Darwin and Lincoln! Darwin announcing the survival of the strong! Lincoln declaring that when being mounted up to man, love also came into the universe to shield the weak! Lincoln insisting that when the laws of the physical universe and of the moral universe clash, those of the moral universe will prevail! Thank God, our soldiers, on a score of immortal battlefields in the last two years, have proven that Lincoln was right. The victory which we celebrate is the victory of spiritual forces over the things of earth. Lincoln truly served mankind because he loved mankind. Genuine service must always spring from the promptings of the heart, and is never a product of the will alone. It was your own poet Lowell who said: “How beautiful to see Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead.” And so he couldn’t help giving his tenderest thought to the working man. He cared for him because he cared for all men. All are familiar with his significant saying that the Lord loves plain people because He made so many of them. With reference to the age-old question of labor and capital, he declared--“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the highest consideration.” This is but another way of saying that society should chiefly concern itself with the lot in life of the average man. And this is but saying, in another form, that Lincoln was a lover of humanity. The Declaration of Independence, to which, again and again, he turned in his thinking, included not only the right to life and liberty, but the right to the pursuit of happiness as well. And it is interesting to note that though Lincoln emphasized the right to liberty--for slavery was the dominant issue at the time--he never referred to the Declaration, so far as I can find, without coupling with the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness. Life means much; liberty means much; but both fail unless life can be lived and liberty enjoyed under conditions of well-being. Any form of government is but a means to an end, and that end is the happiness of the individual. I am sure that in our almost a century and a half of existence, since that great day of Independence, more men have lived happy lives in our country and under our form of government than in any other in all the history of the world. But the happiness and well-being of the average man and woman must be steadily advanced if our institutions are to endure. The economists may explain, the statesmen may excuse our failure to accomplish this, but the fact remains that our civilization will fail if the well-being of the men and women and children of America shall not continuously improve.