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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: detecting their genuine expression when performing the most
solemn and the meanest acts of their lives.
The qualities of a great man are often federative. If among these
colossal spirits one has more talent than wit, his wit is still
superior to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is
witty." Genius always presupposes moral insight. This insight may
be applied to a special subject; but he who can see a flower must
be able to see the sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has
saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is
alive; the man will follow!"--that man is not merely a surgeon or
a physician, he is prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and
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