Abraham Lincoln: The Practical Mystic

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

ILLUSIONS AND REALITIES OF
THE WAR ^

THE INVINCIBLE ALLIANCE
AND OTHER ESSAYS

THE CELTIC TEMPERAMENT

MODERN MYSTICISM AND
OTHER ESSAYS

PARISIAN PORTRAITS

THE HUMOUR OF THE UNDER-

MAN

THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS

LA VIE ET LES HOMMES
(in French)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC

By FRANCIS GRIERSON

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

JOHN DRINKWATER

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXIX

PRINTBD BY MORRISON AND GIBR LIMITED, BDINBUKGN

INTRODUCTION

THE great wonder of poetry, of all art,
is that its challenge and consolation
transcend all points of view; working not
upon our opinions, but upon our funda-
mental desire for completeness and intelli-
gible form. The man who realizes the true
significance of poetry responds with equal
satisfaction to Swinburne when he savs :

''This life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep;

and to Browning's

"Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake,"

no matter in which direction the trend of
his own personal philosophy may be. The
life-giving quality lies in the complete
realization of a mood in one case as in the
other, and it is from this that we draw a
knowledge of our own power of fulfilment,
by this that we are inspired.
It is no idleness to say that a man's life

vi Introduction

becomes endowed with meaning for us ex-
actly in so far as it approaches this perfect
unity and conclusion of a great work of art.
This has nothing to do with the position
that art is greater than life, though it could
be shown easily enough that art is merely
life in its nearest approach to perfection.
A life in which neither intention nor loyalty
to intention are left unresolved, in which
the nature of the soul stands out to our
vision with the sharpness of chiselled marble,
and compels its environment always to take
on something of its own property, trans-
figuring, as it were, the external circum-
stance in which it moves, remains to us for
ever an example and a hope. The fear,
that if this be so a life of evil will might
serve us as profoundly as one of nobility,
I is baseless. For, by some creative fitness
' governing the universe, poverty of spirit
/ is always doomed in the last issue to con-
fusion ; evil is, indeed, nothing but the lack
of this very lucidity and completeness.
But it does not at all follow that in matters
of opinion many good men may not be in
disagreement with the man in whose life
we are aware of the radiant spiritual form.
The life, most familiar to English-speaking
people, in which this unity is loveliest, is

Introduction vii

that of Christ. And the man who worships
Christ most truly may well be one who
would not fear to make this or that question
of his teaching, nor would such a one be the
/least patiently forborne.
/ In modern history there is no man whose
\ life so finely bears for the world the sig-
^ nificance of a great work of creative wisdom
as Abraham Lincoln, j If it should be asked
whether Lincoln was a greater man than
Shakespeare, it must at least be remem-
bered, whatever the answer, that in Lincoln
his life stands for the Lear and Macbeth and
Ttoelftb Night and Tempest of Shakespeare.
And it is the spectacle of the one perfecting
his own soul that moves us as deeply and
instructs us as surely as that of the other
perfecting the creatures of his imagination.
It seems to me that it is this faculty in
Lincoln for investing the life of a statesman, ^
absorbed in the medley of daily affairs, with
spiritual significance, so that what he does,
however pregnant, is always of secondary
consideration to what he so supremely is,
that Mr. Grierson has in mind when he
calls him "the practical mystic.'* The theme
is a great one, and Mr. Grierson is to be
thanked for dealing by it so justly.
The crowning instance of the independ-

^

viii Introduction

ence that this sublime realization of char-
acter may have of mere opinion, is to be
found in considering the very issae that
was the pre-occupation of Lincoln's political
career. The determining idea of his states-
manship^as the preservation of the American
Union.LJt was not, as is very often sup-

Eosed, the abolition of slavery. His personal
atred of the slave traffic, conceived in
boyhood, was inflexible, but although nothing
gave him greater satisfaction than the act
of emancipation when it cam.e, it was not
until the southern states had forfeited their
constitutional rights by rebellion that he
allowed himself to perform it. For his
Presidential oath involved the sanction of
slavery where it already existed, and nothing
would have induced him to allow his own
sympathies to modify the obligation which
he then took. So that the elementary
question of morality as to whether the
trade in living bodies was in any circum-
stance justifiable did not truly arise at the
outset in the direction of his policy. The
stand that he made with such memorable
singleness was for a far more debatable and
more purely political conviction. Although
he sanctioned, by necessity, existing slave-
rights, when he was asked for an extension

