15.  The moral quantities must not be excluded in war.

But now the activity in War is never directed solely against matter; it is always at the same time directed against the intelligent force which gives life to this matter, and to separate the two from each other is impossible.

But the intelligent forces are only visible to the inner eye, and this is different in each person, and often different in the same person at different times.

As danger is the general element in which everything moves in War, it is also chiefly by courage, the feeling of one’s own power, that the judgment is differently influenced.  It is to a certain extent the crystalline lens through which all appearances pass before reaching the understanding.

And yet we cannot doubt that these things acquire a certain objective value simply through experience.

Every one knows the moral effect of a surprise, of an attack in flank or rear.  Every one thinks less of the enemy’s courage as soon as he turns his back, and ventures much more in pursuit than when pursued.  Every one judges of the enemy’s General by his reputed talents, by his age and experience, and shapes his course accordingly.  Every one casts a scrutinising glance at the spirit and feeling of his own and the enemy’s troops.  All these and similar effects in the province of the moral nature of man have established themselves by experience, are perpetually recurring, and therefore warrant our reckoning them as real quantities of their kind.  What could we do with any theory which should leave them out of consideration?

Certainly experience is an indispensable title for these truths.  With psychological and philosophical sophistries no theory, no General, should meddle.

16.  Principal difficulty of A theory for the conduct of war.

In order to comprehend clearly the difficulty of the proposition which is contained in a theory for the conduct of War, and thence to deduce the necessary characteristics of such a theory, we must take a closer view of the chief particulars which make up the nature of activity in War.

17.  First speciality.—­Moral forces and their effects. (Hostile feeling.)

The first of these specialities consists in the moral forces and effects.

The combat is, in its origin, the expression of hostile feeling, but in our great combats, which we call Wars, the hostile feeling frequently resolves itself into merely a hostile view, and there is usually no innate hostile feeling residing in individual against individual.  Nevertheless, the combat never passes off without such feelings being brought into activity.  National hatred, which is seldom wanting in our Wars, is a substitute for personal hostility in the breast