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Mutual Action and Reaction of Attack and Defence We shall now consider attack and defence separately, as far as they can be separated from each other. We commence with the defensive for the following reasons: it is certainly very natural and necessary to base the rules for the defence upon those of the offensive, and vice versa; but one of the two must still have a third point of departure, if the whole chain of ideas is to have a beginning, that is, to be possible. The first question concerns this point. If we reflect upon the commencement of war philosophically, the conception of war does not originate
properly with the offensive, as that form has for its absolute object, not so much fighting as the taking
possession of something. The idea of war arises first by the defensive, for that form has the battle for
its direct object, as warding off and fighting plainly are one and the same. The warding off is directed
entirely against the attack; therefore supposes it, necessarily; but the attack is not directed against the
warding off; it is directed upon something else -- the taking possession; consequently does not presuppose
the warding off. It lies, therefore, in the nature of things, that the party who first brings the element of
war into action, the party from whose point of view two opposite parties are first conceived, also establishes
the first laws of war, and that party is the defender. We are not speaking of any individual case; we are
only dealing with a general, an abstract case, which theory imagines in order to determine the course it
is to take. |
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