he had no taste." Next to this, the literature of elegance and
refinement, the philosophy of the closet and drawing-room, with which
his contemporaries are imbued, glided over his intellect as over a hard
rock. None but mathematical truths and positive notions about geography
and history found their way into his mind and deeply impressed it.
Everything else, as with his predecessors of the fifteenth century,
comes to him through the original, direct action of his faculties in
contact with men and things, through his prompt and sure tact, his
indefatigable and minute attention, his indefinitely repeated and
rectified divinations during long hours of solitude and silence.
Practice, and not speculation, is the source of his instruction, the
same as with a mechanic brought up amongst machinery.

"There is nothing relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If
nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-carriages.
If cannon must be cast, I will see that it is done properly. If tactical
details must be taught, I will teach them."[1154]

This is why he is competent right from the beginning, general in the
artillery, major-general, diplomatist, financier and administrator of
all kinds. Thanks to this fertile apprenticeship, beginning with the
Consulate, he shows officials and veteran ministers who send in their
reports to him what to do.

"I am a more experienced administrator than they,[1155] when one has
been obliged to extract from his brains the ways and means with which to
feed, maintain, control, and move with the same spirit and will two or
three hundred thousand men, a long distance from their country, one has
soon discovered the secrets of administration."

In each of the human machines he builds and manipulates, he perceives
right away all the parts, each in its proper place and function, the
motors, the transmissions, the wheels, the composite action, the speed
which ensues, the final result, the complete effect, the net product.
Never is he content with a superficial and summary inspection; he
penetrates into obscure corners and to the lowest depths "through
the technical precision of his questions," with the lucidity of
a specialist, and in this way, borrowing an expression from the
philosophers, with him the concept should be adequate to its
purpose.[1156]

Hence his eagerness for details, for these form the body and substance
of the concept; the hand that has not grasped these, or lets