III. His acute Understanding of Others.

His psychological faculty and way of getting at the thought and
feeling of others.- His self-analysis. - How he imagines a general
situation by selecting a particular case, imagining the invisible
interior by deducting from the visible exterior. - Originality and
superiority of his style and discourse. - His adaptation of these to
his hearers and to circumstances. - His notation and calculation of
serviceable motives.

No faculty is more precious for a political engineer; for the forces
he acts upon are never other than human passions. But how, except
through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest
sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be
estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and
uncertain ground, where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves
with almost absolute certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he
studies himself; indeed, to find one's way into another's soul
requires, preliminarily, that one should dive deep into one's own.[61]

"I have always delighted in analysis," said he, one day, "and should I
ever fall seriously in love I would take my sentiment to pieces. Why
and How are such important questions one cannot put them to one's self
too often."

"It is certain," writes an observer, "that he, of all men, is the one
who has most meditated on the why which controls human actions."

His method, that of the experimental sciences, consists in testing
every hypothesis or deduction by some positive fact, observed by him