“All battles are first won or lost in the mind.” — Joan of Arc
One of the enduring personal projects in service of which Being Kindled is instrumental has been to discover the meaning of the words “spirit” and “spiritual.” An unexpected convergence, appropriately emergent for the topic, between three subjects of my own fascination may happily contribute to this end. What Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, and Marshall McLuhan immediately and usefully have in common is an illuminating relation to gunpowder.
McLuhan in Understanding Media identifies an important shift in gunpowder’s application along the same axis as the revolution of the printing press. The more archaic use of gunpowder in explosives, “dynamite style” [1], that is, in an organic, nebulous, omnidirectional fashion, gives way to the development of the firearm — a change both chronologically and structurally close to the linearity of Gutenberg. (As an interesting aside, forms of the firearm and the press both appear in China some time before they take on their revolutionary character in Europe). A bored steel barrel affords precisely the kind of selective containment of detonation that amounts to direction. As the written (and printed) word transform the organic constructs of oral language into linear, mechanical sequences, so the gun transmutes the expansive, explosive power of gunpowder into a power that is linearly-focused and incisive. McLuhan ingeniously draws out the visual emphasis common to both print and guns, perhaps most fascinatingly in his citation of findings that literacy often corresponds with superior marksmanship [2].
Napoleon, it is well known, was a master of cannon. “Great battles are won by artillery,” he famously said. The advent of modern warfare which he helped to usher in depended at least in large measure on the mastery of firearm technology. McLuhan quotes Cardinal Newman as having stated that Napoleon understood “the grammar of gunpowder” [3]. As Robert M. Epstein’s work elucidates, Napoleon’s innovative style of warfighting also depended on literacy. He could not have coordinated forces as vast as the one with which he humiliated Austria in formations and maneuvers so tightly directed without commanders who could read not just orders but handbooks and doctrine.
Enter Mary Gordon’s surprising remark that Joan of Arc, for all the uncertainty of her actual military acumen, was nonetheless particularly worth noting for her strategic implementation of the then-much-more-novel artillery [4]. This can hardly be attributed to literacy, as Joan despite her extraordinary accomplishments lived a very common existence with regard to pre-Gutenberg illiteracy. But the word “genius” evokes a stranger thread connecting Joan with her less saintly French military counterpart Napoleon.
In light of the severe contrast in education between the respectively pre- and post-Revolutionary characters of Joan and Napoleon, the application of the moniker “genius” to the latter is much more intelligible to modern, educated Westerners. Napoleon was a well-read and savvy individual, Joan a zealot. But the modern Westerner with his innate anti-supernaturalism is prone to overlook the antique meaning of “genius” with reference to the divine. Gordon ponders this phenomenon as it relates to the use of a deracinated, intellectualized, secularized form of the word as a dismissal of the possibility of the miraculous [5]. But in its original sense, Joan of Arc undoubtedly possessed a relationship to the supernatural that would have been described as “genius,” that is, not the genius of intellect, but of insight so clear as to pierce the veil of nature itself.
Gordon’s inclusion of Joan’s affinity for gunpowder may not be particularly salient in itself, but in connection with this conception of genius as related to her supernatural sensory experiences it becomes especially interesting. Joan of Arc and Napoleon Bonaparte were both deeply formed by their respective milieus, and while I think this fact goes a long way toward repudiating “Great Man Theory,” it is nonetheless true that certain prominent movements of history have an individual around whom their momentum orbits and their forces coalesce, at least as much producing as produced by such persons.
Napoleon knew the importance of perception in terms of military intelligence, but also the inner power of perception, of the ability to suspend oneself in midair above the battlefield, to draw the mind out of the flurry of smoke and details and bring the innumerable brushstrokes of a campaign into view as a coherent and whole portrait — and to sift through that portrait for the critical moment in order to seize it. Joan of Arc may be said, with requisite credulity assumed, to have received a similar “aerial” perspective, albeit in her own words from divine revelation rather than any innate greatness. It is worth noting, however, that Joan generally described her insight as “voices” rather “visions,” but this is explicable without contradicting the parallel in question by appeal to her illiteracy, and further noting that the precedence of her “voices” did not preclude “visions.”
