Within this last preceding paragraph one feels again the presence and the movement of all that all the chapters of this volume have contained. Herein we seem to face a sort of final synthesis of all our study. If this be true, or only true approximately, then its face and contents should be scrutinized until they are cleared of every shadow or alloy. For this research is surely approaching its goal, and some of its boundaries may surely be defined. One line that shows indelibly is his intelligence; an intelligence comprehending total centuries, and assembling within its scope extreme diversities; an intelligence that has a piercing eye, acute to distinguish and divide; an intelligence that has power to estimate, compare, and summarize; an intelligence intolerant of error, and eager after truth; an intelligence that can frame an argument designed to clarify, convince, and win all other minds; an intelligence that assumes to deal with God, receiving and reflecting within its own interior and proper vision a revelation of the divine intent. Here is an energy, at once receptive and original, fitted marvelously for a reflection that can embrace and authorize eternal truth. This intelligence is within control. It is not a vagrant or unguided force. It is under conduct, all its action to observe, inspect, and estimate being ordered reasonably. And all this influence operating to understand and counsel, all this wisdom, while gathering light and substance from everywhere, is informed within, and wonderfully self-contained. As Lincoln reasons in this inaugural, as he resolves and purifies his argument, its power to convince is most intimate and deep within himself. As he guides and shapes his thoughts for the thought of other men, the convictions within the speaker, and their power to persuade, so inwrought in the speech, become identical. In his own consent choice and judgment are combined. Here is freedom indeed, a freedom to discern as truly as to choose, to distinguish as truly as to decide, to estimate as truly as to select, the freedom of the intelligence, an intelligence that is truly free.