ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
---------------------
ILLUSIONS AND REALITIES OF
THE WAR
THE INVINCIBLE ALLIANCE
AND OTHER ESSAYS
THE CELTIC TEMPERAMENT
MODERN MYSTICISM AND
OTHER ESSAYS
PARISIAN PORTRAITS
THE HUMOUR OF THE UNDERMAN
THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS
LA VIE ET LES HOMMES
(_in French_)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC
BY FRANCIS GRIERSON
AUTHOR OF "MODERN MYSTICISM,"
"ILLUSIONS AND REALITIES OF THE WAR,"
"THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS," ETC.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York, U. S. A.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
_The Practical Mysticism of Abraham Lincoln_ 9
_The Divine Will_ 12
_The Mystical Awakening_ 13
_The Agnostic and the Mystic_ 17
_The Logic of the Supernatural_ 19
_The Mystical Mood_ 21
"_Going into the Silence_" 22
_Invisible Powers_ 24
_The Fusion of Spirit and Matter_ 26
_His Miraculous Progress_ 28
_A Prophetic Witness_ 30
_Lincoln's Simplicity_ 32
_Lincoln's Clairvoyant Wit_ 34
_A Prophetic Vision of Hades_ 37
_Shakespeare and Lincoln_ 40
_A Prophecy Fulfilled_ 42
_The Ordinances of Heaven_ 44
_Lincoln's Face_ 48
_The Great Debate_ 49
_Forecastings and Premonitions_ 52
_Illumination of the Spirit_ 54
_Tycho Brahe and Lincoln_ 56
_Herndon's Analysis and Testimony_ 58
_An Original Mind_ 60
_The Great Books_ 61
_Veneration and Truth_ 63
_The Great Puzzle_ 64
_Lincoln's Energy and Will_ 65
_Nature and Prophecy_ 67
_The Seal of Nature_ 68
_Law and Authority_ 70
_Lincoln as Critic_ 73
_His Style_ 74
_Lincoln's Serenity_ 75
_The Romance of His Character_ 77
_President by the Grace of God_ 79
_Science and the Mystical_ 80
_The Old and the New_ 81
_Destiny versus Will_ 82
_James Jacquess--Practical Mystic_ 85
_Images and Dreams_ 89
_The New Era_ 92
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC
_The Practical Mysticism of Abraham Lincoln_
A knowledge of the influences which ruled the life of Lincoln, the
greatest of practical mystics, is essential now that a new form of
paganism and slavery threatens humanity.
In Lincoln's time the black slaves of America had to be freed; in our
time the white slaves of Europe have to be freed. We have returned to
the conquest. History is being repeated, but on a far vaster scale. The
whole world is groaning under the threats and deeds of tyranny that
seeks to become absolute. What Abraham Lincoln stood for in the middle
of the nineteenth century the English-speaking peoples must stand for at
the beginning of the twentieth. Materialism produced Prussian autocracy.
A spiritual power brought America safely through the ordeals of the
Civil War. But the material and the spiritual cannot both rule at the
same time. One must yield authority to the other. And we cannot succeed
by denying the very thing which caused Lincoln to triumph over all
enemies and obstacles.
In 1862 the Reverend Byron Sutherland went with some friends of the
President to call upon him. On November 15th, 1872, Dr. Sutherland wrote
to the Reverend J. A. Reed:--
"The President began by saying, 'The ways of God are mysterious and
profound beyond all comprehension. "Who, by searching, can find Him
out?" Now, judging after the manner of men, taking counsel of our
sympathies and feelings, if it had been left to us to determine it, we
would have had no war. And, going farther back, to the occasion of it,
we would have had no evil. There is the mystery of the universe which no
man can solve, and it is at that point that human understanding backs
down. There is nothing left but for the heart of man to take up faith
and believe where it cannot reason. Now, I believe we are all agents and
instruments of Divine Providence. On both sides we are working out the
will of God. Yet how strange the spectacle! Here is one half of the
nation prostrated in prayer that God will help to destroy the Union and
build up a government upon the corner-stone of human bondage. And here
is the other half, equally earnest in their prayers and efforts to
defeat a purpose which they regard as so repugnant to their ideas of
human nature and the rights of society, as well as liberty and
independence. They want slavery; we want freedom. They want a servile
class; we want to make equality practicable as far as possible. And they
are Christians and we are Christians. They and we are praying and
fighting for results exactly the opposite. What must God think of such a
posture of affairs? There is but one solution--self-deception. Somewhere
there is a fearful heresy in our religion, and I cannot think it lies in
the love of liberty and in the aspirations of the human soul. I hold
myself in my present position, and with the authority invested in me, as
an instrument of Providence. I have my own views and purposes. I have my
convictions of duty and my ideas of what is right to be done. But I am
conscious every moment that all I am, and all I have, is subject to the
control of a Higher Power. Nevertheless, I am no fatalist. I believe in
the supremacy of the human conscience, and that men are responsible
beings; that God has a right to hold them--and will hold them--to a
strict personal account for the deeds done in the body.... God alone
knows the issue of this business. He has destroyed nations from the map
of history for their sins. Nevertheless, my hopes prevail generally
above my fears for our Republic. The times are dark. The spirits of ruin
are abroad in all their power and the mercy of God alone can save us.'"
