The Mover and the Adjuster

Abstract

The influence of man on man is exercised sometimes to assemble a group of individuals moved toward common action, sometimes to remedy the antagonisms which naturally result from the conflict of human wills. These two situations give rise to two forms of authority which are seldom found in the same person, since one form is essentially exciting and the other essentially calming. The contrast between them can be illustrated by the two images of the bridge of Arcole and the oak of Vincennes.The print which shows Bonaparte hurling himself at the enemy and urging his soldiers to follow sums up in a single scene all the influence toward action he had exercised on them since he had taken command. He had found troops low in morale and without any disposition to take the offensive; he breathed his own fire into them; his famous proclamation tended to imbue them with his own ambition, and united them as participants in his plan. By a remarkable feat of transference, impatient because he was without glory, he made them realize that they were without shoes, and he materialized for them his own vast dreams in the visible form of “the fertile plains of Lombardy.”