penetrating power which could not have been assumed on occasion even by
the most versatile and gifted actor.
The two following quotations from "The Valley of Shadows" describe
Lincoln's personal appearance and the emotions produced by the
expression of his features:--
"'The sperrit air more in the eye than it air in the tongue,' said Elihu
Gest, rising from his seat; 'if Abe Lincoln looked at the wust
slave-driver long enough Satan would give up every time.'
"'I see right away the difference a-twixt Lincoln en Douglas warn't so
much in Lincoln bein' a good ways over six foot en Douglas a good ways
under, ez it war in their eyes. The Jedge looked like he war speakin'
agin time, but Abe Lincoln looked plumb through the meetin' into the
everlastin'--the way Moses must hev looked when he see Canaan ahead--en
I kin tell ye I never did see a man look that a-way.'"
_The Great Debate_
The hour had struck for the supreme test between the forces of slavery,
on one hand, and the forces of freedom, on the other. A vast throng
gathered at Alton from every section of the country to hear the last
public discussion between the two antagonists, Lincoln and Douglas, and
from the surging sea of faces thousands of anxious eyes gazed upward at
the group of politicians on the balcony like wrecked mariners scanning
the horizon for the smallest sign of a white sail of hope.
"This final debate resembled a duel between two men-of-war, the pick of
a great fleet, all but these two sunk or abandoned in other waters,
facing each other in the open, Douglas, the Little Giant, hurling at his
opponent from his flagship of slavery his deadliest missiles, Lincoln
calmly waiting to sink his antagonist by one single broadsider.
"Regarded in the light of spiritual reality, Lincoln and Douglas were
predestined to meet side by side in this discussion, and it is hardly
possible to give an adequate idea of the startling difference between
the two temperaments: Douglas--short, plump, and petulant;
Lincoln--long, gaunt, and self-possessed; the one white-haired and
florid, the other black-haired and swarthy; the one educated and
polished, the other unlettered and primitive.
"Judge Douglas opened the debate in a sonorous voice plainly heard by
all, and with a look of mingled defiance and confidence he marshalled
his facts and deduced his arguments. To the vigour of his attack there
was added the prestige of the Senate Chamber, and it looked as if he
would carry the majority with him. When, after a brilliant oratorical
effort, he brought his speech to a close, it was amidst the shouts and
yells of thousands of admirers.
"And now, Abraham Lincoln, the man who in 1830 undertook to split for
Mrs. Nancy Miller four hundred rails for every yard of jean dyed with
walnut bark that would be required to make him a pair of trousers, the
flat-boatman, local stump-orator, and country lawyer, rose from his
seat, stretched his long bony limbs upward, as if to get them in working
order, and stood like some solitary pine on a lonely summit, very tall,
very dark, very gaunt, and very rugged, his swarthy features stamped
with a sad serenity, and the instant he began to speak the mouth lost
its heaviness, the eyes attained a wondrous illumination, and the people
stood bewildered and breathless under the natural magic of the most
original personality known to the English-speaking world since Robert
Burns.
"Every movement of his long muscular frame denoted inflexible
earnestness, and a something issued forth, elemental and mystical, that
told what the man had been, what he was, and what he would do in the
future. Every look of the deep-set eyes, every movement of the prominent
jaw, every wave of the brawny hand produced an impression, and before he
had spoken twenty minutes the conviction took possession of thousands
that here was the prophetic man of the present and the political saviour
of the future."
Thus we see how Lincoln influenced persons, groups, crowds, whether he
was sitting or standing, arguing or talking, rendering an opinion or
listening to counsel.
_Forecasting and Premonitions_
Nothing great comes into the world unattended. Abraham Lincoln was
surrounded by men and women who were predestined to their task without
being fully aware of what they were doing. One of the most memorable
mystical demonstrations ever recorded in any epoch occurred in the
little town of Salem, Illinois, in August, 1837, when Lincoln was only
twenty-three years of age, long before he had cut any figure in the
political world. Accompanied by six lawyers and two doctors, Lincoln
went from Springfield to Salem in a band-wagon to attend a camp-meeting.