_The Divine Will_
September 30th, 1862, when everything looked dark and the future of
America was uncertain, Lincoln wrote the following meditation on the
Divine Will:--
"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in
accordance with the will of God. Both may be, one must be, wrong. God
cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the
present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something
different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human
instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation
to affect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true:
that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His
great power on the minds of the contestants he could have either saved
or destroyed the Union without war. Yet the contest began. And, having
begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the
contest proceeds."
_The Mystical Awakening_
A mystical epoch is upon us, and like all vital movements it has come
without systematic propaganda and without organised effort.
The world-upheaval did not cause this new movement; it has simply
advanced it by stripping materialism of its illusive trappings and
showing it naked to the civilised world. It is not the work of one man
or any single group, sect, or nation. Its characteristics are
Anglo-American, and its development will prove the only antidote to the
new pagan Kultur, which opposes not only Christian morals but everything
that places the spiritual above the material.
Abraham Lincoln, the greatest practical mystic the world has known for
nineteen hundred years, is the one man whose life and example ought to
be clearly set before the English-speaking peoples at this supreme
climax in the history of civilisation. The thoughts, incidents,
manifestations, which the majority of historians glide over with a
careless touch, or sidetrack because of the lack of moral courage, are
the only things that count in the life of that great seer. His whole
existence was controlled by influences beyond the ken of the most astute
politicians of his time. His genius was superhuman. And since this world
is not governed by chance, a power was at work which fore-ordained him
for his unique mission.
W. H. Herndon has this to say in his biography of the immortal
statesman:--
"Nature had burned into him her holy fire and stamped him with the seal
of her greatness."
In other words, the seal of the practical mystic, which may be taken as
the keynote to the spiritual theme of his marvellous experiences. For it
is futile to continue to harp on Lincoln's political acumen, his
knowledge of law, his understanding of the people, his judgment of
individuals, his poverty, his disregard of the conventional, as causes
of his greatness. The same may be said of thousands of others, yet there
is no other Lincoln. To arrive at a just appreciation of the man and his
achievements I felt it essential to read very carefully all the books
written by those most intimate with the great President--a study which
has required a period of thirty years. The writing of "The Valley of
Shadows" was one of the results of that study, that book being, as far
as I could make it, a depiction of the spiritual atmosphere of the
Lincoln country in Lincoln's time--the atmosphere in which he lived and
moved, thought and worked.
Too long has the materialism of weights and bushel measures dimmed the
light that shines from the example of that incomparable seer. Too long
have politicians used his name to fish for gudgeons in the muddy waters
of sectional politics. Too long has Lincoln been held up in speeches and
electioneering manoeuvres as a politician who arrived because he was
honest. As if Webster, Calhoun, Clay, Sumner, and scores of others were
not equally honest without ever attaining a world-influence. What caused
Lincoln's honesty? His conscience. And what created his conscience? His
innate mystical knowledge of the difference between good and evil,
philosophers and puppets, the solemn dignity of duty and the sham
dignity of ambition. His was the clear vision in the darkest hours while
others were magnifying events through long-distance spectacles, or
minimising them in near-sighted details.
The mystical trend now visible in England and America is not a revival
but a renaissance. It has come in the natural course of events, being
the only thing that responds to the spiritual aspirations and needs of
the dispensation ushered in by the great war.
The renaissance of practical mysticism is now apparent both in and
outside the churches; but its greatest influence is exerted on that
large class which, before the war, had no religious convictions of any
kind. We have arrived at a climax in history. Old methods and systems
are passing, but not the old fundamental truths. Conditions, not
principles, have changed, and our attitude towards things has changed
with conditions. Thousands can now see clearly where once they saw
through a veil of agnosticism. It required a mighty force to lift the
veil, and a vast amount of machinery and metaphysics had to combine to
accomplish such a miracle; but the miracle is here, alive with a vital
flame unknown since the days of the Prophets and the Apostles.
The spiritual renaissance is not a drawing-room fad. It is not founded
on a passing whim. Novelties and opinions shift with the wind, and
people who are influenced by them are influenced by shadows. Mere
notions can never take the place of ideas. Novelties possess no
fundamental basis on which the spirit of man can build, and the
difference between an idea and a notion is the difference between a
university and a lunatic asylum.
The spiritual renaissance is not confined to any particular profession,
and this is why it is making headway among people of such divers views.
The war has crushed the juice out of the orange on the tree of pleasure
and nothing is left but the peel over which materialism is slipping to
its doom.
