been assisted by a
partial use of his soul-faculties. When human projects ran foul of
natural laws, disaster followed. For instance, the acquirement of a new
territory may take a vast amount of energy and heroic fighting--and the
will of one man may then be paramount in making a fact of history
coupled with his name; but if the army of occupation dies in the swamps
of the conquered country, shall the disaster be attributed to God? Shall
we not rather say that if the events of history were in His intended
control they would be less cruel, less human, less bestial? Can anyone
trace a lasting benefit that arose from Napoleon's career? The meteor
disappeared into impalpable dust. The conquered lands returned to their
owners. Was any country improved by his coming? He left a bloody trail
through Egypt, but not till the last decade has the Egyptian fellah
known a whiff of liberty or justice for two thousand years. The only
outcome that lasts to the present day is the assisted vanity of the
French people, a vanity built on the abilities of one man, which were
lost to the country when he died. Does anyone see a trace of the will of
God in all this? I do not.

His Corsican mother bore him while she attended her husband in his
battles. The offspring was marked for war in his mother's womb. He was
preeminently a natural product; and in him we find indomitable will
continually concentrated on faculties which yielded the discernments
that made him master of men and master of war. No man came under his
scrutiny without feeling that he was read to the core. The weaknesses,
strengths, vanities, braveries, and ambitions of others were all read,
used, and played upon for one man's ends. And from Bismarck back to
Cyrus we find all the great ones ruling in the same way--through the
discernments that are will-forced from the soul-faculties.

But among lesser men, and in everyday life? Here, the same, only in
lesser degrees; not with a knowledge of the processes at work, and thus
without the conscious direction of effort which would produce more
satisfactory results; though often the world is astonished when the
extraordinary introspection of some business men enables them to make
money in all their dealings. This is not luck. Their amassed wealth is
the proof of their life's strain--almost another name for it. And it
should be remarked, in passing, that most of the great ones have been
deeply religious in their own ways. Jay Gould was dee