Chương Chương 359 · 第359章

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 the event.

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,

we 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.