This stupendous movement was not sprung upon the world in a night. It
has had its slow stages of development. Everything comes and goes in
cycles which are graded in kind and proceed in accordance with immutable
law. This spiritual movement has had its special phases of preparation.
It is not true that the voices of the prophets have been inaudible. What
is true is that every voice that has sounded since the dawn of
historical civilisation has been heard and heeded. Emerson uttered a
great mystical truth when he said: "A book written for three will
gravitate to three," and, similarly, a voice intended for three will be
heard and heeded by three.
_The Agnostic and the Mystic_
Herndon's agnosticism left no lasting impression on the mind of Lincoln.
This is remarkable, because Herndon was a man with a powerful
originality and a strong will.
Lincoln was more or less influenced by Herndon at the beginning of their
acquaintance but such influence did not last long.
Another curious thing is that Mr. Herndon, in spite of his probity, his
practical ability, and his talent as a lawyer, never became known beyond
his own state. He never was put forward as a leader. Perhaps he
entertained no particular ambition to lead, being too much of a
philosopher, but the remark is in order that what was lacking in his
temperament was just a spark of that mystical illumination which gave
Lincoln his faith, his conviction, and his power.
No doubt Herndon was singularly fitted for the position he held with
Lincoln for the space of twenty years. Had he been a leader in public
affairs he could not have aided Lincoln as he did.
That the great President never had a mentor is plain to all who have
studied the best biographies. He did sometimes act upon suggestions from
friends in matters of minor importance in his private affairs. When, one
day, after he had become President, Mrs. Lincoln informed him that the
gossips declared he was being ruled by Seward, his reply was: "I may not
rule myself out, certainly Seward shall not. The only ruler is my
conscience--following God in it--and these men will have to learn that
yet." And Seward did learn it, as well as Stanton and Chase, and every
member of the Cabinet, and all others who came within the radius of his
mystical circuit. Indeed, the generals all learnt it, some of them to
their sorrow, long before the war ended.
Lincoln's authority became apparent to all whenever he delivered a
speech on important occasions. Then, as Judge Whitney has said, he was
"as terrible as an army with banners." Col. Henry Watterson, in his
memorable address before the Lincoln Union, in Chicago, puts the
question: "Where did Shakespeare get his genius? Where did Mozart get
his music? Whose hand smote the lyre of the Scottish ploughman? God
alone. And if Lincoln was not inspired of God then there is no such
thing as special Providence or the interposition of Divine Power in the
affairs of men."
_The Logic of the Supernatural_
Judge Henry C. Whitney has asked the following questions:--"By what
magic spell was this, the greatest moral transformation in all profane
history, wrought? What Genius sought out this roving child of the
forest, this obscure flatboatman, and placed him on the lonely heights
of immortal fame? Why was this best of men made the chief propitiation
for our national sins? Was his progress causative or fortuitous; was it
logical or supernatural; was the Unseen Power, or he himself, the
architect of his fortune?
"The blunders that were committed by raw and reckless commanders in the
field were sufficient to make angels weep, but they were all mosaics in
the process of Fate to work out the Divine plan. If we could see the
whole scheme of human redemption it would be quite clear to us that not
only Abraham Lincoln, U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, but equally Jefferson
Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Raphael Semmes were
necessary instruments of the great disposer of events--that the bullet
which terminated the glorious career of the President was not more
surely sped by Fate to its mark than was the bullet which ended the life
of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh and which ultimately averted ruin to
the Union forces on that blood-stained field, and that in the sublime
procession of destiny all events, apparent accidents, calamities,
crimes, and blunders were agents of the omnipotent will, now as cause,
then as interlude or eddy, anon as effort, all working, apparently, and
to human comprehension, fortuitously, but in reality all harmoniously to
their Divine appointed end."
_The Mystical Mood_
"There was to me," says Henry B. Rankin, in his "Personal Recollections
of Abraham Lincoln," "always an unapproachable grandeur in the man when
he was in this mood of inner solitude. It isolated and--I always
thought--exalted him above his ordinary life. History will discern and
reverently disclose the strength in Lincoln's character and the
executive foresight for which this mood gave him revealings."
And the Reverend Joseph Fort Newton adds to the sentiments of his friend
Rankin these words: "Lincoln was a man whom to know was a kind of
religion. His deep musings on the ways of God, on the souls of men, on
the principles of justice and the laws of liberty bore fruit in exalted
character and exact insight. Hence, a style of speech remarkable for its
lucidity, direction, and forthright power, with no waste of words,
tinged always by a temperament at once elusive and alluring, which Bryce
compares to the weighty eloquence of Cromwell without its haziness."
"_Going into the Silence_"
During an important criminal trial Amzi McWilliams said: "Lincoln will
pitch in heavy now for he has hid."
One who knew him declared: "He seemed never to be alone. I have
frequently seen him, in the midst of a Court in session, with his mind
completely withdrawn from the busy scene before his eyes, as completely
abstracted as if he were in absolute solitude."
