THE SUBTLETY OF THE FEELING OF POWER.—Napoleon was greatly mortified at the fact that he could not speak well, and he did not deceive himself in this respect: but his thirst for power, which never despised the slightest opportunity of showing itself, and which was still more subtle than his subtle intellect, led him to speak even worse than he might have done. It was in this way that he revenged himself upon his own mortification (he was jealous of all his emotions because they possessed power) in order to enjoy his autocratic pleasure. He enjoyed this pleasure a second time in respect to the ears and judgment of his audience, as if it were good enough for them to be addressed in this way. He even secretly enjoyed the thought of bewildering their judgment and good taste by the thunder and lightning of his highest authority—that authority which lies in the union of power and genius—while both his judgment and his good taste held fast proudly and indifferently to the truth that he did not speak well.—Napoleon, as the complete and fully developed type of a single instinct, belongs to ancient humanity, whose characteristic—the simple construction and ingenious development and realisation of a single motive or a small number of motives—may be easily enough recognised. 246. ARISTOTLE AND MARRIAGE.—Insanity makes its appearance in the children of great geniuses, and stupidity in those of the most virtuous—so says Aristotle. Did he mean by this to invite exceptional men to marry? 247. THE ORIGIN OF A BAD TEMPERAMENT.—Injustice and instability in the minds of certain men, their disordered and immoderate manner, are the ultimate consequences of the innumerable logical inexactitudes, superficialities, and hasty conclusions of which their ancestors have been guilty. Men of a good temperament, on the other hand, are descended from solid and meditative races which have set a high value upon reason—whether for praiseworthy or evil purposes is of no great importance. 248. DISSIMULATION AS A DUTY.—Kindness has been best developed by the long dissimulation which endeavoured to appear as kindness: wherever great power existed the necessity for dissimulation of this nature was recognised—it inspires security and confidence, and multiplies the actual sum of our physical power. Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. The persistent exercise of such a dissimulation ends by bringing about the actual nature of the thing itself: the dissimulation in the long run suppresses itself, and organs and instincts are the unexpected fruits in this garden of hypocrisy. 249.