-

His associates weaken and sink under the burden imposed on them and
which he supports without feeling the weight. When Consul,[1149] "he
sometimes presides at special meetings of the section of the interior
from ten o'clock in the evening until five o'clock in the morning..
.. Often, at Saint-Cloud, he keeps the counselors of state from nine
o'clock in the morning until five in the evening, with fifteen minutes'
intermission, and seems no more fatigued at the close of the session
than when it began." During the night sessions "many of the members
succumb through weariness, while the Minister of War falls asleep";
he gives them a shake and wakes them up, "Come, come, citizens, let us
bestir ourselves, it is only two o'clock and we must earn the money
the French people pay us." Consul or Emperor,[1150] "he demands of each
minister an account of the smallest details: It is not rare to see
them leaving the council room overcome with fatigue, due to the long
interrogatories to which he has subjected them; he appears not to have
noticed, and talks about the day's work simply as a relaxation which has
scarcely given his mind exercise." And what is worse, "it often happens
that on returning home they find a dozen of his letters requiring
immediate response, for which the whole night scarcely suffices." The
quantity of facts he is able to retain and store away, the quantity of
ideas he elaborates and produces, seems to surpass human capacity, and
this insatiable, inexhaustible, unmovable brain thus keeps on working
uninterruptedly for thirty years.

Through another result of the same mental organization, Napoleon's brain
is never unproductive; that's today our great danger.--During the past
three hundred years we have more and more lost sight of the exact and
direct meaning of things. Subject to the constraints of a conservative,
complex, and extended educational system we study

* the symbols of objects rather than on the objects themselves;

* instead of the ground itself, a map of it;

* instead of animals struggling for existence,[1151] nomenclatures and
classifications, or, at best, stuffed specimens displayed in a museum;

* instead of persons who feel and act, statistics, codes, histories,
literatures, and philosophies;

in short, printed words. Even worse, abstract terms, which from century
to century have become more abstract and therefore further removed
from experience, more difficult to understand, less ada