We will here attempt to draw from the word “extreme” an idea that may be attended with some utility.

It is every day disputed whether in war success is ascribable to conduct or to fortune.

Whether in diseases, nature or medicine is most operative in healing or destroying.

Whether in law it is not judicious for a man to compromise, although he is in the right, and to defend a cause although he is in the wrong.

Whether the fine arts contribute to the glory or to the decline of a state.

Whether it is wise or injudicious to encourage superstition in a people.

Whether there is any truth in metaphysics, history, or morals.

Whether taste is arbitrary, and whether there is in reality a good and a bad taste.

In order to decide at once all these questions, take an advantage of the extreme cases under each, compare these two extremes, and you will immediately discover the truth.

You wish to know whether success in war can be infallibly decided by conduct; consider the most extreme case, the most opposed situations in which conduct alone will infallibly triumph. The hostile army must necessarily pass through a deep mountain gorge; your commander knows this circumstance; he makes a forced march, gets possession of the heights, and completely encloses the enemy in the defile; there they must either perish or surrender. In this extreme case fortune can have no share in the victory. It is demonstrable, therefore, that skill may decide the success of a campaign, and it hence necessarily follows that war is an art.

Afterwards imagine an advantageous but not a decisive position; success is not certain, but it is exceedingly probable. And thus, from one gradation to another, you arrive at what may be considered a perfect equality between the two armies. Who shall then decide? Fortune; that is, some unexpected circumstance or event; the death of a general officer going to execute some important order; the derangement of a division in consequence of a false report, the operation of sudden panic, or various other causes for which prudence can find no remedy; yet it is still always certain that there is an art, that there is a science in war.

The same must be observed concerning medicine; the art of operating with the head or hand to preserve the life which appears likely to be lost.

The first who applied bleeding as speedily as possible to a patient under apoplexy; the first who conceived the idea of plunging a bistoury into the bladder to extract the stone from it............