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 coördinate 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 Cæsar, 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.