On the way Lincoln cracked jokes about the horses, the wagon, the
lawyers, and many other things. When they arrived at the camp they found
Doctor Peter Akers, one of the greatest Methodist preachers of the time,
was about to preach a sermon on "The Dominion of Christ." The famous
preacher declared that the Dominion of Christ could not come in America
until slavery was destroyed. His sermon lasted three hours and he showed
that a great civil war would put an end to human bondage.
"I am not a prophet," he said, "but a student of the Prophets; American
slavery will come to an end in some near decade, I think in the
sixties." These words caused a profound sensation. In their excitement
thousands surged about the preacher, but when at last he cried out: "Who
can tell but that the man who shall lead us through this strife may be
standing in this presence," a solemn stillness fell over the assembly.
There, not more than thirty feet away, stood the lank figure of Lincoln,
with his pensive face, a prophet as yet uninspired, a leader as yet
unannounced. The preacher's words had fallen like a mystical baptism on
the head of this obscure pioneer, as yet unanointed by the sacrificial
fire of the coming national tragedy.
When they returned to Springfield Lincoln remained silent for a long
time. At last one of his friends asked him what he thought of the sermon
and he replied that he "little dreamed that such power could be given to
mortal man, for those words were from beyond the speaker. Peter Akers
has convinced me that American slavery will go down with the crash of
civil war." Then he added: "Gentlemen, you may be surprised and think it
strange, but when the preacher was describing the civil war I distinctly
saw myself, as in second sight, bearing an important part in that
strife."
The next morning Mr. Lincoln came very late to his office, and Mr.
Herndon, glancing at his haggard face, exclaimed: "Why, Lincoln, what's
the matter?" Then Lincoln told him about the great sermon and said: "I
am utterly unable to shake myself free from the conviction that I shall
be involved in that terrible war."
_Illumination of the Spirit_
When Lincoln, young and unknown, visited New Orleans as a flat-boatman
and saw men and women being sold at auction in the public mart, he said
to the friend who was with him: "If ever I get a chance to hit that
thing I'll hit it hard."
Who was this young man, whose clothes were in tatters, who was without
patrons, to suggest such a thing as a chance to strike even a feeble
blow at the institution of slavery? Dr. Gregg, commenting on this
memorable incident, asks:
"Why did Lincoln utter these words? Was it an illumination of the Spirit
forecasting the Civil War? Was it a whisper by a divine messenger that
he was to be the chosen one to wipe the thing from the earth and give
deliverance to millions of his fellow men?"
Few, if any, of Lincoln's biographers have touched on his early life
with more than a superficial notion of its significance. Judge Whitney,
in spite of his great knowledge and his deep insight, divides Lincoln's
life into two parts, the first being uninspired, the second
supernaturally wonderful. The truth is that the first part of his life
contained a clear forecast of the second. Lincoln at the age of
fifty-five was the same man, unchanged, excepting by experience. Only in
fairy stories are people changed from fools into philosophers.
As a boy Lincoln was unlike any other boy, always unique, self-centred
in the best and highest sense, the like of whom did not exist in his or
any other country. All through his early life there could be seen the
signs and symbols of his coming power. How such a being came into the
world science fails to explain. Back of the mystery there are other
mysteries, and not in a thousand years of experiment will eugenics
produce another such mortal, not in ten thousand years will science
create anything spiritual or mystical. Science can never get beyond the
material. If it ever controls the psychic intelligence, mediocrity will
be the order of the day. The higher intelligence does not need control
but development. This freedom Lincoln had, but back of that apparent
freedom the mystical conditions existed, fixed and foreordained. The
very men and women who assisted him had to be where he found them. To
have been anywhere else they would have been out of their proper
element. In the human world there are no misfits, only grades of
development.
