It is not essential that his meadows should be very extensive: most men live with their nose to the ground; very few look beyond a very narrow circle; men are not much troubled by being penned up; the egoism and urgent needs of daily life are already for them ready-made limits: within these natural barriers they ask for nothing but to be allowed to graze in security.
Let us give them this assurance and leave them free to consult their own welfare .-- As to the rest, in very small number, more or less imaginative, energetic, and ardent, there is, outside the enclosure, an issue expressly provided for them: the new administrative and military professions offer an outlet to their ambition and to their vanity which, from the start, keeps on expanding until, suddenly, the first Consul points to an infinite perspective on the horizon.[2326] According to an expression attributed to him, henceforth, "the field is open to all talents," and hence all talents, gathered into the central current and precipitated headlong through competition, swell with their inflow the immensity of the public power.
This done, the principal features of modern France are traced; a tool of a new and strange type arises, defines itself, and issues forth, its structure determining its destiny.

It consists of a social body organized by a despot and for a despot, calculated for the use of one man, excellent for action under the impulsion of a unique will, with a superior intelligence, admirable so long as this intelligence remains lucid and this will remains healthy.

It is adapted to a military life and not to civil life, and therefore badly balanced, hampered (gene) in its development, exposed to periodical crises, condemned to precocious debility, but viable for a long time, and, for the present robust, alone able to bear the weight of the new reign and to furnish for fifteen successive years the crushing labor, the conquering obedience, the superhuman, murderous, insensate effort which its master exacts.
IV.

Napoleon's barracks.
General aspect and characteristics of the new State.
-- Contrast between its structure and that of other contemporary or pre-existing States .-- The plurality, complexity, and irregularity of ancient France .-- The unity, simplicity, and regularity of modern France .-- To what class of works it belongs .-- It is the modern masterpiece of the classic spirit in the political and social order of things.
Let us take a nearer view of the master's idea and of the way in which, at this moment, he figures to himself the society which is assuming new shape in his hands.

All the leading features of the plan are fixed beforehand in his mind: they are already deeply graven on it through his education and through his instinct.