f the new era he was
inaugurating. He was no vulgar destroyer, and did not desire to ruin in
order to rule.

He is charged with ambition, the sin by which the angels fell. It is not
for us to fathom the depths of his mighty mind. Let us admit the charge.
But it was not an ignoble ambition. Let us say that he was so ambitious
that he laid the foundations of the Roman Empire and of modern France;
that his services to civilization and his plans for humanity were so
broad that patriots were driven to murder him.

Some of Caesar's eulogists have claimed for him a moral greatness
corresponding to his transcendent mental power. This is mistaken zeal.
He may stand as the supreme representative of the race in the way of
practical executive intellect. It is poor praise to put him into another
order of men, with Plato or with Paul. Their greatness was of another
kind. We cannot speak of degrees. He is the exponent of creative force
in political history--not of speculative or ethical power.

Moreover, with all his originality of conception and power of execution,
Caesar lacked that kind of imagination which makes the true poet, the
real creative artist in literature. Thus we observe the entire absence
of the pictorial element in his writings. There is no trace of his ever
being affected by the spectacular incidents of warfare nor by the
grandeur of the natural scenes through which he passed. The reason may
be that his intellect was absorbed in the contemplation of men and
motives, of means and ends. We cannot conceive of his ever having been
carried out of himself by the rapture of inspiration. Such clearness of
mental perception is naturally accompanied by a certain coolness of
temperament. A man of superlative greatness must live more or less alone
among his fellows. With his immense grasp of the relations of things in
the world, Caesar cannot have failed to regard men to some extent as the
counters in a great game--himself the player. So he used men, finding
them instruments--efficient and zealous, often--of his far-reaching
plans. He was just in rewarding their services--more than just: he was
generous and kind. But he did not have real associates, real friends;
therefore it is not surprising that he met with so little gratitude.
Even his diction shows this independence, this isolation. It would be
difficult to find an author of any nation in a cultivated age so free
from the influence of the language of his predecessors. Cae