Meanwhile, the ill-clad captain of artillery who had invented the plan by which the British were pushed out of Toulon with so much neatness and despatch, had nearly turned the civilized world upside down. No man save Alexander ever accomplished so much of that kind of work in so short a time. His work consisted of a number of acts performed by him, each of which was like his act at Toulon, in that it began with the conception of a brilliant idea, proceeded with the embodiment of the idea in a concrete plan, and ended with the carrying into operation of that plan. Napoleon was great in each of these lines of work. He had a brilliant and yet correct imagination, that enabled him to conceive ideas of extraordinary brilliancy, and also to select from them the ideas that were the most susceptible of being made into concrete plans of the kind that could be carried out successfully. He possessed great constructiveness, that enabled him to construct mentally a plan in which all the means available for his use were seized upon and put to their special tasks. He possessed finally great ardor, industry and courage, that enabled him to start his plan to going very quickly, and keep it going very rapidly, until it had performed its task. It would be idle to discuss at which of these three stages of the work he was the greatest, or to try to decide which stage of the three was the most important; because the three were links in a continual chain, and the chain depended on each equally for its strength:--as any chain does on its links. It may be interesting, however, to realize that mere imagination is possibly the most elementary activity of the mind; mere imagination is evidenced by savages, for instance, and by children, more than by highly educated men. Constructiveness, on the other hand, is little to be found in savages or children, and is a product of education, and a result of the training of the reasoning faculties. Courage and impulsive energy again are elemental faculties, and are observable more in savages than in the civilized. It seems to be the effect of civilization, therefore, to develop the reasoning faculties, at the expense of both imagination and courage. In fact, it is clearly the effect of civilization to develop a cold and calculating materialism. Men are rare therefore, and have been rare in every age, who combine the three qualities of imagination, constructiveness and courage. Napoleon combined all three in harmonious proportions; and he possessed each one in its most perfect form.