Intelligence during the Italian Renaissance and at the present day.--Integrity of Bonaparte's mental machinery. --Flexibility, force, and tenacity of his attention.--Another difference between Napoleon's intellect and that of his contemporaries.--He thinks objects and not words.--His antipathy to Ideology.--Little or no literary or philosophical education.--Self-taught through direct observation and technical instruction.--His fondness for details.--His inward vision of physical objects and places. --His mental portrayal of positions, distances, and quantities. "The human plant," said Alfieri, "is in no country born more vigorous than in Italy"; and never, in Italy, was it so vigorous as from 1300 to 1500, from the contemporaries of Dante down to those of Michael Angelo, Caesar Borgia, Julius II., and Macchiavelli.[1143] The first distinguishing mark of a man of those times is the soundness of his mental instrument. Nowadays, after three hundred years of service, ours has lost somewhat of its moral fiber, sharpness, and versatility: usually the compulsory specialization has caused it to become lop-sided making it unfit for other purposes. What's more, the increase in ready-made ideas and clichés and acquired methods incrusts it and reduces its scope to a sort of routine. Finally, it is exhausted by an excess of intellectual activity and diminished by the continuity of sedentary habits. It is just the opposite with those impulsive minds of uncorrupted blood and of a new stock.--Roederer, a competent and independent judge, who, at the beginning of the consular government, sees Bonaparte daily at the meetings of the Council of State, and who notes down every evening the impressions of the day, is carried away with admiration:[1144] "Punctual at every sitting, prolonging the session five or six hours, discussing before and afterwards the subjects brought forward, always returning to two questions, 'Can that be justified?[1145]' 'Is that useful?' examining each question in itself, in these two respects, after having subjected it to a most exact and sharp analysis; next, consulting the best authorities, the pasts, experience, and obtaining information about bygone jurisprudence, the laws of Louis XIV. and of Frederick the Great.... Never did the council adjourn without its members knowing more than the day before; if not through knowledge derived from him, at least through the researches he obliged them to make. Never did the members of the Senate and the Legislative Corps, or of the tribunals, pay their respects to him without being rewarded for their homage by valuable instructions. He cannot be surrounded by public men without being the statesman, all forming for him a council of state."