Page 2261 - war-and-peace

able, 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 in-
vaded 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 outnot because those orders differed in any way
from the other, unexecuted orders but because they coin-
cided 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

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