Judge Whitney wrote: "In religion, Lincoln was in essence a mystic, and
all his adoration was in accordance with the tenets of that order," a
judgment which agrees with that of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President
of the Southern Confederacy: "With Lincoln, the Union rose to the
sublimity of a religious Mysticism."
The mystical mood cannot be likened to any other mood. People in a hurry
never experience such a mental state. Personal ambition forbids it and
the feeling of vainglory renders such a condition impossible. What
renders the life of Lincoln so instructive is the fact that with him
everything was so natural. He did not experiment; he did not practise
special hours and seasons; he had no fixed times for this or that. He
professed no subtle methods of inducing moods and took no stimulants.
Nature and a mystical Providence arranged and provided.
His moods were between himself and his God. No one ever dared approach
him as to the why or the wherefore of his silence. And it is proper here
to comment on the instinctive good sense of the American people in whose
midst Lincoln passed his whole life--they instinctively knew too much to
presume upon the privacy of his mystical moods. In this their attitude
was wholly admirable. The American people were at that time practical,
democratic seers, without whom the greatest practical mystic could not
have existed.
That Lincoln possessed intuition and illumination without resorting to
human aid is clear and irrefutable. His words were simple and his
actions were simple, like those of the Hebrew seers. He announced and he
pronounced, without subtle explanations or mysterious formulas.
All which proves that practical mysticism can nourish as much under a
Democracy as under any other form of government.
Men do not receive their gifts from those in power. They come into the
world with them. Lincoln was opposed on all sides from the start. He had
to contend with poverty, provincial ignorance, aristocratic prejudice,
academical opposition, and he had against him his homely features, his
awkward bearing, and the lack of influential patronage. He had no family
connections that could be of assistance anywhere at any time. Never had
there been a man of great intellect so absolutely alone in the
intellectual world, so removed from social and political favours of time
and circumstance.
_Invisible Powers_
We are compelled to look at all sides of Lincoln's political career in
order to arrive at a just appreciation of his stupendous achievements,
and when that is done we have to dismiss the notion that he succeeded
because of his brilliant intellectual gifts. Others possessed great
intellects without attaining altitudes of commanding power and enduring
fame.
Why did the influence of Cæsar, Darius, Alexander, Bonaparte, and
Bismarck cease as soon as they passed away? Because the influence they
exerted was based on material dominion. With the collapse of the
material everything collapses. The material can never go beyond or take
precedence of the spiritual. Marcus Aurelius is read to-day because he
placed spiritual things above all worldly possessions and privileges.
The universe was created by a Supreme Mind and the direction of affairs
is in the hands of this All-Seeing Power, manifesting in all
forms--sometimes personal, sometimes collective. In Lincoln's case it
took a pronounced individual form, isolated and unique, as in Moses. The
ease with which Lincoln overcame opposition amazed those who were near
him. They judged it miraculous. Miracles are manifestations for which
science has no definition, no analysis. Lincoln's intelligence was not
bound by the known rules and laws of science. It requires intuition and
illumination for its realisation. Such intelligence cannot be handled in
detail as chemists handle the elements of matter. In the mystical world
all the elements, forces, and combinations act and develop together as
one manifestation at one time. No mental chemistry can separate them.
_The Fusion of Spirit and Matter_
"The existence of a great man," says Victor Cousin, the French
philosopher, "is not the creation of arbitrary choice; he is not a thing
that may, or may not, exist; he is not merely an individual; too much,
or too little, of individuality are equally destructive to the character
of a great man. On the one hand, individuality of itself is an element
of what is pitiful and little, because particularity, the contingent and
the finite, tends unceasingly to division, to dissolution, and to
nothingness. On the other hand, every general tends to absolute unity.
It possesses greatness but it is exposed to the risk of losing itself in
abstractions. The great man is the harmonious combination of what is
particular with what is general. This combination constitutes the
standard value of his greatness, and it involves a two-fold condition:
first, of representing the general spirit of his nation, because it is
in his relation to that general spirit that his greatness consists; and,
secondly, of representing the general spirit which confers upon his
greatness in his own person, in a real form, that is, in a finite,
positive, visible, and determinate form; so that what is general may not
suppress what is particular; and that which is particular may not
dissipate and dissolve what is general--that the infinite and the finite
may be blended together in that proportion which truly constitutes human
greatness."
All which applies to Lincoln.
"Conceive a great machine," wrote Guizot, the historian, "the design of
which is centred in a single mind, though its various parts are
entrusted to various workmen, separated from, and strangers to, each
other. No one of them understands the work as a whole, nor the general
result which he concerts in producing; but every one executes with
intelligence and freedom, by rational and voluntary acts, the particular
task assigned to him. It is thus that by the hand of man the designs of
Providence are wrought out in the government of the world. It is thus
that the two great facts, which are apparent in the history of
civilisation, come to co-exist. On the one hand, those portions of it
which may be considered as fated, or which happen without the control of
human knowledge or will; on the other hand, the part played in it by the
freedom and intelligence of man and what he contributes to it by means
of his own knowledge and will."
