________________________________________________
_ Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time,
can relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of
years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can
by His sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but
man acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs.
Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that
no command can be executed without some preceding order having been
given rendering the execution of the last command possible.
No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole
series of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and
never refers to a whole series of events but always to one moment only
of an event.
When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to
war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of
consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have
commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered
such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to
Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the
fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on- millions of commands,
which formed a whole series corresponding to a series of events
which brought the French armies into Russia.
If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an
invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so much
time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once attempted
to execute that design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with
which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a
conviction he repeatedly expressed)- this came about because his
commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first case,
but did so correspond in the latter.
For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man
should order what can be executed. But to know what can and what
cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's
invasion of Russia in which millions participated, but even in the
simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles may arise
to prevent its execution. Every order executed is always one of an
immense number unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with
the course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get
linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a
series of events, and are executed.
Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which
precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and
out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent
with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that
were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the
chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in
the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and
petty events, such for instance as all those which led the French
armies to Russia, is generalized into one event in accord with the
result produced by that series of events, and corresponding with
this generalization the whole series of commands is also generalized
into a single expression of will.
We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In
reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling
an expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or
expressions of his will, very variously and indefinitely directed.
Amid a long series of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series,
for the campaign of 1812, was carried out- not because those orders
differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they
coincided with the course of events that led the French army into
Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not
because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but
because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the
stencil.
So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the
events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event,
but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two.
To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to
reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not
from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the
command himself takes part in
This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what
is called power. This relation consists in the following:
For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in
which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common
action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the
same.
Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations
toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,
and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action
for which they have combined.
Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one
of the most striking and definite examples is an army.
Every army is composed of lower grades of the service- the rank
and file- of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next
higher military rank- corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom
there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are
still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is
concentrated in one person.
A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,
of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and
file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of
the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point
of which will represent the commander in chief.
The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section
of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,
hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for
these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The
noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the
action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give
commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but
commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the
troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon
himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the
action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement
of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another
is seen in every combination of men for common activity- in
agriculture, trade, and every administration.
And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to
the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,
combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in
performing the action the less they can command and the more
numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there
are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,
who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his
activity chiefly to commanding.
This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.
Having restored the condition of time under which all events
occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
directed to commanding. _
Read next: Second Epilogue: Chapter 7
Read previous: Second Epilogue: Chapter 5
Table of content of War and Peace
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
