Pointers of the way

From the classical Chinese internal tradition, the recognition that variation is surface and principle is substance.

Although there are innumerable variations, the principles that pervade them remain the same.

The 15th-century Italian master held that one should find trust in science, since fighting is born from geometry.

If someone intends to know with discernment,
if fencing is an Art or a Science,
I shall inform you of my judgement;
consider well my sentence.

It is truly a Science, not an Art,
as I shall describe with succinct eloquence:
how geometry divides and separates into parts,
into infinite numbers and measures,
and fills Science her papers,
such that the sword is a child within her care.

The German master, four and a half centuries ago, holding difference and unity together in a single thought.

Everyone thinks differently from everyone else, so he behaves differently in combat… we are not all of a single nature, so we also cannot have a single style in combat, yet all must nonetheless arise and be derived from a single basis.

Not a fighter, but the demand he made of astronomy is the one the fighting arts still resist.

…modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.

A master of the Spanish Verdadera Destreza, the ‘true skill’ that already called itself a science, urging a return to nature and reason.

Nowadays, the martial arts (destreza) are constrained to exhibitions and they must be taken back to their roots; it must be a science again, learning from nature, allowing masters to show and share their opinions.

The Victorian historian of fencing, on how the ‘noble science’ was held back for centuries by its own teachers.

…very little progress was made for a long period, and the ‘noble science’, as it was very early called, remained in a terribly imperfect state, hindered and encumbered by infinite pedantry and nonsense, and taught by pragmatical and very foolish Masters of Fence to pupils who were content to follow egregiously wrong systems, although skill in disposing of an adversary was literally a matter of most vital concern to them.

The founder of Bartitsu, who built one method out of English boxing, Japanese wrestling and the walking-stick: an early anthropic system.

Bartitsu therefore resolves itself into this: if one gets into a row and plays the game in the recognised style of English fair play – with fists – the opponent will very likely rush in and close, in order to avoid a blow. Then comes the moment for wrestling in the secret Japanese way. Instantly the unwary one is caught and thrown so violently that he is placed hors de combat … the art of walking-stick defence is taught for a variety of purposes. It may be used safely against an opponent armed with a dagger, against a quarterstaff, against kicking, boxing, etc.

The founder of modern karate, tracing his own art back to a common root.

It is no exaggeration to say that the original sense of Karate-Do is at one with the basis of all martial arts.

A physician who tried to found a modern scientific system, Arwrology, and named the sclerosis he was fighting.

Many of the present methods are incommensurate with the needs. Often old smug institutionalised methods of instruction have adherents, generally of the gerontocracy class, whose sclerosed intellect eclipses their vision. They become negationists, refusing to abrogate out-moded customs.

All knowledge is not new, but much quietly becomes obsolescent. It is high time that all these old miscellaneous bits of teaching were objectively evaluated, and the few effective methods incorporated into one master programme.

Writing on close combat, on the fundamentals a weaponised age had let slip.

It is important for fighting men to know how to fight. The science of warfare has been developed to a fine point undreamed of even twenty years ago… yet in the making of more efficient killing tools, most men have forgotten to learn how to fight without any weapons.