the war; look at the most extreme case, the most opposed situations, in
which leadership alone will infallibly triumph. The enemy's army is
forced to pass through a deep mountain gorge; your general knows it: he
makes a forced march, he takes possession of the heights, he holds the
enemy shut in a pass; they must either die or surrender. In this extreme
case, luck cannot have any part in the victory. It is therefore
demonstrated that skill can determine the success of a campaign; from
that alone is it proved that war is an art.

Now imagine an advantageous but less decisive position; success is not
so certain, but it is always very probable. You arrive thus, step by
step, to a perfect equality between the two armies. What will decide
then? luck, that is to say an unforeseen event, a general officer killed
when he is on his way to execute an important order, a corps which is
shaken by a false rumour, a panic and a thousand other cases which
cannot be remedied by prudence; but it still remains certain that there
is an art, a generalship.

As much must be said of medicine, of this art of operating on the head
and the hand, to restore life to a man who is about to lose it.

The first man who at the right moment bled and purged a sufferer from an
apoplectic fit; the first man who thought of plunging a knife into the
bladder in order to extract a stone, and of closing the wound again; the
first man who knew how to stop gangrene in a part of the body, were
without a doubt almost divine persons, and did not resemble Moliere's
doctors.

Descend from this obvious example to experiments that are less striking
and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured,
without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured
them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty
doctors are deceived; the one that has the most intelligence, the surest
eye, guesses the character of the malady. There is therefore an art; and
the superior man knows the finenesses of it. Thus did La Peyronie guess
that a man of the court had swallowed a pointed bone which had caused an
ulcer, and put him in danger of death; thus did Boerhaave guess the
cause of the malady as unknown as cruel of a count of Vassenaar. There
is therefore really an art of medicine; but in all arts there are men
like Virgil and Maevius.

In jurisprudence, take a clear case, in which the law speaks clearly; a
bill of exchange pr