This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[592]
mind was his standard.
His mental action was deliberate, and he was pitiless and persistent in pursuit of the truth.
No error went undetected, no falsehood unexposed, if he once was aroused in search of the truth.
The true peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln has not been seen by his various biographers; or, if seen, they have failed woefully to give it that importance which it deserves.
Newton beheld the law of the universe in the fall of an apple from a tree to the ground; Owen saw the animal in its claw; Spencer saw evolution in the growth of a seed; and Shakespeare saw human nature in the laugh of a man. Nature was suggestive to all these men. Mr. Lincoln no less saw philosophy in a story and an object lesson in a joke.
His was a new and original position, one which was always suggesting something to him. The world and man, principles and facts, all were full of suggestions to his susceptible soul.
They continually put him in mind of something.
His ideas were odd and original for the reason that he was a peculiar and original creation himself.
His power in the association of ideas was as great as his memory was tenacious and strong.
His language indicated oddity and originality of vision as well as expression.
Words and language are but the counterparts of the idea — the other half of the idea; they are but the stinging, hot, leaden bullets that drop from the mould; in a rifle, with powder stuffed behind them and fire applied, they are an embodied force resistlessly pursuing their object.
In the search for words Mr. Lincoln was often at a
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.