Introduction ix

of these he was absolute in refusal, and then
it was, upon the South's proposal to secede
from the Union and make its own slave
legislation, that he perceived a conflict of
opinion upon which, rather than compro-
mise, he was^jvilling to accept the bitterness
of civil war^j^National unity is a cause that
has bred'ifiany heroes of the stamp if not
of the stature of Lincoln, but self-deter-
mination is a creed that it would be rash
to say has been less nobly Or less honourably

/^rved. And here, at this particular crisis,
Lincoln^s peer in goodness and integrity,
Rooert £• Lee, sacrificed self-interest and
strong personal sympathy merely to stand
by the claim of his native state to the right
of secession. Lee had open to him the
highest command in the Northern armies,
and he hated the slave foundation jio less
than did Lincoln himself, to whom j^e gave
the honour that greatness gives to greatness,
and yet in opinion he was in irreconcilable
difference. And it would be easy for a
man to concur with Lee's judgment in this
matter, and yet realize that his view left
the perfection of Lincoln's spiritual life
untouched.

When these signal manifestations of char-
acter in the world appear before us in
t

f

z Introduction

perspective, it so often seems that fate,
over-ruling our lighter sense of fitness, has
conspired by some apparent accident to
make the proportions complete in external
circumstance as in the subtler processes of
a life. Fifty years after the event, Lin-
coln's violent death at the moment when,
in the counsels of reconstruction, he was
needed as he was never needed before, cannot
appear to the justest reason as anything but
the calamity that it seemed to be to the
world at the time. The loss that it meant
to modern political thought and civilizing

\ influence cannot be measured. It is certain

' that no event in history has so clearly the
aspect of disaster, emphasized as it is by the

' succession of a policy wantonly mischievous.

' Had Lincoln uved another twenty years,
the political life of our Western races would
inevitably have been a better and cleaner
thing than it is. And yet, above the ways
of just reason, there is some strange ad-
monition that the divine imagination was
not even here blindly working without
purpose. Who shall say what might have
come of the seeming certain promise of
those twenty years ? Was there not in
that end, which even we, who feel nothing
of the direct shock, cannot contemplate

Introduction xi

without indignation and a sense of right
frustrated, after all something of the wonder
that stays upon the close of Hecuba and of
Lear ? Was there not in this, too, a shaping
of the perfect whole that must remain an
inspiration to mankind for ever ? We are
not always wiser than the gods, even in our
divinest pity.

JOHN DRINKWATER

1919

CONTENTS

The Practical Mysticism of Abraham Lincoln

The Divine Will

The Mystical Awahening .

The Agnostic and the Mystic

The Logic of the Supernatural

The Mystical Mood .

'* Going into the Silence "

Invisible Powers

The Fusion of Spirit and Matter

His Miraculous Progress

A Prophetic Witness .

Lincoln's Simplicity .

Lincoln's Clairvoyant Wit

A Prophetic Vision of Hades

Shahespeare and Lincoln

A Prophecy Fulfilled

The Ordinances of Heaven

Lincoln's Face .

The Great f>ebat$

Forecastings and Premonitions

•••
ZIU

PAGB
I

4

5

9
II

13

14
i6

i8

20
23

34
26

29

32

34
36
40

41
44

xiv ConUnts

PAGE

Illumination of the Spirit 46

Tycho Brake and Lincoln ..... 48

Hemdon's Analysis and Testimony ... 50

An Original Mind 52

The Great Boohs 53

Veneration and Truth 55

The Great PuMJule 5^

Lincoln's Energy and Will .... 57

Nature and Prophecy 59

The Seal of Nature 60

Law and Authority 62

Lincoln as Critic 65

if ts Style 66

Lincoln's Serenity ...... 67

The Romance of his Character .... 69

President by the Grace of God . . . . 71

Science and the Mystical 72

The Old and the New 73

Destiny versus Will 74

James Jacquess — Practical Mystic , , • 77

Images and Dreams 81

The New Era 84

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THE PRACTICAL MYSTIC

A KNOWLEDGE of the influences which The Practical
ruled the life of Lincoln, the greatest Mysticism of

- . , . . . , ^ , Abraham

of practical mystics, is essential now that a Lincoln
new form of paganism and slavery threatens
humanity.

