This need of ideal relations and longing for people to whom he could
unbosom himself without reserve, worked at cross purposes with
Frederick's penetrating discrimination, and his uncompromising love of
truth, which was a deadly enemy of all deception, impatiently resisted
every illusion, despised shams, and sought for the essence of things.
This scrutinizing view of life and its duties might well offer him
protection against those deceptions which oftener annoy an
imaginative prince, who gives his confidence, than a private
individual. His acuteness, however, showed itself also in savage moods
as unsparingly, sarcastically, and maliciously destructive. Where did
he get this disposition? Was it Brandenburg blood? Was it an
inheritance from his great-grandmother, the Electress Sophia of
Hanover, and his grandmother, Queen Sophia Charlotte, those
intellectual women with whom Leibniz had discussed the eternal harmony
of the universe? The harsh school of his youth certainly had had
something to do with it. His insight into the foibles of others was
keen. Wherever he saw a weak point, wherever any one's manners annoyed
or provoked him, his ready tongue was busy. His gibes fell unsparingly
upon friend and foe alike; and even where silence and patience were
demanded by every consideration of prudence, he could not control
himself. At such times his soul seemed to suffer some strange
transformation. With merciless exaggeration he distorted the picture
of his victim into a caricature.
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