_His Miraculous Progress_
One of the most searching biographers of Lincoln maintains that between
the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight he displayed no sign of embryonic
or assured greatness.
If this be true, it means that none of Lincoln's early friends were
intuitive enough to discover his greatness. Even the best writers who
have dealt with this fascinating subject have failed to see all the
facts, all the influences, all the correlated powers, in connection with
what looks to many like a life of miracle. Intelligence and power are
not attained by any mental hocus-pocus or metaphysics. Diamonds in the
rough are still diamonds, or no one would think of having them polished.
The same law works in nature as in human nature. The great man is born,
but he is not born with all his faculties developed, and he, like
others, must pass through stages of progressive development. There is
not one law for genius and another for mere talent.
A distinguished writer says:--
"Lincoln achieved greatness, but can the genesis of the mystery be
analysed?"
Certainly not by the ordinary process of ordinary philosophers and
scientists. What all writers up to the present have failed to see is
that Lincoln's powers were a combination of the normal-practical and the
practical-supernatural. His supernaturalism was positive, mathematical,
and absolute. The only things which Lincoln had to learn as he went were
the modes of application. He had to learn system and method, as was
natural, but the principle came into the world with him. Everything that
is concrete appears simple. The various qualities and elements that
produce what we call mental illumination are hidden from the crowd and
even from those who most profess to understand.
Jesse Dubois wrote to Judge Whitney that "after having been intimately
associated with Lincoln for twenty-five years I now find that I never
knew him."
The great man had unconsciously deceived his friends because of his
outward simplicity. And this outward freedom was backed by his
simplicity of speech and direct logic. It was all too simple. They were
fooled by the outward material because the inward mystical took that
form. His friends liked the man and worked to elect him principally for
that reason, and this is why they were astonished later on when the
practical mystic rose clear above all systems of politics and all the
accepted philosophies, and accomplished the miraculous. The impossible
happened. The President had to go more than half way through the Civil
War before the real Lincoln became manifest to observing critics.
_A Prophetic Witness_
In his book, "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln," Judge Whitney
comments:--
"As early as 1856, independent of all contemporary opinion, I conceived
the idea that Mr. Lincoln was a prodigy of intellectual and moral force.
Others associated with us deemed him superlatively great, but still
human. I went farther; my view was definite and pronounced, that Lincoln
was ordained for a greater than a merely human mission, and I avowed
this belief as early as that time.
"His character as a lawyer was controlled and moulded by his character
as a man. He understood human nature thoroughly and was an expert in the
cross-examination of witnesses. If a witness told the truth without
evasion Lincoln was respectful and patronising to him, but he would
score a perjured witness unmercifully. He took no notes but remembered
everything quite as well as those who did so. I remember once we all,
Court and lawyers, except Lincoln, insisted that a witness had sworn
so-and-so, but it turned out that Lincoln was correct and that he
recollected better than the united bench and bar. But with all his
candour, there was a method and shrewdness which Leonard Swett well
understood and which he has thus forcibly expressed: 'As the trial
progressed, where most lawyers object, he would say he "reckoned" it
would be fair to admit this in, or that; and sometimes when his
adversary could not quite prove what Lincoln knew to be the truth, he
would say he "reckoned" it would be fair to admit the truth to be
so-and-so. When he did object to the Court, when he heard his objections
answered, he would often say, "Well, I reckon I must be wrong."'
"He was wise as a serpent in the trial of a case, but I have got too
many scars from his blows to certify that he was harmless as a dove.
When the whole thing is unravelled the adversary begins to see that what
he was so blandly giving away was simply what he couldn't get and keep.
By giving away six points and carrying the seventh he carried his case,
and, the whole case hanging on the seventh, he traded everything which
would give him the least aid in carrying that. Any one who took Lincoln
for a simple-minded man would very soon wake up on his back, in a
ditch."
_Lincoln's Simplicity_
There are two kinds of simplicity--one is without reason or
discrimination, that believes all that is seen and heard if presented
under the guise of honesty; the other is the kind that penetrates
beneath manner, dress, verbiage, and meets all subterfuge, artifice, and
sophistry with statements and facts at once logical and irrefutable.
Lincoln was the most simple man in dress, in speech, in manners, in
looks, that ever stood before the world in so great a rôle, but his
intellect was anything but simple. He was never deceived by cunning
devices and cunning manoeuvres. Bacon has an essay showing the difference
between cunning and wisdom, and it may be said that Lincoln's knowledge
took the form of wisdom as distinguished from cunning. His management of
a law case was that of a seer. The points he made were not made for
personal gratification but for love of truth and justice. Not only he
did not want to risk being deceived, he took every precaution to insure
against deception. Here is where his welding of reason and logic
produced in his marvellous intellect a kind of clairvoyance which his
friends at the bar felt but could not analyse. The combination was
unheard of! The lawyers and the judges could only reason from their own
experience, they could only cite examples in their own lives, and this
man Lincoln was unlike all that had been and all that was.