In Lincoln's time the black slaves of Amer-
ica had to be freed ; in our time the white
slaves of Europe have to be freed. We have
returned to the conquest. History is being
repeated, but on a far vaster scale. The
whole world is groaning under the threats
and deeds of tyranny that seeks to become
absolute. What Abraham Lincoln stood for
in the middle of the nineteenth century the
English-speaking peoples must stand for at
the beginning of the twentieth. Materialism
produced Prussian autocracy. A spiritual
power brought America safely through the
ordeals of the Civil War. But the material
and the spiritual cannot both rule at the same
time. One must yield authority to the other.
And we cannot succeed by denying the very

2 Abraham Lincoln

The Practical thing which caused Lincoln to triumph over

A^a^Z ""^ ^ enemies and obstacles.

Lincoln In 1 862 the Reverend Byron Sutherland

went with some friends of the President to
call upon him. In November 15th, 1872,
Dr. Sutherland wrote to the Reverend J. A.
Reed : —

"The President began by saying, *The
ways of God are mysterious and profound be-
yond all comprehension. " Who, by search-
ing, can find Him out ? '' Now, judging
after the manner of men, taking counsel of
our sympathies and feelings, if it had been
left to us to determine it, we would have had
no war. And, going farther back, to the
occasion of it, we would have had no evil.
There is the mystery of the universe which
no man can solve, and it is at that point that
human understanding backs down. There is
nothing left but for the heart of man to take
up faith and believe where it cannot reason.
Now, I believe we are all agents and instru-
ments of Divine Providence. On both sides
we are working out the will of God. Yet how
strange the spectacle ! Here is one-half of the
nation prostrated in prayer that God will help
to destroy the Union and build up a govern-
ment upon the comer-stone of human bond-
age. And here is the other half, equaUy

I'he Practical Mystic 3

earnest in their prayers and eflForts to defeat The PracHcai
a purpose which they regard as so repugnant ^^^^ ^^
to their ideas of human nature and the rights Lincoln
of society, as well as liberty and independence.
They want slavery ; we want freedom. They
want a servile class ; we want to make equality
practicable as far as possible. And they are
Christians and we are Christians. They and
we are praying and fighting for results exactly
the opposite. What must God think of such
a posture of affairs ? There is but one solu-
tion — self-deception. Somewhere there is a
fearful heresy in our religion, and I cannot
think it lies in the love of liberty and in the
aspirations of the human soul. 1 hold myself
in my present position, and with the authority
invested in me, as an instrument of Provi-
dence. I have my own views and purposes.
I have my convictions of duty and my ideas
of what is right to be done. But I am con-
scious every moment that all I am, and all I
have, is subject to the control of a Higher
Power. Nevertheless, I am no fatalist. I
believe in the supremacy of the human con-
science, and that men are responsible beings ;
that God has a right to hold them — and will
hold them — to a strict personal account for
the deeds done in the body. . . . God alone
knows the issue of this business. He has de-

4 Abraham Lincoln

The PracHcai stroyed nations from the map of history for

^hrdhcm^^ their sins. Nevertheless, my hopes prevail

Lincoln generally above my fears for our Republic.

The times are dark. The spirits of ruin are

abroad in all their power and the mercy of

God alone can save us/ '*

The Divine
WiU

SEPTEMBER 30th, 1862, when every-
thing looked dark, and the future of
America was uncertain, Lincoln wrote the
following meditation on the Divine Will : —
" The will of God prevails. In great con-
tests each party claims to act in accordance
with the will of God. Both may be, one must
be, wrong. God cannot be for and against
the same thing at the same time. In the pre-
sent civil war it is quite possible that God's
purpose is something different from the pur-
pose of either party ; and yet the human in-
strumentalities, working just as they do, are
of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.
I am almost ready to say this is probably true:
that God wills this contest, and wills that it
^hall not end yet. By His great power on
the minds of the contestants he could have
either saved or destroyed the Union without
war. Yet the contest began. And, having

The Practical Mystic 5

begun,He could give the final victorytoeither The DMn$
side any day. Yet the contest proceeds/' ^^

A MYSTICAL epoch is upon us, and The Mystical
like all vital movements it has come '^"'''*^***^
without systematic propaganda and without
organized eflFort.

