There is perhaps no more conclusive proof of his wisdom than that his consciousness of this unique endowment did not cause his home policy to become tyrannical and his foreign policy grandiose. From the second fault he was saved by his keen eye for realities, which taught him that, as he confessed, Prussia was playing a part among the Great Powers without being in fact the equal of the rest. That he never became a tyrant, was probably due in part to natural humanity and in part to the philosophy which was his pride. He was often harsh towards his subjects, but he proclaimed that his duty was to make them happy and he never shed their blood. His threats to execute his ministers were mere insults. But philosophy did not check one evil to which he was inclined by nature and impelled by situation. Nothing short of human sympathy could have mitigated his contempt for the populace, which gathered strength with years. “My dear Sulzer,” he replied to an educational theorist who urged that men were naturally inclined to good, “you do not know that curséd race as I do.” “It is more probable,” he held, “that we sprang from evil spirits, if such things could exist, than from a Being whose nature is good.” As he rode through the streets of his capital on one famous occasion, he came upon a group of the discontented staring at a seditious cartoon. “Hang it lower down,” was his scornful order, “so that they need not strain their necks to see it.” To the service of those whom he termed the rabble, none the less, Frederick devoted a great share of a life of incessant labour. Every day, Sunday and week-day alike, was parcelled out so as to contain the greatest possible amount of work. “It is not necessary that I should live,” wrote the King, “but it is necessary that I should act.” He toiled for the State and for himself, and, with the exception of regular visits to his mother and Madame de Camas, he admitted few social claims upon his time. His Queen never even saw his favourite home, Sans Souci, which he built in the park at Potsdam in 1747. She knew so little of his affairs that she gave a party at Schönhausen while he was lying _in extremis_. The consideration which he denied to her he did not give to others whose title to it was less strong. As he grew older, he curtailed even the short time that he had been wont to spend in his capital, and divided the bulk of the year between seclusion at Potsdam and the inspection of his provinces.