hovering. In that book the distinction is clearly laid down, but the book
unhappily was never completed. With his manuscript, however, he left a
"Note" warning us against regarding his earlier books as a full
presentation of his developed ideas. From the note it is also evident that
he thought the classification on which he had lighted was of the utmost
importance, that he believed it would clear up all the difficulties which
he had encountered in his earlier books--difficulties which he had come to
see arose from a too exclusive consideration of the Napoleonic method of
conducting war. "I look upon the first six books," he wrote in 1827, "as
only a mass of material which is still in a manner without form and which
has still to be revised again. In this revision the two kinds of wars will
be kept more distinctly in view all through, and thereby all ideas will
gain in clearness, in precision, and in exactness of application."
Evidently he had grown dissatisfied with the theory of Absolute War on
which he had started. His new discovery had convinced him that that theory
would not serve as a standard for all natures of wars. "Shall we," he asks
in his final book, "shall we now rest satisfied with this idea and by it
judge of all wars, however much they may differ?"[2] He answers his
question in the negative. "You cannot determine the requirements of all
wars from the Napoleonic type. Keep that type and its absolute method
before you to use _when you can_ or _when you must_, but keep equally
before you that there are two main natures of war."

[2] Clausewitz, On War, Book viii, chap, ii

In his note written at this time, when the distinction first came to him,
he defines these two natures of war as follows: "First, those in which the
object is the _overthrow of the enemy_, whether it be we aim at his
political destruction or merely at disarming him and forcing him to
conclude peace on our terms; and secondly, those in which our object is