Abraham Lincoln
Page: 13

becomes more complicated, can be worked at sight by any man able
to talk for an hour or two without stopping to think.

Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a ready-made
ruler. But no case could well be less in point; for, besides that he
was a man of such fair-mindedness as is always the raw material of
wisdom, he had in his profession a training precisely the opposite of
that to which a partisan is subjected. His experience as a lawyer
compelled him not only to see that there is a principle underlying
every phenomenon in human affairs, but that there are always two
sides to every question, both of which must be fully understood in
order to understand either, and that it is of greater advantage to an
advocate to appreciate the strength than the weakness of his
antagonist's position. Nothing is more remarkable than the unerring
tact with which, in his debate with Mr. Douglas, he went straight to
the reason of the question; nor have we ever had a more striking
lesson in political tactics than the fact, that opposed to a man
exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and bigotry to his
purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser
motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he
should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr.
Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His
wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men;
his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest
acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the
only durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any
abstract right, but upon so much of justice, the highest attainable at
any given moment in human affairs, as may be had in the balance of
mutual concession. Doubtless he had an ideal, but it was the ideal
of a practical statesman,--to aim at the best, and to take the next
best, if he is lucky enough to get even that. His slow, but singularly
masculine, intelligence taught him that precedent is only another
name for embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in
the guidance of communities of men than in that of the individual