Lincoln's simplicity seemed to the casual observer of a character so
trusting and so naïf that it deceived all the members of his Cabinet
during the first two years of the war. They were used to smart men,
clever men, academical men. They called for the routine of
respectability and official dignity. To their minds the President seemed
pliable and willing, and they set about instructing him in the a, b, c
of high politics and the first principles of statesmanship. The
President was in no way frustrated. He understood them in advance,
having weighed them in the balance of his own judgment. He had found
them honest but inexperienced, sincere but saucy. He knew they were
living in an atmosphere of low visibility. At the proper moment he would
turn on the searchlights and give them their bearings. Some of them
expected to act as the President's pilot, while others expected to be
captain of the ship-of-state with the President as pilot.
It took them more than two years to find out that this pioneer of the
West was captain, pilot, and master of charts on a political sea the
like of which they little dreamed existed. In one sense, he wore out
their obstinacy by his patience. In another, he awaited opportunities to
attest their errors and show his judgment, but matters proceeded with
such calm that they could not understand with what power he acted, with
what prescience he divined.
What mystified them was the combination of the practical with the
spiritual, the clear vision with the maxims of ordinary business
affairs, the penetration of the future while working in seeming
darkness.
_Lincoln's Clairvoyant Wit_
Lincoln was not deceived by an outward show of religion. A Southern
woman begged the President to have her husband released from a Northern
prison, "for," she said, "although he is a Rebel he is a very religious
man." Lincoln replied: "I am glad to hear that, because any man who
wants to disrupt this Union needs all the religion in sight to save
him."
He treated with indifference people who commandeered. A haughty woman
came to Lincoln and demanded a colonel's commission for her son. "I
demand it," she said, "not as a favour but as a right. Sir, my
grandfather fought at Lexington, my father fought at New Orleans, and my
husband was killed at Monterey."
"I guess, Madam," was Lincoln's reply, "your family has done enough for
the country. It is time to give some one else a chance."
When Hugh McCullough, Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's second
term, presented a delegation of New York bankers at the White House,
McCullough said: "These gentlemen of New York have come on to see the
Secretary of the Treasury about our new loan. As bankers, they are
obliged to hold our national securities. I can vouch for their
patriotism and loyalty, for, as the good Book says, 'Where the treasure
is there will the heart be also.'"
To which Lincoln replied: "There is another text, Mr. McCullough, I
remember, that might equally apply, 'Where the carcass is there will the
eagles be gathered together.'"
Lincoln condemned as tedious a certain Greek history. When a diplomat
present said: "The author of that history, Mr. President, is one of the
profoundest scholars of the age; no one has plunged more deeply into the
sacred fount of learning."
"Yes," replied Lincoln, "or come up drier."
When in Chicago in 1860, the mayor, John Wentworth, asked Lincoln why he
did not get some astute politician to _run_ him, Lincoln replied that
"events and not a man's own exertions made presidents."
To Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln remarked: "Judd and Ray and those fellows
think I don't see anything, but I see all around them. I see better what
they want to do with me than they do themselves."
They were deceived, not by Lincoln, who never cared what individuals
thought, but by Nature, which often sets a trap for people who live in a
world of their own illusions. Nature, the medium through which the
Divine mind manifests, is, so to speak, a mask through which egoists
cannot penetrate and by which the cunning are led to destruction.
Lincoln let them talk and even act, knowing that they themselves were
the tools for their own undoing. While the ward politicians and others,
who thought themselves far superior, laid their plans, schemed, and
intrigued, the man of clear vision awaited unperturbed the events which
he knew would put them all in their proper places. Little did they dream
that they were mere incidents among the million of incidents that go to
the making of one epoch-making event.
The practical mystic is little concerned with incidents. The multitude
do not know in what direction they are going, moved and influenced as
they are by the incidental, the accidental, the shifting illusions in
which they live, but the man who knows why they are influenced also
knows why he is influenced.
Lincoln was patient with the men who considered him a sort of political
accident. He understood their point of view. He did not entertain
feelings of revenge. Hundreds of men, like John Wentworth, are only
mentioned to-day because of some passing incident which connected them
with the man whom they regarded as a failure in politics.
_A Prophetic Vision of Hades_
That William Blake was a mystic of the practical kind there can be no
question. In art and in poetry he had that illumination which Lincoln
had in statesmanship.
The New York _Times_ says:--
"That a century has failed to heap the dust of oblivion over England's
'Greatest Mystic,' William Blake, is exemplified by the reproduction in
a recent issue of _Country Life_ of one of Blake's engravings for
Dante's _Inferno_, in which four fiends with cruel faces are torturing a
soul in Hell."
