Rejection of Set and Geometrical Theories
"It should educate the mind of the future leader in war" is what Clausewitz demands from a useful theory; but he most expressly and unreservedly rejects every attempt at a method "by which definite plans for wars or campaigns are to be given out all ready made as if from a machine."[10] He mocks at Bülow's including at first in the one term "base" all sorts of things, like the supply of the army, its reinforcements and equipments, the security of its communications with the home country, and lastly the security of its line of retreat, and then fixing the extent of the base, and finally fixing an angle for the extent of that base: "And all this was done merely to obtain a pure geometrical result utterly useless" (Von Caemmerer).
For the same reason Jomini's principle of the Inner Line does not satisfy him, owing to its mere geometrical nature, although he right willingly acknowledges "that it rests on a sound foundation, on the truth that the combat is the only effectual means in war" (Von Caemmerer). All such attempts at theory seem to him therefore perfectly useless, "because they strive to work with fixed quantities, while in war everything is uncertain, and all considerations must reckon with all kinds of variable quantities; because they only consider material objects, while every action in war is saturated with moral forces and effects; lastly, because they deal only with the action of one party, while war is a constant reciprocal effect of both parties" (Von Caemmerer).
"Pity the warrior," says Clausewitz, "who is contented to crawl about in this beggardom of rules." "Pity the theory which sets itself in opposition to the mind"[11] (note, the moral forces).