_Tycho Brahe and Lincoln_
When Hugh Miller, the noted geologist, faced the inexplicable he
committed suicide. But Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, the greatest
practical mystic the world of science has known, experienced a sense of
joy and exhilaration every time he viewed the starry heavens through his
telescope. He considered astronomy something "divine." His was the
joyful pride of the seer who revels in the unexplained mysteries of the
universe, and from time to time obtained clairvoyant glimpses of the
working of the miracle. Brahe, like Abraham Lincoln, had moments when he
perceived the inevitable with unalloyed vision.
After carefully studying the comet of 1577 he declared that it announced
the birth of a prince in Finland who should lay waste Germany and vanish
in 1632. Gustave Adolphus was born in Finland, overran Germany, and died
in 1632.
Brahe was the forerunner of the true scientist, Lincoln the forerunner
of the true statesman. It is not a fact that science and intuition are
antagonistic. The antagonism exists only in the imagination of
second-rate thinkers. The great discoverers always put the spiritual and
the mystical above learning. Brahe and Newton, as scientists, were
unequalled in their age and have not been surpassed in this. The Kultur
of modern Germany has but emphasised the danger of pseudo science in all
walks of life and made it plain that no nation can prosper under such an
illusion. The Prussians have forced many to revert back to a
consideration of the gifts of such men as Tycho Brahe, Newton, Lincoln,
and the difference between their science and that of Kultur is a
difference that strikes the normal thinker with amazement.
The true scientist is a seer who discloses new facts and discovers
hidden laws. The true scientific mystic creates, but the votaries of
Kultur destroy without creating. Yet, they will be destroyed by their
own weapons. Modern materialism will go down under the weight of the
material. The denial of the mystical forces of the universe is the
vulnerable spot in the scientific armour of Krupp-Kultur. Let any one
who wishes to be convinced by crude facts alone read the history of
Frederick, the so-called Great, and then read a history of Lincoln. Then
let the student ask which is the greater nation to-day--Prussia, headed
by Frederick's descendant, or America, represented by Woodrow Wilson,
the legitimate outcome of Washington the inspired patriot, and Lincoln
the inspired emancipator?
_Herndon's Analysis and Testimony_
W. H. Herndon, for more than twenty years the law partner of Mr.
Lincoln, delivered an address in Springfield, Illinois, upon the life
and character of the lamented President, which for subtle analysis has
few equals in biographical literature. The following are excerpts:
"Mr. Lincoln's perceptions were slow, cold, and exact. Everything came
to him in its precise shape and colour. To some men the world of matter
and of man comes ornamented with beauty, life, and action, and hence
more or less false and inexact. No lurking illusion or other error,
false in itself, and clad for the moment in robes of splendour, ever
passed undetected or unchallenged over the threshold of his mind--that
point that divides vision from the realm and home of thought."
"Names to him were nothing, and titles naught--assumption always
standing back abashed at his cold, intellectual glare. Neither his
perceptions nor intellectual vision were perverted, distorted, or
diseased. He saw all things through a perfect, mental lens. There was no
diffraction or refraction there. He was not impulsive, fanciful, or
imaginative, but calm and precise. He threw his whole mental light
around the object, and, in time, substance and quality stood apart; form
and colour took their appropriate places, and all was clear and exact in
his mind. In his mental view he crushed the unreal, the inexact, the
hollow, and the sham.... To some minds the world is all life, a soul
beneath the material; but to Mr. Lincoln no life was individual or
universal that did not manifest itself to him. His mind was his
standard. His perceptions were cool, persistent, pitiless in pursuit of
the truth. No error went undetected and no falsehood unexposed if he
once was aroused in search of truth.
_An Original Mind_
"Mr. Lincoln saw philosophy in a story and a schoolmaster in a joke. No
man saw nature, fact, thing, from his standpoint. His was a new and
original position, which was always suggesting, hinting something to
him. Nature, insinuations, hints, and suggestions were new, fresh,
original, and odd to him. The world, fact, man, principle, all had their
powers of suggestion to his susceptible soul. They continually put him
in mind of something known or unknown. Hence his power and tenacity of
what is called association of ideas. His susceptibilities to all
suggestions and hints enabled him at will to call up readily the
associated and classified fact and idea.