The face of the chief devil, who is not actually engaged in the torture,
but is an eager and interested spectator, might easily be taken for a
portrait of the German Emperor. As suggested by W. F. Boudillon, the
familiar, upturned moustachios must have puzzled Blake in his vision. He
represented them as tusks growing from the corners of the mouth--it is
to be noted that this fiend alone among the four has the tusks.
It is recorded of Blake, as a lad, that his father would have
apprenticed him to Rylands, the Court Engraver--a man much liked and in
great prosperity at the time--but Blake objected, saying: "Father, I do
not like his face; he looks as if he would live to be hanged." Twelve
years later Rylands committed forgery, and the prophecy came true.
Blake's visions, startling though they be, are not more startling than
many prophecies made by Lincoln, as, for instance, his prophecy of
prohibition, woman's rights, and the end of slavery, not to mention his
visions concerning himself. The practical mystic sees _through_, the
scientific materialist sees only, the surface. Eternity is the
everlasting now. Blake drew a faithful portrait of the Kaiser Wilhelm II
of Germany long before the Kaiser was born, and Tycho Brahe predicted
the birth of a Swedish conqueror and what he would accomplish.
In these things there is no place for chance, nor is it true that the
practical mystic is limited to poetry, or to art, or to music, or to
religion, politics, and philosophy. Neither is the practical mystic
confined to any particular social class or any creed.
Abraham Lincoln could not have directed affairs had he been a recluse.
Before he became an adept in the direction of material affairs he had to
be familiar with the practical ways of the world, and as a lawyer he
passed through a school that left no place for vague theories or vain
illusions. He frequently stripped others of their illusions, but being
free of illusions himself he had none to lose. This made him
invulnerable. His enemies were swayed by theories; nothing short of
knowledge sufficed for this man, who reduced his adversaries to the
position where they were kept constantly on the alert to know what
manoeuvre to employ next. They moved in a region of guess-work where
there was no law except that of their own confusion and discomfiture.
_Shakespeare and Lincoln_
"Lincoln," says Judge Whitney, "was one of the most heterogeneous
characters that ever played a part in the great drama of history, and it
was for this reason that he was so greatly misjudged and misunderstood;
that he was, on the one hand, described as a mere humourist--a sort of
Artemus Ward or Mark Twain--that it was thought that, by some 'irony of
Fate,' a low comedian had got into the Presidential chair, and that the
nation was being delivered over to conflagration, while this modern Nero
fiddled upon its ruins.
"One of his peculiarities was his inequality of conduct, his dignity,
interspersed with freaks of frivolity and inanity; his high aspiration
and achievement, and his descent into the most primitive vales of
listlessness."
In the chief drawer of his cabinet table all the current joke books of
the time were in juxtaposition with official commissions, lacking only
the final signature, applications for pardons from death penalties, laws
awaiting executive action, and orders which, when launched, would
control the fate of a million men and the destinies of unborn
generations. "Hence it was that superficial persons, who expected great
achievements to be ushered in with a prologue, could not understand or
appreciate that this great man's administration was a succession of acts
of grand and heroic statesmanship, or that he was a prodigy of intellect
and moral force."
The mystic Shakespeare and the mystic Lincoln have a connecting link in
their wit and humour. Had Shakespeare left us only two dramas--_Macbeth_
and _Othello_--no one would have dreamed of a creation like Falstaff
emanating from the same mind, yet it is because of the union of the
tragic and the humorous that Shakespeare is universally human, worldly
wise as well as spiritual and metaphysical.
Shakespeare makes of the gravedigger in _Hamlet_ a sort of clown with a
spade, and throughout all his dramas wit and humour, pathos and tragedy,
go hand in hand. Without his humour Shakespeare would have been little
more than an English Racine. With Lincoln, humour was made to serve a
high, psychic purpose. By its means he created a new atmosphere and new
conditions through which he could all the more freely work and act. He
brought humour into play for his own good as well as that of others. He
was not a theorist, or a dreamer of dreams; he was a practical mystic.
_A Prophecy Fulfilled_
In a letter written from Springfield, Illinois, August 15th, 1855, to
the Hon. George Robertson, of Lexington, Kentucky, Lincoln said:--
"The Autocrat of all the Russias will proclaim his subjects free sooner
than will our American Masters voluntarily give up their slaves."
On the day before Lincoln's first inauguration as President of the
United States the "Autocrat of all the Russias," Alexander the Second,
by Imperial decree emancipated his serfs, while six weeks after the
inauguration the "American Masters," headed by Jefferson Davis, began
the great war of secession to perpetuate and spread the institution of
slavery. This is only one of Lincoln's prophecies which proved true. In
stating them he did not pass into an abnormal state. He spoke as one
would speak of the coming weather. He did not consult the stars, nor any
person, before making a prophetic statement. Seeing clearly was as
natural to him as eating or sleeping. He was not a psychic machine,
uttering thoughts which seemed strange and enigmatical to himself,
because his intellectual and spiritual powers were part of himself.
