interest."

According to him, Man is held through his egoistic passions, fear,
cupidity, sensuality, self-esteem, and emulation; these are the
mainsprings when he is not under excitement, when he reasons.
Moreover, it is not difficult to turn the brain of man; for he is
imaginative, credulous, and subject to being carried away; stimulate
his pride or vanity, provide him with an extreme and false opinion of
himself and of his fellow-men, and you can start him off head downward
wherever you please.[46] - None of these motives is entitled to much
respect, and beings thus fashioned form the natural material for an
absolute government, the mass of clay awaiting the potter's hand to
shape it. If parts of this mass are obdurate, the potter has only to
crush and pound them and mix them thoroughly.

Such is the final conception on which Napoleon has anchored himself,
and into which he sinks deeper and deeper, no matter how directly and
violently he may be contradicted by palpable facts. Nothing will
dislodge him; neither the stubborn energy of the English, nor the
inflexible gentleness of the Pope, nor the declared insurrection of
the Spaniards, nor the mute insurrection of the Germans, nor the
resistance of Catholic consciences, nor the gradual disaffection of
the French; the reason is, that his conception is imposed on him by
his character;[47] he sees man as he needs to see him.


III. Napoleon's Dominant Passion: Power.

His mastery of the will of others. - Degree of submission required by
him. - His mode of appreciating others and of profiting by them. -