"Mr. Lincoln was often at a loss for a word and hence was compelled to
resort to stories, and maxims, and jokes to embody his idea, that it
might be comprehended. So true was this peculiar mental vision of his,
that though mankind has been gathering, arranging, and classifying facts
for thousands of years, Lincoln's peculiar standpoint could give him no
advantage of other men's labour. Hence he tore up to the deep
foundations all arrangements of facts, and coined and arranged new plans
to govern himself. His labour was great, continuous, patient, and
all-enduring.
_The Great Books_
"The truth about the whole matter is that Mr. Lincoln read _less_ and
thought _more_ than any man in his sphere in America. When young he read
the Bible, and when of age he read Shakespeare. The latter book was
scarcely ever out of his mind. Mr. Lincoln is acknowledged to have been
a great man, but the question is, what made him great? I repeat, that he
read less and thought more than any man of his standing in America, if
not in the world. He possessed originality and power of thought in an
eminent degree. He was cautious, cool, patient, and enduring. These are
some of the grounds of his wonderful success. Not only was nature, man,
fact, and principle suggestive to Mr. Lincoln, not only had he accurate
and exact perceptions, but he was causative, i. e., his mind ran back
behind all facts, things, and principles to their origin, history, and
first cause--to that point where forces act at once as effect and cause.
He would stop and pause in the street and analyse a machine. He would
whittle things to a point and then count the numberless inclined planes,
and their pitch, making the point. Mastering and defining this, he would
then cut that point back, and get a broad transverse section of his pine
stick, and peel and define that. Clocks, omnibuses, language,
paddle-wheels, and idioms never escaped his observation and analysis.
Before he could form any idea of anything, before he would express his
opinion on any subject, he must know its origin and history, in
substance and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his
subject inside and outside, upside and downside.
"He searched his own mind and nature thoroughly, as I have often heard
him say. He must analyse a sensation, an idea, and words, and run them
back to their origin, history, purpose, and destiny. He was most
emphatically a merciless analyser of facts, things, and principles. When
all these processes had been well and thoroughly gone through, he could
form an opinion and express it, but no sooner. Hence when he did speak
his utterances rang out gold-like, quick, keen, and current upon the
counters of the understanding. He reasoned logically, through analogy
and comparison. All opponents dreaded him in his originality of idea,
condensation, definition, and force of expression, and wo be to the man
who hugged to his bosom a secret error if Mr. Lincoln got on the chase
of it. I say, wo to him! Time could hide the error in no nook or corner
of space in which he would not detect and expose it.
_Veneration and Truth_
"The predominating elements of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar character, were:
firstly, his great capacity and powers of reason; secondly, his
excellent understanding; thirdly, an exalted idea of the sense of right
and equity; and fourthly, his intense veneration of what was true and
good. His reason ruled all other faculties of his mind.
"His pursuit of truth was indefatigable, terrible. He reasoned from his
well-chosen principles with such clearness, force, and compactness that
the tallest intellects in the land bowed to him in this respect.
"He came down from his throne of logic with irresistible and crushing
force. His printed speeches prove this, but his speeches before the
Supreme Courts of the State and Nation would demonstrate it.
"Mr. Lincoln was an odd and original man; he lived by himself and out of
himself. He was a very sensitive man, unobtrusive and gentlemanly, and
often hid himself in the common mass of men in order to prevent the
discovery of his individuality. He had no insulting egotism and no
pompous pride; no haughtiness. He was not an upstart and had no
insolence. He was a meek, quiet, unobtrusive gentleman.
"Not only were Mr. Lincoln's perceptions good; not only was nature
suggestive to him; not only was he original and strong; not only had he
great reason and understanding; not only did he love the true and good;
not only was he tender and kind--but, in due proportion, he had a
glorious combination of them all.
