Using these principles, the navigator expanded the limits of his art.

Soon we see Columbus, superbly bold, crossing the unknown ocean; and Magellan piercing the southern tip of the American continent by the straits that now bear his name.
But of all the arts and sciences, the art and science that are the oldest and the most important; that have caused the greatest expenditure of labor, blood, and money; that have been the immediate instruments of more changes and greater changes in the history of the world than any other, are the art and the science of strategy.
Until the time of Moltke the art of strategy, like most arts, was more in evidence than the science.

In fact, science of any kind is a comparatively recent product, owing largely to the more exact operations of the mind brought about by the birth of the science of measurement, and the ensuing birth and development of the mechanic arts.

Before Moltke's time campaigns were won by wise preparation and skilful execution, as they are now; but the strategical skill was acquired by a general or admiral almost wholly by his own exertions in war, and by studying the campaigns of the great commanders, and reflecting upon them with an intensity that so embedded their lessons in his subjective mind that they became a part of him, and actions in conformity with those lessons became afterward almost automatic.

Alexander and Napoleon are perhaps the best illustrations of this passionate grasping of military principles; for though both had been educated from childhood in military matters, the science of strategy was almost non-existent in concrete form, and both men were far too young to have been able to devote much time or labor to it.