and allow no time to look about for fresh
data, often not enough for mature consideration.

But it more often happens that the correction of one premise, and the
knowledge of chance events which have arisen, are not sufficient to
overthrow our plans completely, but only suffice to produce hesitation.
Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty,
instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is,
that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; thus our
determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience;
and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be "under arms."

Now, if it is to get safely through this perpetual conflict with the
unexpected, two qualities are indispensable: in the first place an
intellect which, even in the midst of this intense obscurity, is not
without some traces of inner light, which lead to the truth, and then
the courage to follow this faint light. The first is figuratively
expressed by the French phrase coup d'oeil. The other is resolution.
As the battle is the feature in War to which attention was originally
chiefly directed, and as time and space are important elements in it,
more particularly when cavalry with their rapid decisions were the
chief arm, the idea of rapid and correct decision related in the first
instance to the estimation of these two elements, and to denote the
idea an expression was adopted which actually only points to a correct
judgment by eye. Many teachers of the Art of War then gave this limited
signification as the definition of coup d'oeil. But it is undeniable
that all able decisions formed in the moment of action soon came to be
understood by the expression, as, for instance, the hitting upon the
right point of attack, &c. It is, therefore, not only the physical, but
more frequently the mental eye which is meant in coup d'oeil. Naturally,
the expression, like the thing, is always more in its place in the field
of tactics: still, it must not be wanting in strategy, inasmuch as in it
rapid decisions are often necessary. If we strip this conception of that
which the expression has given it of the over-figurative and restricted,
then it amounts simply to the rapid discovery of a truth which to the
ordinary mind is either not visible at all or only becomes so after long
examination and reflection.

Resolution is an act of courage in single instances, and if it becomes a
characteri