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Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent
on time, can relate to a whole series of events occurring over
a period of years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent
of everything, can by His sole will determine the direction of
humanity's movement; but man acts in time and himself takes part
in what occurs.
Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we
see that no command can be executed without some preceding order
having been given rendering the execution of the last command
possible.
No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a
whole series of occurrences; but each command follows from another,
and never refers to a whole series of events but always to one
moment only of an event.
When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to
go to war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series
of consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could
not have commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today
he ordered such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin,
and to Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to
the army, the fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on- millions
of commands, which formed a whole series corresponding to a series
of events which brought the French armies into Russia.
If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning
an invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so
much time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once
attempted to execute that design but undertook an expedition into
Russia, with which country he considered it desirable to be in
alliance (a conviction he repeatedly expressed)- this came about
because his commands did not correspond to the course of events
in the first case, but did so correspond in the latter.
For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that
a man should order what can be executed. But to know what can
and what cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case
of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in which millions participated,
but even in the simplest event, for in either case millions of
obstacles may arise to prevent its execution. Every order executed
is always one of an immense number unexecuted. All the impossible
orders inconsistent with the course of events remain unexecuted.
Only the possible ones get linked up with a consecutive series
of commands corresponding to a series of events, and are executed.
Our false conception that an event is caused by a command
which precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken
place and out of thousands of others those few commands which
were consistent with that event have been executed, we forget
about the others that were not executed because they could not
be. Apart from that, the chief source of our error in this matter
is due to the fact that in the historical accounts a whole series
of innumerable, 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 invaded 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 out- not because those orders
differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because
they coincided 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 is just
what is called power. This relation consists in the following:
For common action people always unite in certain combinations,
in which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the
common action, the relation between those taking part in it is
always the same.
Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations
toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,
and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective
action for which they have combined.
Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective
action one of the most striking and definite examples is an army.
Every army is composed of lower grades of the service- the
rank and file- of whom there are always the greatest number; of
the next higher military rank- corporals and noncommissioned officers
of whom there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom
there are still fewer, and so on to the highest military command
which is concentrated in one person.
A military organization may be quite correctly compared to
a cone, of which the base with the largest diameter consists of
the rank and file; the next higher and smaller section of the
cone consists of the next higher grades of the army, and so on
to the apex, the point of which will represent the commander in
chief.
The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section
of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,
hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for
these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order.
The noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform
the action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they
already give commands. An officer still less often acts directly
himself, but commands still more frequently. A general does nothing
but command the troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever
uses a weapon himself. The commander in chief never takes direct
part in the action itself, but only gives general orders concerning
the movement of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of
people to one another is seen in every combination of men for
common activity- in agriculture, trade, and every administration.
And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections
of a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions
in any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest
to the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated
action, combine in such relations that the more directly they
participate in performing the action the less they can command
and the more numerous they are, while the less their direct participation
in the action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them
there are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man
at the top, who takes the least direct share in the action and
directs his activity chiefly to commanding.
This relation of the men who command to those they command
is what constitutes the essence of the conception called power.
Having restored the condition of time under which all events
occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related
to a corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition
of relation between those who command and those who execute, we
find that by the very nature of the case those who command take
the smallest part in the action itself and that their activity
is exclusively directed to commanding.
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