Here then, in the tone and impress of this address is the sovereign place to find the tone and impress of Lincoln's soul. If that living soul ever gave a conscious hint of its living lineaments and hidden dwelling place, here is that hint's finest published utterance. Here, then, is the total measure of our task. Upon this transparent speech, and not upon vacant air, is the student of psychology to direct his eye. Here is the final challenge. Deep within the deeps of this supreme address, clear within the rhythms of these resounding trilogies, what does one see and hear?
To the question thus defined an answer something such as this must be returned:
Here in this inaugural address is designation and signature of a man astute to comprehend a Nation's history, reverent towards responsibility, a champion and exponent of liberty, commending with radiant earnestness that all his fellow men so walk with God, so cherish equity, and so walk in charity as to secure in all the earth an amity that time can never disrupt.
Something such is the personality which this address attests. While this speech exists, this testimony will endure. Its word stands firm. And its signature is plain. He who wrote the speech has left upon its manuscript his clear and sacred seal. He who gave its body shape was a freeman none could bend, heedful of the arbiter none might disobey, humble towards God, loyal to himself, a friend to every man, an aspirant for life.
Surely these are intimations of personality. Here is Lincoln, a vivid plenitude in living unison of timeless quietness and harmony, ordaining freely his own law of even heed for self and brother man, for God and spirit life. Here is the full manhood of a living soul, Godlike and earthly-born. None of its features are solidified in flesh, to be again and soon resolved. All its face is spiritual; all its action free, self-ordered, and self-judged; all preserving jealously its own kingly honor; all beaming graciously on other men; all bearing homage up to God; all vivid with immortality; abhorring mightily all pride and hate, all falsehood and decay; all sharing sacrificially with other men the cost and shame entailed in righting human wrong. This is Lincoln's personality. In Godlike, friendly, undying self-respect; in heavenly, upright, immortal kindliness; in humane, divine, self-honoring heed for spirit-life—in each and any one of these four identical affirmations is Lincoln's personality exhaustively engrossed, each and any one declaring that he contains within himself a free and deathless soul, akin alike to God and man, and bound therein by the self-wrought law of love and truth.
These terms define a life at once of human and of heavenly range, at once inhabiting and transcending realms of change, at once self-ruled and environed with responsibility. Here is elemental personality, in inwrought and indivisible unity, with measureless capacity for versatility, easily blending fulness of vigor with complete repose, vestured and transfused with native symmetry and grace. In some such living, breathing words, themselves transfigured and illumined by the quickening verities they strive to body forth, may the pure, immortal soul of Lincoln, and of every child of man, be defined, unburdened, and declared.
Something thus must written words describe the soul that surged beneath this speech, and freely gave this speech its being. Surely such an undertaking must not be despised. That aspiring, creative spirit, so earnest and so resolute, far more than any speech its vision or its passion may body forth, demands to be portrayed. Grand as are these paragraphs, their author has a far surpassing majesty. Fitted as are these accents to reach and stir the auditors of a continent, the soul from which these accents rise has an access to all those auditors far more intimate.
If readers of this essay spurn the effort which it undertakes, let them not be scorners merely. From among their number, let some one arise, artist enough in insight and handicraft to make some truer delineation of that living Lincoln, the abiding origin and author of this and his every other noble speech and deed. Such an artist is sure to find, if ever the conscious soul of Lincoln shines through his hand, that when the inner face of Lincoln is portrayed, that portrait will carry speaking evidence of a joyful and abiding consciousness of liberty and law, of self and brother man, of things eternal, and of God; that in his countenance, so sorrow-shadowed and yet so serene, will shine a close resemblance to every other man; that through his quiet eye will gleam that image of God in which he and all his fellow men have been made; and that deep within it all will beam a radiant assurance that by the way of sacrifice the awful mystery of sin has been resolved.
Hitherward must men who seek the soul of Lincoln turn their eye. Humble, gentle, and loyal, eager after the life that is its own reward, at once dutiful and free, lavishing out his life to take the sting from sin—this is the soul of Lincoln. In this image every man will see himself reflected, either in affinity, or by rebuke, herein revealing how all men resemble God. Something such is man. Something such is our common manhood. Something such is our inherent testimony as to our origin and source. And something such is the task of him who would frame a valid definition of personality. No undertaking is more profound, none more supreme. And once it is accomplished, forms of statement will have been found availing to embody all man can ever know of self or God.