Abraham Lincoln: The Practical MysticGrierson, Francis
Religion
Abraham Lincoln: The Practical Mystic
Grierson, Francis
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Psychology
The true scientist is a seer who discloses new facts and discovers
hidden laws. The true scientific mystic creates, but the votaries of
Kultur destroy without creating. Yet, they will be destroyed by their
own weapons. Modern materialism will go down under the weight of the
material. The denial of the mystical forces of the universe is the
vulnerable spot in the scientific armour of Krupp-Kultur. Let any one
who wishes to be convinced by crude facts alone read the history of
Frederick, the so-called Great, and then read a history of Lincoln. Then
let the student ask which is the greater nation to-day--Prussia, headed
by Frederick's descendant, or America, represented by Woodrow Wilson,
the legitimate outcome of Washington the inspired patriot, and Lincoln
the inspired emancipator?
_Herndon's Analysis and Testimony_
W. H. Herndon, for more than twenty years the law partner of Mr.
Lincoln, delivered an address in Springfield, Illinois, upon the life
and character of the lamented President, which for subtle analysis has
few equals in biographical literature. The following are excerpts:
"Mr. Lincoln's perceptions were slow, cold, and exact. Everything came
to him in its precise shape and colour. To some men the world of matter
and of man comes ornamented with beauty, life, and action, and hence
more or less false and inexact. No lurking illusion or other error,
false in itself, and clad for the moment in robes of splendour, ever
passed undetected or unchallenged over the threshold of his mind--that
point that divides vision from the realm and home of thought."
"Names to him were nothing, and titles naught--assumption always
standing back abashed at his cold, intellectual glare. Neither his
perceptions nor intellectual vision were perverted, distorted, or
diseased. He saw all things through a perfect, mental lens. There was no
diffraction or refraction there. He was not impulsive, fanciful, or
imaginative, but calm and precise. He threw his whole mental light
around the object, and, in time, substance and quality stood apart; form
and colour took their appropriate places, and all was clear and exact in
his mind. In his mental view he crushed the unreal, the inexact, the
hollow, and the sham.... To some minds the world is all life, a soul
beneath the material; but to Mr. Lincoln no life was individual or
universal that did not manifest itself to him. His mind was his
standard. His perceptions were cool, persistent, pitiless in pursuit of
the truth. No error went undetected and no falsehood unexposed if he
once was aroused in search of truth.
_An Original Mind_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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