6. ENDEAVOURS TO ESTABLISH A POSITIVE THEORY.

There arose, therefore, an endeavour to establish maxims, rules,
and even systems for the conduct of War. By this the attainment of
a positive object was proposed, without taking into view the endless
difficulties which the conduct of War presents in that respect.
The conduct of War, as we have shown, has no definite limits in any
direction, while every system has the circumscribing nature of a
synthesis, from which results an irreconcileable opposition between such
a theory and practice.

7. LIMITATION TO MATERIAL OBJECTS.

Writers on theory felt the difficulty of the subject soon enough, and
thought themselves entitled to get rid of it by directing their maxims
and systems only upon material things and a one-sided activity. Their
aim was to reach results, as in the science for the preparation for
War, entirely certain and positive, and therefore only to take into
consideration that which could be made matter of calculation.

8. SUPERIORITY OF NUMBERS.

The superiority in numbers being a material condition, it was chosen
from amongst all the factors required to produce victory, because it
could be brought under mathematical laws through combinations of time
and space. It was thought possible to leave out of sight all other
circumstances, by supposing them to be equal on each side, and therefore
to neutralise one another. This would have been very well if it had been
done to gain a preliminary knowledge of this one factor, according to
its relations, but to make it a rule for ever to consider superiority
of numbers as the sole law; to see the whole secret of the Art of War in
the formula, IN A CERTAIN TIME, AT A CERTAIN POINT, TO BRING UP SUPERIOR
MASSES--was a restriction overruled by the force of realities.

9. VICTUALLING OF TROOPS.

By one theoretical school an attempt was made to systematise another
material element also, by making the subsistence of troops, according to
a previously established organism of the Army, the supreme legislator
in the higher conduct of War. In this way certainly they arrived at
definite figures, but at figures which rested on a number of arbitrary
calculations, and which therefore could not stand the test of practical
application.

10. BASE.

An ingenious author tried to concentrate in a single conception, that of
a BASE, a whole host of objects amongst which sundry relations even with
immaterial forces found their way in