SECOND EPILOGUE
6. CHAPTER VI
(continued)
And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of
a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in
any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to
the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,
combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in
performing the action the less they can command and the more
numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the
action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there
are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,
who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his
activity chiefly to commanding.
This relation of the men who command to those they command is what
constitutes the essence of the conception called power.
Having restored the condition of time under which all events
occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a
corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of
relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that
by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest
part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively
directed to commanding.
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