Moreover, we are further informed by the same unimpeachable authority, that so irresistible is genius for warfare, that united to courage, it is formidable beyond the united financial and military resources of the State. In corroboration of this, we have the testimony of well-qualified judges. Says the Count de Saxe:
“Unless a man is born with talent for war and this talent is brought to perfection, it is impossible for him to be more than an indifferent general.”
In these days, more or less degenerate from the soldierly standpoint, the fantastic sophistries of Helvetius have vogue, and most people believe book-learning to be all-in-all.
Many are so weak-minded, as really to believe, that because born in the Twentieth Century, they necessarily are the repository of all the virtues, and particularly of all the knowledge acquired by their ancestors from remotest generations. Few seem to understand that the child, even of ultra-modern conditions, is born just as ignorant and often invincibly so, as were the sons of Ham, Shem and Japhet, and most appear to be unaware, that:
Only by intelligent reflection upon their own experience and upon the experiences of others, can one acquire knowledge.
The triviality of crowding the memory with things that may or may not be true, is the merest mimicry of education.
Real education is nothing more than the fruit of experience; and he who acts in conformity to such knowledge, alone is wise. Thus to act, implies ability to comprehend. But there are those in whom capability is limited; hence, all may not be wise who wish to be so, and these necessarily remain through life very much as they are born.
The use of knowledge would be infinitely more certain, if our understanding of its accurate application were as extensive as our needs require. We have only a few ideas of the attributes of matter and of the laws of mechanics, out of an infinite number of secrets which mankind never can hope to discover. This renders our feeble adaptations in practice of the knowledge we possess, oftimes inadequate for the result we desire; and it seems obvious that if Nature had intended man to attain to the superlative, she would have endowed him with intelligence and have communicated to him information, infinitely superior to that we possess.