Napoleon's fretful impatience that its victories should have as their literary accompaniments only the wan tragedies of Joseph Chénier and the unleavened odes of Millevoye was just. An empire so glorious, if based on the people's will, should not have found in the genius of the age its sworn antagonist. This stamped his empire as spurious. But these simultaneous phenomena, these supreme attainments at once in action and in art, are not connected as cause and effect. For the roots of their identity we must search deeper. The transcendent deed and the work of art alike have their origin in the _élan_ of the soul, the diviner vision or the diviner desire. The will which becomes the deed, the vision which becomes the poem or the picture, are here as yet one; and this _élan_, this energy of the soul, what is it but the energy of the infinite within the finite, of the eternal within time? Art in whatever perfection it attains is but an illustration, imperfect, of the spirit of man. The greatest books that ever were written, the most exquisite sculptures that ever were carved, the most delicate temples that ever were reared, the richest paintings that ever came from Titian are all in themselves ultimately but the dust of the soul of him who composes them, builds them, carves them. The unrevealed and the unrevealable is the soul itself that in such works is dimly adumbrated. The most perfect statue is but an imperfect semblance of the beauty which the sculptor beheld, though intensifying and reacting upon, and even in a sense consummating, that inward vision; and the sublimest energy of imperial Rome derives its tragic height from the degree to which it realizes the energy of the race. In the Islam of Omar this law displays itself supremely, and with a flame-like vividness. There the divine origin of the State which in the Athens of Pericles is hidden or revealed in the myriad forms of art, plastic or poetic, in the Rome of Sulla or Caesar in tragic action, displays itself in naked purity and in majesty unadorned. If artistic loveliness marks the age of Sophocles, tragic grandeur the Rome of Augustus, mystic sublimity is the feature of the Islam of Omar. The thought and the deed, +lógos kaì poíêsis+, here are one. § 3. THE FALL OF EMPIRES: THE THEORY OF RETRIBUTION We have now reached the final stage of our inquiry. Is there any law by which the vicissitudes of the States, whose origin has been traced through the individual to a remoter and more awful source, are fixed and directed? And can the decay of empires, those supreme forms in the development of States, be resolved into its determining causes, or do we here confront a movement which is beyond the sphere ruled by cause and effect?