Bonaparte, when he left the Military Academy): "Very fond of the
abstract sciences, indifferent to others, well grounded in mathematics
and geography."

[54] Roederer, III., 544 (March 6, 1809), 26, 563 (Jan. 23, 1811, and
Nov. 12, 1813).

[55] Mollien, I., 348 (a short time before the rupture of the peace of
Amiens), III., 16: "It was at the end of January, 1809, that he wanted
a full report of the financial situation on the 31st of December, 1808
. . . . This report was to be ready in two days." - III., 34: "A
complete balance sheet of the public treasury for the first six months
of 1812 was under Napoleon's eyes at Witebsk, the 11th of August,
eleven days after the close of these first six months. What is truly
wonderful is, that amidst so many different occupations and
preoccupations . . . . he could preserve such an accurate run of
the proceedings and methods of the administrative branches about which
he wanted to know at any moment. Nobody had any excuse for not
answering him, for each was questioned in his own terms; it is that
singular aptitude of the head of the State, and the technical
precision of his questions, which alone explains how he could maintain
such a remarkable ensemble in an administrative system of which the
smallest threads centered in himself."

[56] 200 years after the death of Napoleon Sir Alfred Ayer thus
writes in "LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC": 'Actually, we shall see that
the only test to which a form of scientific procedure which satisfies
the necessary condition of self-consistency is subject, is the test of
its success in practice. We are entitled to have faith in our
procedure just so long as it does the work it is designed to do - that