nd room here frequently enough. Certainly we may say that many
a petty action of the passions is silenced in this serious business of
life; but that holds good only in respect to those acting in a lower
sphere, who, hurried on from one state of danger and exertion to
another, lose sight of the rest of the things of life, BECOME UNUSED
TO DECEIT, because it is of no avail with death, and so attain to
that soldierly simplicity of character which has always been the best
representative of the military profession. In higher regions it is
otherwise, for the higher a man's rank, the more he must look around
him; then arise interests on every side, and a manifold activity of
the passions of good and bad. Envy and generosity, pride and humility,
fierceness and tenderness, all may appear as active powers in this great
drama.

21. PECULIARITY OF MIND.

The peculiar characteristics of mind in the chief actor have, as well as
those of the feelings, a high importance. From an imaginative, flighty,
inexperienced head, and from a calm, sagacious understanding, different
things are to be expected.

22. FROM THE DIVERSITY IN MENTAL INDIVIDUALITIES ARISES THE DIVERSITY OF
WAYS LEADING TO THE END.

It is this great diversity in mental individuality, the influence of
which is to be supposed as chiefly felt in the higher ranks, because it
increases as we progress upwards, which chiefly produces the diversity
of ways leading to the end noticed by us in the first book, and which
gives, to the play of probabilities and chance, such an unequal share in
determining the course of events.

23. SECOND PECULIARITY.--LIVING REACTION.

The second peculiarity in War is the living reaction, and the reciprocal
action resulting therefrom. We do not here speak of the difficulty of
estimating that reaction, for that is included in the difficulty before
mentioned, of treating the moral powers as quantities; but of this, that
reciprocal action, by its nature, opposes anything like a regular
plan. The effect which any measure produces upon the enemy is the most
distinct of all the data which action affords; but every theory must
keep to classes (or groups) of phenomena, and can never take up the
really individual case in itself: that must everywhere be left to
judgment and talent. It is therefore natural that in a business such as
War, which in its plan--built upon general circumstances--is so often
thwarted by unexpected and singular accidents, m