The Buried Temple | Page 8

by the justice or injustice of our intentions; and yet these will almost
invariably govern our attitude towards Nature. Here once more, as in
the case of social justice, we ascribe to the universe, to an unintelligible,
eternal, fatal principle, a part that we play ourselves; and when we say
that justice, heaven, nature, or events are rising in revolt against us to
punish or to avenge, it is in reality man who is using events to punish
man, it is human nature that rises in revolt, and human justice that
avenges.
16
In a former essay I referred to Napoleon's three crowning acts of
injustice: the three celebrated crimes that were so fatally unjust to his
own fortune. The first was the murder of the Duc d'Enghien,
condemned by order, without trial or proof, and executed in the
trenches of Vincennes; an assassination that sowed insatiable hatred
and vengeance in the path of the guilty dictator. Then the detestable
intrigues whereby he lured the too trustful, easy-going Bourbons to
Bayonne, that he might rob them of their hereditary crown; and the
horrible war that ensued, a war that cost the lives of three hundred
thousand men, swallowed up all the morality and energy of the empire,
most of its prestige, almost all its convictions, almost all the devotion it
inspired, and engulfed its prosperous destiny. And finally the frightful,
unpardonable Russian campaign, wherein his fortune came at last to
utter shipwreck amid the ice of the Berezina and the snow-bound

Polish steppes.
"These prodigious catastrophes," I said, "had numberless causes; but
when we have slowly traced our way through all the more or less
unforeseen circumstances, and have marked the gradual change in
Napoleon's character, have noted the acts of imprudence, folly, and
violence which this genius committed; when we have seen how
deliberately he brought disaster to his smiling fortune, may we not
almost believe that what we behold, standing erect at the very
fountain-head of calamity, is no other than the silent shadow of
misunderstood human justice? Human justice, wherein there is nothing
supernatural, nothing very mysterious, but built up of many thousand
very real little incidents, many thousand falsehoods, many thousand
little offences of which each one gave rise to a corresponding act of
retaliation--human justice, and not a power that suddenly, at some
tragic moment, leaps forth like Minerva of old, fully armed, from the
formidable, despotic brow of destiny. In all this there is only one thing
of mystery, and that is the eternal presence of human justice; but we are
aware that the nature of man is very mysterious. Let us in the
meanwhile ponder this mystery. It is the most certain of all, it is the
profoundest, it is the most helpful, it is the only one that will never
paralyse our energy for good And though that patient, vigilant shadow
be not as clearly defined in every life as it was in Napoleon's, though
justice be not always as active or as undeniable, we shall none the less
do wisely to study a case like this whenever opportunity offers. It will
at least give rise to doubt within us, it will stimulate inquiry; and these
things are worth far more than the idle, short-sighted affirmation or
denial that we so often permit ourselves: for in all questions of this kind
our endeavour should not be to prove, but rather to arouse attention, to
create a certain grave, courageous respect for all that yet remains
unexplained in the actions of men, in their subjection to what appear to
be general laws, and in the results that ensue."
17
Let us now try to discover in what way this great mystery of justice
does truly and inevitably work itself out within us. The heart of him

who has committed an unjust act becomes the scene of ineffaceable
drama, the paramount drama of human nature; and it becomes the more
dangerous, and deadlier, in the degree of the man's greatness and
knowledge.
A Napoleon will say to himself, at such troubled moments, that the
morality of a great life cannot be as simple as that of an ordinary one,
and that an active, powerful will has rights which the feeble, inert will
cannot claim. He will hold that he may the more legitimately sweep
aside certain conscientious scruples, inasmuch as it is not ignorance or
weakness that causes him to disregard these, but the fact that he views
them from a standpoint higher than that of the majority of men; and
further, that his aim being great and glorious, this passing deliberate
callousness of his is therefore truly a victory won by his strength and
his intellect, since there can be no danger in doing wrong when it is
done by one who does it knowingly,