"He had no avarice in his nature or other like vice. He did not care who
succeeded to the presidency of this or that Christian Association or
Railroad Convention; who made the most money; who was going to
Philadelphia, when and for what, and what were the costs of such a trip.
He could not understand why men struggled for such things as these.
_The Great Puzzle_
"One day, at Washington, he made this remark to me: 'If ever this free
people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralised, it will
come from this human wriggle and struggle for office--a way to live
without work.'
"It puzzled him at Washington to know and to get at the root of this
dread desire, this contagious disease of national robbery in the
nation's death-struggle.
"This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad man, floated into our country in
1831, in a frail canoe, down the north fork of the Sangamon River,
friendless, penniless, powerless, and alone--begging for work in our
city--ragged, struggling for the common necessities of life. This man,
this peculiar man, left us in 1861, the President of the United States,
backed by friends, power, fame, and all human force."
_Lincoln's Energy and Will_
Energy is usually a blind force in the conduct of human affairs and the
greatest with which we have to deal. History is made up of the deeds of
individuals with a surplus of energy, which overflows and damages
governments as floods damage lands.
Will, energy, and ambition are, in most cases, synonymous terms. Without
energy the will breaks down, and without ambition energy and will would
prove innocuous. No one can doubt that misdirected energy was at the
bottom of much that moved the Prussians and that their ambitions were
wholly material, limited to geographical boundaries. Lincoln displayed
physical as well as mental energy in a supernormal degree; his will was
as fixed as a mountain of adamant, while his ambition was not personal,
but national and universal. Only the practical mystic could direct such
forces with wisdom, and as we look still closer into the mystery of his
temperament the question of pride and vanity arises, and their relation
to ambition and will.
In the first place, what causes ambition? Pride, answers the world. But
the world is wrong. Ambition is not the result of pride but of vanity.
Solomon, the wisest and greatest man of his time, was a proud man and a
wise ruler until he began to import apes and peacocks. Then vanity
usurped the place of pride and he came to the end of his temporal
tether.
Vanity caused Napoleon to have himself crowned Emperor of the French,
and from that day his power declined. A proper sense of pride would have
led him to stop where he was and refuse all further manifestations and
developments of worldly honour. Pride tends to moral dignity and
intellectual reticence, and that is why Lincoln blushed in the presence
of the institution of slavery. His pride gave him an acute sense of
shame and his honour an acute sense of justice. Only the vain will
consent to live in idleness while others slave for them. Vanity induces
anything from the ridiculous to the criminal, and those controlled by it
are subject to absurd statements and ridiculous actions. They cannot
avoid both. Washington and Lincoln were free from the fetters of
ridicule. They were imbued with a subconscious pride which stood for the
whole nation.
_Nature and Prophecy_
Herndon says:--
"I cannot refrain from noting the views Lincoln held in reference to the
great questions of moral and social reforms under which he classed
suffrage for women, temperance, and slavery. 'All such questions, he
observed one day, as we were discussing temperance in the office, 'must
find lodgment with the most enlightened souls who stamp them with their
approval. In God's own time they will be organised into law and woven
into the fabric of all our institutions.'"
As the Divine principle permeates all nature, so Lincoln, being a pure
product of nature, possessed the secret consciousness of natural power,
illumined by mystical intuition and guided by the higher forces of the
spirit. He realised the superiority of mind over matter, of intelligence
over ignorance, of wisdom over learning, of illumination over mere
knowledge. He was another Marcus Aurelius, without the influence of
paganism, free from the trammels of mythology. He inquired into the
mystery of his own being and delved into the darkest corners of
personality and character. Some of his deepest thoughts on the mysteries
of life and death were never voiced by this man who never spoke unless
he deemed it imperative to speak.
Lincoln, indeed, never gossipped about people and books. He was not a
gossip. His jokes were for a purpose, his talk was for a purpose, and
his meditations were fundamental.
_The Seal of Nature_