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.