(POWER AND KNOWLEDGE. SCIENCE WHEN MERE KNOWING; ART, WHEN DOING, IS THE
OBJECT.)

THE choice between these terms seems to be still unsettled, and no one
seems to know rightly on what grounds it should be decided, and yet
the thing is simple. We have already said elsewhere that "knowing" is
something different from "doing." The two are so different that they
should not easily be mistaken the one for the other. The "doing" cannot
properly stand in any book, and therefore also Art should never be
the title of a book. But because we have once accustomed ourselves to
combine in conception, under the name of theory of Art, or simply
Art, the branches of knowledge (which may be separately pure sciences)
necessary for the practice of an Art, therefore it is consistent to
continue this ground of distinction, and to call everything Art when the
object is to carry out the "doing" (being able), as for example, Art of
building; Science, when merely knowledge is the object; as Science of
mathematics, of astronomy. That in every Art certain complete sciences
may be included is intelligible of itself, and should not perplex us.
But still it is worth observing that there is also no science without a
mixture of Art. In mathematics, for instance, the use of figures and
of algebra is an Art, but that is only one amongst many instances. The
reason is, that however plain and palpable the difference is between
knowledge and power in the composite results of human knowledge, yet it
is difficult to trace out their line of separation in man himself.

2. DIFFICULTY OF SEPARATING PERCEPTION FROM JUDGMENT.

(ART OF WAR.)

All thinking is indeed Art. Where the logician draws the line, where the
premises stop which are the result of cognition--where judgment begins,
there Art begins. But more than this even the perception of the mind is
judgment again, and consequently Art; and at last, even the perception
by the senses as well. In a word, if it is impossible to imagine a human
being possessing merely the faculty of cognition, devoid of judgment or
the reverse, so also Art and Science can never be completely separated
from each other. The more these subtle elements of light embody
themselves in the outward forms of the world, so much the more separate
appear their domains; and now once more, where the object is creation
and production, there is the province of Art; where the object is
investigation and knowledge Science holds sway.--After all this it
results of itself that it is more fitting to say Art of War than Science
of War.

So much for this, because we cannot do without these conceptions. But
now we come forward with the assertion that War is neither an Art nor a
Science in the real signification, and that it is just the setting out
from that starting-point of ideas which has led to a wrong direction
being taken, which has caused War to be put on a par with other arts and
sciences, and has led to a number of erroneous analogies.

This has indeed been felt before now, and on that it was maintained that
War is a handicraft; but there was more lost than gained by that, for
a handicraft is only an inferior art, and as such is also subject to
definite and rigid laws. In reality the Art of War did go on for some
time in the spirit of a handicraft--we allude to the times of the
Condottieri--but then it received that direction, not from intrinsic but
from external causes; and military history shows how little it was at
that time in accordance with the nature of the thing.

3. WAR IS PART OF THE INTERCOURSE OF THE HUMAN RACE.

We say therefore War belongs not to the province of Arts and Sciences,
but to the province of social life. It is a conflict of great interests
which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from
others. It would be better, instead of comparing it with any Art, to
liken it to business competition, which is also a conflict of human
interests and activities; and it is still more like State policy, which
again, on its part, may be looked upon as a kind of business competition
on a great scale. Besides, State policy is the womb in which War is
developed, in which its outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like
the qualities of living creatures in their germs.(*)

(*) The analogy has become much closer since Clausewitz's
time. Now that the first business of the State is regarded
as the development of facilities for trade, War between
great nations is only a question of time. No Hague
Conferences can avert it--EDITOR.

4. DIFFERENCE.

The essential difference consists in this, that War is no activity of
the will, which exerts itself upon inanimate matter like the mechanical
Arts; or upon a living but still passive and yielding subject, like
the human mind and the human feelings in the ideal Arts, but against
a living and reacting force. How little the categories of Arts and
Sciences are applicable to such an activity strikes us at once; and we
can understand at the same time how that constant seeking and striving
after laws like those which may be developed out of the dead material
world could not but lead to constant errors. And yet it is just the
mechanical Arts that some people would imitate in the Art of War. The
imitation of the ideal Arts was quite out of the question, because these
themselves dispense too much with laws and rules, and those hitherto
tried, always acknowledged as insufficient and one-sided, are
perpetually undermined and washed away by the current of opinions,
feelings, and customs.

Whether such a conflict of the living, as takes place and is settled
in War, is subject to general laws, and whether these are capable of
indicating a useful line of action, will be partly investigated in this
book; but so much is evident in itself, that this, like every other
subject which does not surpass our powers of understanding, may be
lighted up, and be made more or less plain in its inner relations by an
inquiring mind, and that alone is sufficient to realise the idea of a
THEORY.