The true conservative is one who sees the universe as a paradigm of essences, of which the phenomenology of the world is a sort of continuing approximation. Or, to put this in another way, he sees it as a set of definitions which are struggling to get themselves defined in the real world. As Lincoln remarked of the Framers of the Declaration of Independence: “They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”[114] This paradigm acts both as an inspiration to action and as a constraint upon over-action, since there is always a possibility of going beyond the schemata into an excess. Lincoln opposed both slavery and the Abolitionists (the Abolitionists constituted a kind of “action” party); yet he was not a middle-of-the-roader. Indeed, for one who grew up a Whig, he is astonishingly free from tendency to assume that “the truth lies somewhere in between.” The truth lay where intellect and logic found it, and he was not abashed by clearness of outline. This type of conservative is sometimes found fighting quite briskly for change; but if there is one thing by which he is distinguished, it is a trust in the methods of law. For him law is the embodiment of abstract justice; it is not “what the courts will decide tomorrow,” or a calculation of the forces at work in society. A sentence from the First Inaugural Address will give us the conservative’s view of pragmatic jurisprudence: “I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.”[115] The essence of Lincoln’s doctrine was not the seeking of a middle, but reform according to law; that is, reform according to definition. True conservatism can be intellectual in the same way as true classicism. It is one of the polar positions; and it deserves an able exponent as well as does its vivifying opposite, true radicalism.