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The happiness or the progress of his people never furnished even the indirect motives of his conduct, and the result was a baffled policy and a crippled and bankrupt empire at last. He knew men, especially he knew their weaknesses, and he knew how to turn them to account. He knew how much they would bear, and that little grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast and deliberate injustice.
So firmly fixed in the popular belief is that historical myth that it will undoubtedly live for many years, if not generations, although history in the end will right it like all other misunderstandings. Mr. Lincoln had his weaknesses and limitations, like other men. All must admit that his treatment of the slavery question was not without its mistakes.
All this is true in the first instance: there is a superficial Erasmus who answers to that image, but it is not the whole Erasmus; there is a deeper one who is almost the opposite and whom he himself does not know because he will not know him. Possibly because behind this there is a still deeper being, which is truly good. Does he not ascribe weaknesses to himself? Certainly.
After a few words more of idle chat they separated; he to his master's house, which was a considerable distance off; and this extraordinary creature unconscious of the terrors and other weaknesses that render her sex at once so dependent on and so dear to man full only of delight at the expected glee of the wake to the house of death where it was held.
In these were warnings, statistics, and compilations showing all the financial and military weaknesses of Russia: that her great gold reserve had been largely loaned out and was not available cash on hand, as the world had been led to believe; that it would take eighteen months more of preparation to place her military forces in position to defend the country; that her arms and the factories to build them were not ready.
But the master, indifferent to her tears, enraged by her confidences, walked up and down gesticulating, just as if he were in his studio, and he spoke to the countess with brutal frankness, as he would to a woman who had revealed all her secrets and weaknesses. What difference did all that make to him? Had she sent for him to tell him such stuff? She grieved with childish sighs from the bed.
Nevertheless, through these schools all sons of officials, whatever their capacity or lack of capacity, could become officials in their turn. In spite of its weaknesses, the system had its good side. It inoculated a class of people with ideals that were unquestionably of high ethical value.
Trotter may only have had three little girls of her own, but she certainly had been brought up in a family where there were boys, because she knew so well what their weaknesses were.
The man who, through character analysis, has a scientific knowledge of himself, has therein a valuable guide to self-development and self-improvement. He knows which qualities to cultivate and which to restrain. He knows what situations and associations to avoid so that his frailties and weaknesses will handicap him as little as possible.
To this poor waif of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium of deadly weaknesses within?" "I? yes," said Otto; "but you, Gotthold you, with your interminable industry, your keen mind, your books serving mankind, scorning pleasures and temptations! You do not know how I envy you."
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