[Cf. IV. § 6.]
25. In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them;
[The piquancy of the paradox evaporates in translation. Concealment is perhaps not so much actual invisibility (see supra § 9) as "showing no sign" of what you mean to do, of the plans that are formed in your brain.]
conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains.
[Tu Mu explains: "Though the enemy may have clever and capable officers, they will not be able to lay any plans against us.">[
26. How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy’s own tactics—that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.
27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
[I.e., everybody can see superficially how a battle is won; what they cannot see is the long series of plans and combinations which has preceded the battle.]
28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
[As Wang Hsi sagely remarks: "There is but one root-principle underlying victory, but the tactics which lead up to it are infinite in number." With this compare Col. Henderson: "The rules of strategy are few and simple. They may be learned in a week. They may be taught by familiar illustrations or a dozen diagrams. But such knowledge will no more teach a man to lead an army like Napoleon than a knowledge of grammar will teach him to write like Gibbon.">[