Part 42

Of course, he was relentless, cruel, unscrupulous and all the rest of it, as we have been so often told. But, praise and blame aside, the question of the source of his power still remains the important thing.

Certainly he was not great because he was a brilliant student, for, all in all, he was not deeply read. It could hardly be claimed that he was of the electric, assimilative type, for he would listen to no one and held opinions of others in contempt. He was not even a strong reasoner as the term is generally used.

Wherein, then, lay that genius which makes him the outstanding Frenchman and one of the supreme personages of history? Apparently he was pre-eminent because, more than almost any man who ever lived, he had the power of harnessing his intuitive processes to his practical problems.

He, it seems, was able to tap that vast, hidden and unsung reservoir of knowledge which is the epitome of all that the human mind has grasped and which, though flowing through the subconscious mind of all, is available in its entirety to but few--and then in all too brief flashes.

The theory of the quality of the human mind, with its every-day, jerky reasoning powers and its submerged, smooth intuitions, finds its strongest support in such an individual.

The subliminal mind, psychologists tell us, reaches out into daily life when the normal intelligence is in abeyance--as in sleep or profound relaxation. This subliminal (below the threshold) mind is swifter than the conscious mind and over-reaches it in a flash. It is practically unerring. 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.

Obvious Punctuation errors standardised.

Page 333 "It is quite plan that": As per original.