ed ideas of his character:--as he was
Caesar's heir, he would have wished Caesar's own children out of
the way;--and Caesar's children by that (to Roman ideas) loathed
Egyptian connexion. His family honor would have been touched....

Up to this point, then, such a picture as this might be the true
portrait of him:--a sickly body, with an iron will in it; a
youth with no outstanding brilliancies, who never lost his nerve
and never made mistakes in policy; with no ethical standars
above those of his time:--capable of picking his names coldly on
the proscription lists; capable of having Cleopatra's innocent
children killed;--one, certainly, who had followed the usual
custom of divorcing one wife and marrying another as often as
expediency suggested. Above all, following the ends of his
ambition unerringly to the top of success.

The ends of his ambition?--That is all hidden in the intimate
history of souls. How should we dare say that Julius was
ambitious, Augustus not? Both apparently aimed at mastery of the
world; from this human standpoint of the brain-mind there is
nothing to choose, and no means of discrimination. But what
about the standpoint of the Gods? Is there no difference, as
seen from their impersonal altitudes, between reaching after a
place for your personality, and supplying a personality to fill a
place that needs filling? There is just that difference, I
think, between the brilliant Julius and the staid Octavian. The
former might have settled the affairs of the world,--as its
controller and master and the dazzling obvious mover of all the
pieces on the board. I do not believe Octavian looked ahead at
all to see any shining pinnacle or covet a place on it; but time
and the Law hurled one situation after another at him, and he
mastered and filled them as they came because it was the best
thing he could do.... If we say that the two men were as the
poles apart, there are but tiny indications of the difference:
the tactlessness and small vanities that advertise personality in
the one; the supreme tact and balance that affirm impersonality
in the other. The personality of Julius must tower above the
world; that of Augustus was laid down as a bridge for the world
to pass over. Julius gave his monkeys three chestnuts in the
morning and four at night;--you remember Chwangtse's story;--and
so they grew angry and killed him. Augustus adjusted himself;
decreed that they should have their four in the