V. THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LIVE FOR SELF ALONE
Henry Cabot Lodge says, “Lincoln could have said with absolute truth, as Seneca’s Pilot says, in Montaigne’s paraphrase, ‘Oh, Neptune, thou mayest save me if thou wilt; thou mayest sink me if thou wilt; but whatever may befall I shall hold my tiller true.’”
The moral process of his life, in which the recorded incidents are only way-marks, is the only worthwhile interest for the American youth or for the newcomer to our shores.
Lincoln’s life-creed may be taken from a statement he has made of his personal duty. “I am not bound to win,” he said, “but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right. I must stand with him while he is right, and I must part with him when he is wrong.”
That this does not mean infallible individual judgment executed at any cost as imperial individual will may be inferred from the beginning of the statement, but it does mean the infallible integrity of honest conscience and character.
Lincoln had a conscience that was like harmony in music, and he could not uphold a wrong thing any more than he could intentionally use a wrong figure and hope to solve correctly his problem.
As an illustrating incident, one of his clients wanted to bring suit against a widow with six children for six hundred dollars.
“Yes,” said Lincoln, “there is no reasonable doubt that I can win this case for you; I can set the whole neighborhood at loggerheads; I can greatly distress a widow and her six fatherless children, and thereby gain six hundred dollars for you which I can see belongs to them with about as much right as to you, but I’ll give you a little advice for nothing. Try some other way to get six hundred dollars.”
Like the rich man who went away so disturbed from the advice of Christ, this man went away sorrowing.
In another instance Lincoln started in with a case believing his client innocent, then he reached the belief that the man was guilty. Turning to his associates in the case, he said, “Sweet, this man is guilty. You defend him. I can’t.” The large fee in the case was forfeited, but his self-respect, that nobility which carried him through many great dark hours, was saved.
Once, when out with his lawyer-companions, he climbed a tree, searching for a bird’s nest, out of which two fledgelings had fallen. His companions made sport of him for giving so much time and work to such worthless things, but he exclaimed with such genuine feeling as to silence them, “I could not have gone to sleep in peace if I had not restored those little birds to their mother.”
Lincoln liked to argue, and, to pass the time in a certain stage-coach ride, he was arguing that every act, no matter how kind, was always prompted by a selfish motive. About this time the stage passed a ditch in which a pig was stuck fast in the mud. Lincoln asked the driver to stop. He then jumped out and rescued the pig.
The passenger with whom Lincoln had been arguing thought that he now had proof for his own side of the case.
“Now look here,” he said as Lincoln climbed back into the stage, “you can’t say that was a selfish act.”
“Yes, I can,” replied Lincoln. “It was extremely selfish. If I had left that little fellow sticking in the mud, it would have made me uncomfortable till I forgot it. That’s why I had to help him out.”
General Littlefield says that one day a client came in with a very profitable case for Lincoln. He told Lincoln his story. Lincoln listened a little while and his look went up to the ceiling in a very abstract way. Presently, he swung his chair around and said, “Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You’ll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn’t do it. If I was talking to the jury in favor of your case, I’d all the time be thinking, ‘Lincoln, you’re a liar,’ and I believe I’d forget myself and say it out loud.”
Coleridge in his “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” might well have had Lincoln in mind when he wrote,
“Farewell! Farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding guest!
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
That was Lincoln’s religion, to love his fellow-men and his country. In the turmoil of wrongs infesting the confusions that were bewildering all minds at the close of the Civil War, all now know that both North and South lost the noblest and most valued friend, the ablest and wisest restorer, anywhere to be found in all the vast regions of pain.