Abraham Lincoln: The Practical MysticGrierson, Francis
Religion
Abraham Lincoln: The Practical Mystic
Grierson, Francis
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Psychology
As a boy Lincoln was unlike any other boy, always unique, self-centred
in the best and highest sense, the like of whom did not exist in his or
any other country. All through his early life there could be seen the
signs and symbols of his coming power. How such a being came into the
world science fails to explain. Back of the mystery there are other
mysteries, and not in a thousand years of experiment will eugenics
produce another such mortal, not in ten thousand years will science
create anything spiritual or mystical. Science can never get beyond the
material. If it ever controls the psychic intelligence, mediocrity will
be the order of the day. The higher intelligence does not need control
but development. This freedom Lincoln had, but back of that apparent
freedom the mystical conditions existed, fixed and foreordained. The
very men and women who assisted him had to be where he found them. To
have been anywhere else they would have been out of their proper
element. In the human world there are no misfits, only grades of
development.
_Tycho Brahe and Lincoln_
When Hugh Miller, the noted geologist, faced the inexplicable he
committed suicide. But Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, the greatest
practical mystic the world of science has known, experienced a sense of
joy and exhilaration every time he viewed the starry heavens through his
telescope. He considered astronomy something "divine." His was the
joyful pride of the seer who revels in the unexplained mysteries of the
universe, and from time to time obtained clairvoyant glimpses of the
working of the miracle. Brahe, like Abraham Lincoln, had moments when he
perceived the inevitable with unalloyed vision.
After carefully studying the comet of 1577 he declared that it announced
the birth of a prince in Finland who should lay waste Germany and vanish
in 1632. Gustave Adolphus was born in Finland, overran Germany, and died
in 1632.
Brahe was the forerunner of the true scientist, Lincoln the forerunner
of the true statesman. It is not a fact that science and intuition are
antagonistic. The antagonism exists only in the imagination of
second-rate thinkers. The great discoverers always put the spiritual and
the mystical above learning. Brahe and Newton, as scientists, were
unequalled in their age and have not been surpassed in this. The Kultur
of modern Germany has but emphasised the danger of pseudo science in all
walks of life and made it plain that no nation can prosper under such an
illusion. The Prussians have forced many to revert back to a
consideration of the gifts of such men as Tycho Brahe, Newton, Lincoln,
and the difference between their science and that of Kultur is a
difference that strikes the normal thinker with amazement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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