This habit of perspective led Lincoln at times to take an extraordinarily objective view of his own actions—more frequently perhaps as he neared the end of his career. It was as if he projected a view in which history was the duration, the world the stage, and himself a transitory actor upon it. Of all his utterances the Second Inaugural is in this way the most objective and remote. Its tone even seems that of an actor about to quit the stage. His self-effacement goes to the extent of impersonal constructions, so that in places Lincoln appears to be talking about another person. “At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first.” “At this second appearing”! Is there any way of gathering, except from our knowledge of the total situation, who is thus appearing? Then after a generalized review of the military situation, he declares: “With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.” Why “is ventured” rather than “I venture”? Lincoln had taught himself to view the war as one of God’s processes worked out through human agents, and the impersonality of tone of this last and most deeply meditative address may arise from that habit. Only once, in the modest qualifying phrase “I trust,” does the pronoun “I” appear; and the final classic paragraph is spoken in the name of “us.” There have been few men whose processes of mind so well deserve the epithet _sub specie aeternitatis_ as Lincoln’s.