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1. Sun Tzu said: Raising a host of a hundred thousand
men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss
on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces
of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad,
and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded
in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years,
striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's
condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred
ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height
of inhumanity.
3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present
help to his sovereign, no master of victory.
4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good
general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond
the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits;
it cannot be obtained inductively from experience,
nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only
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