20.  Other powers of feeling.

If we look upon these affections which are excited by hostility and danger as peculiarly belonging to War, we do not, therefore, exclude from it all others accompanying man in his life’s journey.  They will also find room here frequently enough.  Certainly we may say that many a petty action of the passions is silenced in this serious business of life; but that holds good only in respect to those acting in a lower sphere, who, hurried on from one state of danger and exertion to another, lose sight of the rest of the things of life, become unused to deceit, because it is of no avail with death, and so attain to that soldierly simplicity of character which has always been the best representative of the military profession.  In higher regions it is otherwise, for the higher a man’s rank, the more he must look around him; then arise interests on every side, and a manifold activity of the passions of good and bad.  Envy and generosity, pride and humility, fierceness and tenderness, all may appear as active powers in this great drama.

21.  Peculiarity of mind.

The peculiar characteristics of mind in the chief actor have, as well as those of the feelings, a high importance.  From an imaginative, flighty, inexperienced head, and from a calm, sagacious understanding, different things are to be expected.

22.  From the diversity in mental INDIVIDUALITIES arises the diversity of ways leading to the end.

It is this great diversity in mental individuality, the influence of which is to be supposed as chiefly felt in the higher ranks, because it increases as we progress upwards, which chiefly produces the diversity of ways leading to the end noticed by us in the first book, and which gives, to the play of probabilities and chance, such an unequal share in determining the course of events.

23.  Second peculiarity.—­Living reaction.

The second peculiarity in War is the living reaction, and the reciprocal action resulting therefrom.  We do not here speak of the difficulty of estimating that reaction, for that is included in the difficulty before mentioned, of treating the moral powers as quantities; but of this, that reciprocal action, by its nature, opposes anything like a regular plan.  The effect which any measure produces upon the enemy is the most distinct of all the data which action affords; but every theory must keep to classes (or groups) of phenomena, and can never take up the really individual case in itself:  that must everywhere be left to judgment and talent.  It is therefore natural that in a business such as War, which in its plan—­built upon general circumstances—­is so often thwarted by unexpected and singular accidents, more must generally be left to talent; and less use can be made of a theoretical guide than in any other.