Pertinently, Joan of Arc and Napoleon — again, having very little in common from a strictly military standpoint — both relied for success in the field upon the principle of l’esprit de corps, translated literally, “the spirit of the body.” Napoleon formulated his conception of this principle as the power of an animus that motivates a body of soldiers to do the otherwise impossible. It was the importance of the men’s spirit that motivated Napoleon to take such pains to maintain not just reputation but indeed rapport with his troops, even going so far, as Roberts recounts, as to share his personal stock of wine with the men while on campaign [6]. Napoleon was no doubt aided in these efforts by the heady tonic of Revolutionary ideology and the French national character, but he could not have exploited these advantages without the understanding he possessed of l’esprit de corps and its utmost importance. St. Joan did not conceive of this principle in such anachronistic terms, of course, but nonetheless was empowered by the medieval language of faith to spiritually motivate men to victories otherwise impossible. Even the Israelites, before whom marched the Spirit of God Himself, were only defeated when they were faithless, unmotivated, dispirited.
So, these three principles appear intertwined: genius, sight, and spirit. In many respects, their interrelatedness seems obvious. In a medieval sense of “spirit,” the spiritual nature of genius is obvious in Joan, and in a Hegelian sense it is obvious in Napoleon. Sight and spirit are more apparently opposed, but perhaps it is genius that bridges the gap between them. Genius is the force that renders spirit visible, that subdues the abstract with the eyes, that crystalizes the nebulous in the mind. It latches onto that which is perpetually in motion without losing its grip. Whether the power of genius comes from afar, like St. Michael to Joan, or from within, like Napoleon’s egoistic sense of his own impressiveness, remains to be seen.
Multiple times in Numbers chapter 24 is Balaam the prophet referred to as “the man whose eyes are open,” and this appellation is markedly contrasted in the text against the “trance” he receives. Earlier in the narrative, in the most well-remembered episode of Balaam’s story, the text explains that Balaam’s donkey is given vision to see the angel in the road before Balaam. The presence of the angel is therefore presented as objective through peril, grounding the objectivity as deeply as mortality, but the sensory experience as varying wildly between witnesses. A similar disparity occurs in the New Testament between Paul and his traveling companions on the road to Damascus. The objectivity of Paul’s conversion could be described as rooted historically, again despite the subjectivity of vision. But Paul’s experience curiously left him with no sight at all.
All of this conglomerates around the centrality of vision to the meaning of spirit. If invisibility, even insensibility, is a defining element of spirit, then genius must consist in this intrusion of the invisible into visibility, or else in the intrusion of sight into the invisible. If the former, then genius is the character of St. Joan; if the latter, then of Napoleon. In either case, what these two examples share is extraordinary perception. Marshall McLuhan, even, might be said to belong to the same category, his genius evident in his prophetic prowess. Genius is to see that which is too vast, or too far off in space or time, or too lofty, or too complex to be seen. If this statement holds true, then it affords an important clue about the domains where spirit moves and dwells.
This clue suggests that spirit consist in patterns, but also in impetus, which gives pattern the character of agency. The lives of Joan and Napoleon also suggest that spirit consists, at least sometimes, in that which is far more expansive than the individual. In Napoleon’s case, his genius unleashed a spirit of warfare more powerful than one man could control, and his invincibility waned as his enemies mastered the innovations he had himself introduced. Positively, Joan of Arc was swept up in a spirit which prophesied a victory beyond her lifetime, which indeed came to pass. If spirit is that which is not ordinarily seen, then it is also that which is never controlled. A general may preside over his men, but they all have one breath. The commander who can see spirit can move with it, and impart animation to an otherwise disjointed mass of men, but he can also tap into movements of life that in seeing their patterns he mistakenly thinks he can control their impetus. To see is to identify the direction, not to subdue the energy.
Joan identified spirits that called her to deeds so far removed from her station and circumstance that she otherwise could never have imagined doing them. Napoleon knew the sycophantic spirit that promises glory and exacts payment in the end. McLuhan pinpointed the spirit of his age, what it wanted and where it was going. Though we ordinary folk go about our lives with little more than an occasional suspicion of spiritual activity, spirit is an indelible feature of even ordinary life as the animation that makes families, cultures, and history move. Not all are gifted with prophecy or genius, but all should remember that spirits are everywhere and always in motion, whether seen or unseen.
Yea, thou dost light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness. Yea, by thee I can crush a troop; and by my God I can leap over a wall. — Psalm 18:28-29 (RSV)
[1] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, p. 340
[2] McLuhan, p. 341
[3] McLuhan, p. 13
[4] Mary Gordon, Joan of Arc, p. 61
[5] Gordon, p. 84
[6] Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life, p. 135
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