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230 stars is the perfect image of the conqueror. The great genius honours himself, and has not to live in a condition of give and take with the populace, as is necessary for the politician. The great politician makes his voice resound in the world, but he has also to sing in the streets; he may make the world his chessboard, but he has also to strut in a booth; he is no more a despot than he is a beggar for alms. He has to court the populace, and here he joins with the prostitute. The politician is a man of the streets. He must be completed by the public. It is the masses that he requires, not real individualities. If he is not clever he tries to be rid of the great men, or if, like Napoleon, he is cunning, he pretends to honour them in order that he may make them harmless. His dependence on the public makes some such course necessary. A politician cannot do all that he wishes, even if he is a Napoleon, and if, unlike Napoleon, he actually wished to realise ideals, he would soon be taught better by the public, his real master. The will of him who covets power is bound.

Every emperor is conscious of this relation between himself and the masses, and has an almost instinctive love of great assemblages of his people, or his army, or of his electors. Not Marcus Aurelius or Diocletian, but Kleo, Mark Antony, Themistocles, and Mirabeau are the embodiments of the real politician. Ambition means going amongst the people. The tribune has to follow the prostitute in this respect. According to Emerson, Napoleon used to go incognito amongst the people to excite their hurrahs and praise. Schiller imagined the same course for his Wallenstein.

Hitherto the phenomena of the great man of action have been regarded even by artists and philosophers as unique. I think that my analysis has shown that there is the strongest resemblance between them and prostitutes. To see an analogy between Antonius (Caesar) and Cleopatra may appear at first far-fetched, but none the less it exists. The great man of action has to despise his inner life, in order that he may live altogether "in the world," and he must