menTHE USE OF SPIES

 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
  be obtained from other .