"I multiplied myself by my activity" - Napoleon
When we act in order to achieve some goal in the world, then we wish to change the world. To change the world is to have some extended result of our actions, some effect at a distance. To have some effect of our actions at a distance is to change our will into force. To change our will into force is for something to happen not because we willed it, but because we made it happen. Because we identify ourselves most clearly with our wills, to multiply ourselves by our activity is to multiply our wills, to have many wills which are not ours, to be working to achieve the results of our will. We change the single small force exerted by our wills on the world into many small forces all added up, all working towards some goal. We do not always control this force because the foreign wills are not directly connected to our own, but we can often direct it. The clearer we speak and communicate, the more effectively we exert the force of our small will, the more precise the effect of the greater will is. Of course we must be careful - the transformation from will into force, from vision into event, is not perfect, and is at least as unclear as our vision of the world. We do not always know what we do, why we do it, or what the results will be. When we multiply ourselves by many, we extend the strength of that force to an immense degree, and thus turn a pair of minute tweezers into a thundering chariot team. The stronger we are, the more precise we must be, or the more we must delegate, in order to avoid unintended consequences.
We have spoken here of the effect one has on the world around you. Napoleon was an emperor of France who directed armies, changed warfare, and shook history. If there were no Napoleon, then the history of the world itself would have been different. Napoleon was a grown man when he first enters our history books in a notable way, when he adventures into England and sneaks back a charlatan to his home country, so that we already know what type of man he is. Honestly, I am not a great study of Napoleon, the man or the age, so I don't want to presume too much about him for my next point, but I have studied a bit more about someone like him - Alexander. The young prince of Macedon also gained control of a country at a young age, was for a time supremely victorious in war, and conquered a vast kingdom. We look back on Alexander as a hope in human form, a grand might-have been. He might have unified Asia and Europe, he might have given vast and lasting state support to the study of science, he might have been a shining beacon of what the greatest of Earth's Kings could have achieved in that age of mankind. However, that is not what happened. He spent a decade engaged in fruitless war, died an ignoble drunkard, and soared to heights of hubris undreamt of by most men. The boy was educated by Aristotle, and yet prey fell to the sirens of mysticism. A young man, no matter how educated, who is left alone as head of an army, victorious in all his battles, worshiped as a living God, who has conquered the entire known world? No wonder he soured instead of fermenting.
The work he did, the actions he took in order to achieve what he wanted, what he was supposed to do, what he was born to do - they came back to haunt him in the end. He multiplied himself so far by his actions that those actions came round again to touch him, to change him. As did Alexander, as did Napoleon, have kings, generals, and geniuses have done since as far back as history can recall, he did what he wanted to do, but he did not become who he wished he could be. When power corrupts, we begin to seek the power and not the vision. Instead of aiming at the goal, instead of being precise on our path, we switch over to a highway, to a grand boulevard with a thousand tramping feet that shake the ground with every step and grind down all but the hardiest grasses and the toughest seeds. We gain great power by this method, the ability to move great weights to great distances, at great speed. However, as anyone who has ever driven a vehicle knows, what we gain in strength we lose in precision and clarity.
Thus, the quote of Napoleon says two things. The first is Napoleon triumphant, Emperor of France, terror of his enemies, leader of his people, man of history. The second shows us Napoleon in exile, defeated forever at Waterloo and now Prisoner on a small island, never to see his homeland again. We remember him today because he dared to try, succeeded in his reach, worked by fair means or foul towards his ends. We remember him today because he is the symbol of an age. We remember him today precisely because he is an Emperor who failed, so clearly a man and not a God. We glorify both in his triumph as well as in his fall. He infects all of us today, if not because we ourselves have studied him, than because others have. We won't all be Napoleon, we won't all be maligned and glorified in history books, but we can certainly be a part of him, learn from him. Learn, hopefully and carefully, the best parts of him, and thus undertake the best activity as ourselves.
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