Energy is usually a blind force in the conduct of human affairs and the greatest with which we have to deal. History is made up of the deeds of individuals with a surplus of energy, which overflows and damages governments as floods damage lands.

Will, energy, and ambition are, in most cases, synonymous terms. Without energy the will breaks down, and without ambition energy and will would prove innocuous. No one can doubt that misdirected energy was at the bottom of much that moved the Prussians and that their ambitions were wholly material, limited to geographical boundaries. Lincoln displayed physical as well as mental energy in a supernormal degree; his will was as fixed as a mountain of adamant, while his ambition was not personal, but national and universal. Only the practical mystic could direct such forces with wisdom, and as we look still closer into the mystery of his temperament the question of pride and vanity arises, and their relation to ambition and will.

In the first place, what causes ambition? Pride, answers the world. But the world is wrong. Ambition is not the result of pride but of vanity. Solomon, the wisest and greatest man of his time, was a proud man and a wise ruler until he began to import apes and peacocks. Then vanity usurped the place of pride and he came to the end of his temporal tether.

Vanity caused Napoleon to have himself crowned Emperor of the French, and from that day his power declined. A proper sense of pride would have led him to stop where he was and refuse all further manifestations and developments of worldly honour. Pride tends to moral dignity and intellectual reticence, and that is why Lincoln blushed in the presence of the institution of slavery. His pride gave him an acute sense of shame and his honour an acute sense of justice. Only the vain will consent to live in idleness while others slave for them. Vanity induces anything from the ridiculous to the criminal, and those controlled by it are subject to absurd statements and ridiculous actions. They cannot avoid both. Washington and Lincoln were free from the fetters of ridicule. They were imbued with a subconscious pride which stood for the whole nation.