Men of genius are not instruments in the vulgar meaning of the word.
They do not act in ignorance of what they are doing and saying. Lincoln,
more than any other, could give deliberate reasons for what he did and
said, and it is exceedingly difficult to name another in history who was
under such logical and commanding control of all the moral and
intellectual faculties. When he seemed to the superficial observer to be
dreaming, he was reasoning, calculating, comparing, analysing, weighing,
turning things upside down and inside out, until he satisfied the
dictates of his conscience and his sense of moral responsibility.
He placed no reliance on halfway measures and palliatives, no faith in
the workings of chance. He therefore was not, and could never have been,
a passive instrument in the hands of some unknown power. When it was
said of a certain musician that he composed his operas under the direct
influence of Mozart, the answer was: "Then who influenced Mozart?"
Great originality belongs to the mystical unity of the Supreme
Intelligence. Had Lincoln imitated Henry Clay, whom he so much admired
as a statesman and thinker, what would have become of Lincoln and the
country he governed?
He who originates is authoritative, and, as Carlyle said, "All authority
is mystical in its origin." In no single thing of importance did Lincoln
copy any one's methods or systems. His trend of thought was at variance
with the prevailing trend, even of those who were supposed to know the
most.
_The Ordinances of Heaven_
"Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades, or loose the bands of
Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou
guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of
heaven?"--Job.
Phenomena that arrive with the days, months, seasons, centuries, are
accompanied by events of corresponding significance in the human world,
for everything is related to everything else.
In 1858 a new party came into being, headed by the prophet from the
wilderness, who was as much a phenomenon in the human world as the comet
of that year was in the starry heavens--an apparition first observed by
the Florentine astronomer, Donati. Some scientific authorities give
Donati's comet an orbit of two thousand, others three thousand years.
Its advent was as unexpected as was the advent of Lincoln. Its immense
orbit, the splendour of its train, its seeming close proximity to the
earth, the presentiments which it inspired in millions of the people,
corresponded with the sentiments and sensations inspired by the
phenomenal progress of Lincoln, the avatar of democratic freedom and
justice. The following description is taken from "The Valley of
Shadows":--
"After a long period of cloudy weather the sky cleared, and when
darkness closed in the night came with a revelation. Never had such a
night been witnessed by living man, for a great comet hung suspended in
the shimmering vault like an immense silver arrow dominating the world
and all the constellations. An unparalleled radiance illumined the
prairie, the atmosphere vibrated with a strange, mysterious glow, and as
the eye looked upward it seemed as if the earth was moving slowly
towards the stars.
"The sky resembled a phantasmagoria seen from the summit of some far and
fabulous Eden. The Milky Way spread across the zenith like a confluence
of celestial altars flecked with myriads of gleaming tapers, and
countless orbs rose out of the luminous veil like fleecy spires tipped
with the blaze of opal and sapphire.
"The great stellar clusters appeared as beacons on the shores of
infinite worlds, and night was the window from which the soul looked out
on eternity."
Such was the celestial apparition that ushered in the new party which
was to support Abraham Lincoln and send him to the White House.
In all vital phenomena there is periodicity. The barometer comes to its
minimum height for the day between four and five in the evening; again,
it is at its maximum height between eight and ten in the morning and
between eight and ten in the evening. The two first of these periods is
when the electric tension is at its minimum; at its maximum during the
two latter periods. The basic unit of the lunar day is twelve hours. An
ordinary or solar day is two days, and an ordinary week is two weeks.
This hebdomadal or heptal cycle governs, either in its multiple or
submultiple, an immense number of phenomena in animal life in which the
number seven has a prominent place. A Mr. Hay, of Edinburgh, writing
some sixty years ago, says:
"There is harmony of numbers in all nature--in the force of gravity, in
the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity and
chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the
perceptions of the mind. Indeed, the direction of natural and physical
science is towards a generalisation which shall express the fundamental
laws of all by one simple numerical ratio. The mysticism of Pythagoras
was vague only to the unlettered. It was a system of philosophy founded
on existing mathematics which comprised more of the philosophy of
numbers than our present."
Philosophical students of human nature have taken note of the danger
professional and business men encounter when they extend their mental
activities beyond the hour of four p.m. (by the sun). Thousands fail
because of their ignorance of the fundamental laws governing all things
physical. The morning hours up to ten a.m. are just as dangerous for
many who are highly susceptible to the electric tension which occurs up
to that hour. The feeling that prevails from four to eight in the
afternoon is one of mental or physical fatigue, that in the morning one
of irritability.
Lincoln was not immune from natural law. On one occasion, at five p.m.,
he was suddenly informed of the defeat of the Northern Forces, and it
was feared by those who were present that he would fall to the ground.
Mr. C. C. Coffin sprang forward to assist the President, who, however,
succeeded in returning to the White House unaided.
Nature creates the natural, man the unnatural. Solomon declared: "To
everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose."
_Lincoln's Face_