ourselves the energy and depth of the passions it keeps in check and
urges on like a team of prancing, rearing horses - it is the driver
who, bracing his arms, constantly restrains the almost ungovernable
steeds, who controls their excitement, who regulates their bounds, who
takes advantage even of their viciousness to guide his noisy vehicle
over precipices as it rushes on with thundering speed. If the pure
ideas of the reasoning brain thus maintain their daily supremacy it is
due to the vital flow which nourishes them; their roots are deep in
his heart and temperament, and those roots which give them their
vigorous sap constitute a primordial instinct more powerful than
intellect, more powerful even than his will, the instinct which leads
him to center everything on himself, in other words egoism.[23]


II. Will and Egoism.

Bonaparte's dominant passion. - His lucid, calculating mind. - Source
and power of the Will. - Early evidences of an active, absorbing
egoism. - His education derived from the lessons of things. - In
Corsica. - In France during the Revolution. - In Italy. - In Egypt. -
His idea of Society and of Right. - Maturing after the 18th of
Brumaire. - His idea of Man. - It conforms to his character

It is egoism, not a passive, but an active and intrusive egoism,
proportional to the energy and extension of his faculties developed by
his education and circumstances, exaggerated by his success and his
omnipotence to such a degree that a monstrous colossal I has been
erected in society. It expands unceasingly the circle of a tenacious
and rapacious grasp, which regards all resistance as offensive, which
all independence annoys, and which, on the boundless domain it assigns