Lincoln, The American by FRANK O. LOWDEN Governor of Illinois Boston, Mass. February 12, 1919 [Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] [Illustration: colophon] SPRINGFIELD, ILL. ILLINOIS STATE JOURNAL CO., STATE PRINTERS 1919 15793--1M Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois delivered the following address before the Middlesex Club at the Hotel Somerset in Boston, Mass., Wednesday evening February 12, 1919: Principles rather than policies appealed to Abraham Lincoln. All great questions seemed to him to involve some moral quality. It was his habit, therefore, to resolve them into their simple fundamentals. It thus happens that many of his words are as apt and forceful to-day as when they were first spoken by him. Your Club has recognized this fact and has made “Lincoln, the American,” the theme of the evening. In harmony with this thought, I shall try to put before you some of the things for which Lincoln stood, which directly apply, as it seems to me, to the grave problems with which we and all the world with us are now confronted. A hundred and ten years ago to-day, two men were born. Both have been dust for many years. Yet each played a large part in the Great World War that we hope has reached its close. These men were Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Darwin devoted his life to the study of material things. In that world in which he lived he found heredity and environment to be the controlling facts. Out of his study came the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The savants of Germany made that doctrine the corner-stone of a new philosophy which they called Kultur. According to Kultur, the world belonged to the strong and to the strong alone. Might was right, and the world was in the relentless grip of physical force. Justice, gentleness, righteousness were words invented by the weak to protect themselves against the strong. To pity a foe was weakness; to spare him was a crime. Kultur was a denial of the moral law; was a blind faith in the power of the laws of life which Darwin had declared.