule, the most distinguished generals have never risen from the very learned or really erudite class of officers, but have been mostly men who, from the circumstances of their position, could not have attained to any great amount of knowledge. On that account those who have considered it necessary or even beneficial to commence the education of a future general by instruction in all details have always been ridiculed as absurd pedants. It would be easy to show the injurious tendency of such a course, because the human mind is trained by the knowledge imparted to it and the direction given to its ideas. Only what is great can make it great; the little can only make it little, if the mind itself does not reject it as something repugnant.

41 Former contradictions

Because this simplicity of knowledge requisite in war was not attended to, but that knowledge was always jumbled up with the whole impedimenta of subordinate sciences and arts, therefore the palpable opposition to the events of real life which resulted could not be solved otherwise than by ascribing it all to genius, which requires no theory and for which no theory could be prescribed.

42 On this account all use of knowledge was denied, and everything ascribed to natural talents

People with whom common sense had the upper hand felt sensible of the immense distance remaining to be filled up between a genius of the highest order and a learned pedant; and they became in a manner free-thinkers, rejected all belief in theory, and affirmed the conduct of war to be a natural function of man, which he performs more or less well according as he has brought with him into the world more or less talent in that direction. It cannot be denied that these were nearer to the truth than those who placed a value on false knowledge; at the same time it may easily be seen that such a view is itself but an exaggeration. No activity of the human understanding is possible without a certain stock of ideas; but these are, for the greater part at least, not innate but acquired, and constitute his knowledge. The only question therefore is, of what kind should these ideas be; and we think we have answered it if we say that they should be directed on those things which man has directly to deal with in war.

43 The knowledge must be made suitable to the position

Inside this field of military activity, the knowledge required must be different according to the station of the commander. It will be directed on smaller and more circumscribed objects if he holds an inferior, upon greater and more comprehensive ones if he holds a higher situation. There are field marshals who would not have shone at the head of a cavalry regiment, and vice versa.

44 The knowledge in war is very simple, but not, at the same time, very easy

But although the knowledge in war is simple, that is to say directed to so few subjects, and taking up those only in their final results, the art of execution is not, on that account, easy. Of the difficulties to