It is controlled by laws not yet grasped to any great extent.
It is hidden from life, yet rules it.
Mystics have the gift, in varying degree, of allowing their subconscious
minds to engulf and enfold them. The real poets have written in words
that live because, unknowingly, they have fallen back on and given
expression to the accumulated hopes and visions of the mind of man. The
prophets have simply been those with the power to make their instincts
vocal. Genius, in all its phases, is seemingly but the measure of the
extent to which men cooerdinate their two minds, their instinct and their
reason.
Napoleon, in practically every crisis in which he functioned, struck
those about him as being in a dazed and unnatural condition. He had
those same periods of semi-stupefaction that characterized Caesar, Paul,
Alexander, Goethe, Lincoln and other exceptional men at the time of or
immediately following a terrific use of their mental machinery.
What, then, if, in the final analysis, it should be shown that
Napoleon's greatness lay in the fact that he did not take his own mind
or any other man's mind too seriously?
Transcriber's notes:
Obvious typographical errors corrected.
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