Lincoln's Preference
In the chapter just concluded, the field of ethics is termed a "universe." In the chapter upon Theodicy, it was noted that in Lincoln's most thoughtful ponderings, the great world of reality that passes under the name of physics, or the physical world, seemed to lie outside the field of his concern. Here is a matter demanding something more than a bare allusion. The ponderable universe of material things has impressive majesty. It is too solid and real and present in our life to be ignored. Among the stars and beneath the hills and within the seas are solid and substantial verities. We are environed by their influences on every side. It is deep within their strong embrace that our predetermined fate is being continuously unrolled. What can be the scope and what must be the value of any view of ethics or any plan of life in which this solid, ever-present, all-embracing material world is so indifferently esteemed?
It is with just this query in mind that this research into the mind of Lincoln was first conceived. And the query which has been throughout in immediate review, but unpropounded openly as yet, now demands to be defined and scrutinized. Did the mind of Lincoln, engrossed as it was upon interests supremely ethical, and ignoring, as it seemed to do, all those vast and deep complexities of the purely physical world, find for our unquiet human thought the true and perfect equilibrium? Or was the thought of Lincoln unbalanced and incomplete, misguided and inadequate essentially? In brief, how must ethics and physics, these two and only two supreme realities, when each is most fairly understood, be conceived to correlate and harmonize? As between these two realities, each so imperial and so irreducible, which holds primacy?
Here is for any thoughtful mind well nigh the last interrogation. To attain a competent reply the essential qualities of each and either realm must be uncovered and compared. In physics here, and in ethics there, what attributes pervade, abide, and are essential? And, these true qualities being seen in each, as between the two, which proves itself superior; in which does the soul of man find rest?
In the universe of physics, in all the world of things men see and touch and weigh one pervading and abiding quality is change. We speak indeed of the eternal hills; and before their age-long steadfastness that phrase seems accurate. But it is only soaring rhetoric, surely sinking from its flight, when sober science sets about to cipher from the distinct confessions of their very rocks the date of their birth, the story of their growth, and the sure predictions of their complete decay. In all the stability of the solid hills there is nothing permanent. So with the ageless stars. So with the ever-flowing sea. And so with the very elements of which hills and stars and sea are mixed. All the story of all their genesis and journeying and vanishing is a never-ending tale of change. Nothing physical abides the same. Beneath the daring rays of present-day research all things are being proved impermanent, all found verging over the infinite abyss. Transmutations are in progress everywhere.
In the soul of Lincoln there was craving for a sort of satisfaction which nothing mutable could ever meet. Amid this pageantry of change, among these ceaseless transformations, with all their passing beauty, and all their final disappointment, there was in him a hungering after something that should hold eternally. And within this very eagerness was genuine kinship with the changeless foothold in things eternal which it aspired to find. His very longing was innerly undying. His thirst for immortality was in itself averse and opposite to death essentially. Deep within his desire, deep within himself were living verities, within themselves immutable. His admiration before God's majesty, his free covenant with perfect loyalty, his friendly kindliness towards all others like himself, and his God-like sacrificial grief for all wrongdoing, held within their pure vitality visions and passions and aspirations that no mortal darts could touch. And when with clear discernment he freely chose to fill his soul with hopes and deeds that eternally evade decay, he selected, as between things that change and things that abide, that reality to whose eternal primacy every passing day yields perfect demonstration. Nowhere in physics, in ethics alone could be found the perfect solace of conscious perpetuity.
Another quality of all things physical, a quality likewise all-pervading and persistent, is their want of spontaneity. Within the nature of this mighty physical bulk, that is forever altering its garb and form, and within all its flowing change there is no liberty. Through all the ever-varying orbit of the moon; in all the marvelous wedlock of the elements within the rocks and soils and plants; in all convulsions and explosions of air and sea and fluent gas; in lightning, fire, and plague; in all the age-long monotony of instinct, habit, and proclivity, there is no conscious choice, no character-worth, no ennobling and terrifying responsibility. Through all this change of mortal things all things are fixed. Naught is nobly free.
In the soul of Lincoln there was a passion to be free. In this desire there was a clear intelligence, and a purpose like to God's. He coveted a dignity that was self-achieved. He deemed that worth, and that alone, supreme that was his own creation. Only in deeds that he himself determined could he discern true excellence. Herein he stood apart from brutes, ranked above the hills, and pierced beyond the stars. And when, with such an insight, and such a soaring wish, and in such high dignity, he freely chose to hold supreme the life and thought and joy that are truly free, rating all things fixed and physical as forever far beneath, he allotted certain primacy to that which he discreetly judged undoubtedly pre-eminent. In closest consonance with what has last been said, comes now to be affirmed, a central quality of all things purely physical—persistent and pervading everywhere—their absolute inertia morally. They move as they are moved, and never otherwise. The law by which their being is controlled is not their own. At the last and evermore physics, though the measureless arena of unmeasured active energy, is powerless. It cannot even obey. But most demonstrably it can never command, not even itself. It is vastly, deeply, and forever only passive; although within its ponderous frame are playing with baffling constancy forces that weary all too easily our most stalwart thought.
