In the truest sense of that word so dear to modern times, Napoleon was a self-made man. By his extraordinary energy he made a deficient education do double duty; and those of his natural gifts which in a sluggish man would have been mediocre, he paraded so often, and in such swift succession, that they appeared miraculous. This fiery energy, it cannot too often be repeated, was the man's most distinctive characteristic; when it failed he was undone. Was consistency, as generally understood, to be expected in this personage; is it, indeed, found in most great men? Nowhere does the theory of evolution writhe to sustain itself more than in psychology; nowhere does it discover a greater complexity--a complexity which makes doubtful its sufficiency. Admitting that Napoleon was selfish; that he was lustful; that once, at least, he was criminal; that at various times--yes, even frequently--he was unpopular, and dared not in extremity call for a national uprising to sustain his cause; that he had pitiful limitations in dealing with religion, politics, and finance; supposing him to have displayed on occasion the qualities of a resurrected medieval free-lance, or of the Borgias, or of other historical monsters; confessing that he was launched upon the fiery lake of revolution by the madness of extreme Jacobinism; sustaining the awful indictment in each detail--was there no reverse to the medal, no light to the shadow, no general result except negations? Was the work of Alexander the Great worthless because of his debaucheries? Was Catharine II of Russia a mere damned soul because of her harlotries? Did Talleyrand's duplicity and meanness render less valuable or permanent the work he did in thwarting the coalition at Vienna? The answer of history is plain: what the great of the earth have wrought for others or against them is to be recorded and judged with impartiality; how they sinned against themselves is to be told as an awful warning, and then to be left for the decision of the Great Tribunal. Modern philosophy requires such complicated and yet such minute knowledge in every department of science that the specialist has supplanted the general scholar and the system-maker; the man who aspires to create a plan displaying the unity of either the objective or the subjective world, or any harmony of one with the other, is generally regarded as either an antiquated imbecile or a charlatan. Yet in the examination of historical characters a symmetrical consistency capable of being grasped by the meanest intellect is imperiously demanded by all readers and critics. This is natural, but not altogether reasonable: symmetry cannot be found in the commonest human being on our globe, much less in those who rise supereminent. The greater the man, the more impossible to connect in a mathematical diagram the different phases of his conduct. The search for mediocre consistency in the character of Napoleon is like the Cynic philosopher's quest for a man.