In such a realm as this, forever unawakened and evermore unjudged, Lincoln's awakened and judicial soul could never find contentment. Within that manly heart was enthroned a conscience, alert alike to receive and to originate, as also to approve and fulfill all noble and ennobling obligations. He knew the meaning and the sense of duty, the weight of duty claimed, and the worth of duty done. In his true heart was a living spring of moral law. And in cherishing with exalted satisfaction this imperial quality of all true moral life, therein deciding that physics held nothing worthy of any comparison, he gave kingly utterance to a judgment and decision and desire that could estimate infallibly the ultimate competitors within his conscious life for primacy. For ever in ethics, as never in physics, right judgment finds its source.
Yet another quality of physics, likewise all-pervasive and permanent, is the mocking, paralyzing mystery in which all its certainties are veiled. The mighty acquisitions to our certain knowledge in the realm of nature are superbly manifold and as superbly sure. The swelling catalogue of things well certified in the material world seems to advance the modern scientific mind almost to genuine apotheosis. But of all these stately certitudes there is not one but walks in darkness no human eye nor thought can penetrate. Before heroic and unexampled diligence and daring the scientific frontiers are receding everywhere; but only to make still more amazing and unbearable their inscrutability. On every horizon of the physical realm yawn infinitudes, whether of space or time, of geometry or arithmetic, of electron or of cell, so defiant, so bewildering, and so overwhelming in their complete defeat and mockery of our bravest and best intelligence that our proudest powers are palsied utterly. Whichever ways we turn, whatever gains we win, we face at last, in the very eye of our research, and in the very heart of our desire, a changeless silence that mocks all hope, and leaves us standing in an utter void. In the realm of simple physics the human intellect, despite the fact that in the physical realm the mind of man has triumphed gloriously, is faced forever with the taunting consciousness that its primal task is still undone.
In an undertaking such as this, and in such a hapless outcome, the mind and life of Lincoln could never be engrossed. He was ever facing mystery indeed in the perplexities that throng the moral realm. In fact, in the darkness and confusion that enshroud and mystify the world of duty and award were all his sorrows born. But in those mysteries moral honesty is not mocked. Where iniquities prevail, the soul that bows towards God sees light. Where sin abounds, the heart that yields the sacrifice of penitence finds peace. In the face of hate and strife and bloodshed, to banish malice and to cherish charity is to enter and to introduce complete tranquillity. Where lives grow coarse and souls are base and purity is all denied, the soul that seeks refinement grows refined and consciously approaches God. When God is mocked and scorners multiply and hearts grow hard in pride, the heart that meekly, humbly holds its confidence in the transcendent, all-controlling Deity opens in that lowly faith deep springs of never-failing hope. In these mysteries, however baffling and persistent, these efforts towards relief find sure and great reward.
In such a field and in such endeavors it was Lincoln's sovereign preference to measure out all the forces of his conscious life. Attent towards God, benign towards men, upright within, and prizing life, he found, not defiance and despair, but perennial quickening and encouragement, whatever problems darkened round his life. For him such soul-filling verities, and such a corresponding faith held far-transcending primacy. And so in conscious, sovereign and everlasting preference for the truth that shows all its light in character, and for the faith that such clear truth forever illuminates, Lincoln testified his confidence that in the face of physics ethics holds supreme pre-eminence.
Of all this searching estimate and supreme comparison of these two divergent realms one's mind may gravely doubt whether Lincoln's mind had perfect consciousness. Concerning this no one may speak, except with hesitance. But any one whose mind has entered into intimate partnership with all the wealth of Lincoln's words is well aware that it was a habit of his mind to pursue its themes to their farthest bourne. In penetration and in pondering not many minds were ever more evenly taxed. His mental persistence and deliberation were almost preternatural. Discovering this, a student of his mental ways will grow to feel that, in a likelihood almost equivalent to full certainty, Lincoln was wittingly aware of all the meaning in his proclivity to rate ethical interests uppermost.
At any rate, in his life and writings, so the matter stands. And standing thus in the deeply conscious soul of Lincoln, the matter has a high significance. It seems to testify with a prophet's steady voice that in all the total realm of being, the realm of freedom, of consciousness, and of character is the first and sovereign verity; that the real is fundamentally ethical; that he who seeks for perfect satisfaction must bring to his inquiry the glad allegiance of a moral freeman and a moral judge; that in every undertaking becoming him as man each cardinal moral excellence must grow and shine increasingly; that every mental acquisition must conduce to a lowliness that adores, to a gentleness that loves, to a purity that pledges immortality, to a self-respect that is the mirror and original of all reality; that only thus, in all this universe, and to all eternity, can the soul of man gain triumphs that can satisfy. Only so will truth grow fully radiant, and mystery become benign. Only so can finite man find peace before his Maker, and face serenely all that wisest unbelief finds terrible. This is truth. Here is freedom. Such is faith. Thus, in a freeman's faith truth stands complete.
Such is Lincoln's preference. Like another Abraham, and with a kindred insight and determination, he won all his triumphs and renown by faith—a free and conscious faith in God, and soul, and character.
Here are designations, at once so plastic and so precise, at once so simple and so profound, as to signify and demonstrate how souls of men may conquer death; how one may be a perfect devotee to another person's weal, and still preserve his own integrity; how perfect sanctity may assume a full companionship with sin, whether by redemption or rebuke, and still remain unflecked; and how in man's humility may be enshrined a dignity wherein supernal majesty may be unveiled.
In some such vivid, moral terms, mobile to grasp and manifest the boundless range and priceless worth within the sovereign moral law; as also to declare unerringly the fateful and unbounded issues of a moral choice, may students hope to trace with true intelligence the real foundations of Lincoln's all but unexampled power and fame.