The world-upheaval did not cause this new
movement ; it has simply advanced it by
stripping materialism of its illusive trappings
and showing it naked to the civilized world.
It is not the work of one man or any single
group, sect, or nation. Its characteristics
are Anglo-American, and its development
will prove the only antidote to the new pagan
Kultur, which opposes not only Chnstian
morals, but everything that places the
spiritual above the material.

Abraham Lincoln, the greatest practical
mystic the world has known for nineteen hun-
dred years, is the one man whose life and ex-
ample ought to be clearly set before the
English-speaking peoples at this supreme
climax in the history of civilization. The
thoughts, incidents, manifestations, which
the majority of historians glide over with a
careless touch, or side-track because of the
lack of moral courage, are the only things that

6 Abraham Lincoln

The Mystical count in the life of that great scei. His whole
Awakening existence was controlled by influences beyond
the ken of the most astute politicians of his
time. His genius was superhuman. And
since this world is not governed by chance, a
power was at work which fore-ordained him
for his unique mission.

W. H. Herndon has this to say in his
biography of the immortal statesman : —

" Nature had burned into him her holy
fire, and stamped hun with the seal of her
greatness."

In other words, the seal of the practical
mystic, which may be taken as the keynote
to the spiritual theme of his marvellous ex-
periences. For it is futile to continue to harp
on Lincoln's political acumen, his knowledge
of law, his understanding of the people, his
judgment of individuals, his poverty, nis dis-
regard of the conventional, as causes of his
greatness. The same may be said of thou-
sands of others, yet there is no other Lincoln.
To arrive at a just appreciation of the man
and his achievements I felt it essential to
read very carefully all the books written by
those most intimate with the great President
— a study which has required a period of
thirty years. The writing of " llie Valley
of Shadows '^ was one of the results of that

7be Practical Mystic 7

study, that book being, as far as I could make The MysHcai
it, a depiction of the spiritual atmosphere of ^»«*«^^
the Lincoln country in Lincoln's time — the
atmosphere in which he lived and moved,
thought and worked.

Too long has the materialism of weights
and bushel measures dimmed *the light that
shines from the example of that incomparable
seer. Too long have politicians used his
name to fish for gudgeons in the muddy
waters of sectional politics. Too long has
Lincoln been held up in speeches and elec-
tioneering manoeuvres as a politician who
arrived because he was honest. As if Web-
ster, Calhoun, Clay, Sumner, and scores of
others were not equally honest without ever
attaining a world-influence. What caused-^.
Lincoln's honesty ? His conscience. And )
what created his conscience ? His innate /
mystical knowledge of the difference between /
good and evil, philosophers and puppets, thei
solemn dignity of duty and the sham dignity;
of ambition. His was the clear vision in the!
darkest hours, while others were magnifying
events through long-distance spectacles, ot
minimizing them in near-sighted details.

The mystical trend now visible in England
and America is not a revival but a renaissance.
It has come in the natural course of events,

8 Abrabam Lincoln

The Mystical being the only thing that responds to the
"'^ ***^ spiritual aspirations and needs of the dispen-
sation ushered in by the great waf .
• The renaissance of practical mysticism is

now apparent both in and outside the
churches ; but its greatest influence is ex-
erted on that large class which, before the
war, had no religious convictions of any kind.
We have arrived at a climax in history. Old
methods and systems are passing, but not the
old fundamental ^'truths. Conditions, not
principles, have changed, and our Attitude
, towards things has changed with conditions.
Thousands can now see clearly where once
^. they saw through a veil of agnostici|m. It
^^^ required a mighty force to lift the veil, and a
vast amount of machinery ind metaphysics
« ^ had to combine to accomplish such a miracle ;
but the miracle is here, alive with a vital
flame unknown since the days of the Prophets
and the Apostles.

The spiritu!il renaissance is not a drawing-
room fad. It is not founded on a passing
whim. Novelties and opinions shift with the
wind, and people who are influenced by them
are influenced by shadows. Mere notiBiis
can never take the place of ideas. Novelties
possess no fundamental basis on whicH the
spirit of man can build, and the difference

'■'I 7he Practical Mystic 9

between an idea and a notion is the difference The Mystical
between a university and a lunatic asylum. ^^^^^*^g

The spirirtial renaissance is not confined to
any particular profession, and this is why it
is making headway among people of such
divers views. The war has crushed the juice
out of the orange on the tree of pleasure and
nothing is left but the peel over which
materialism is slipping to its doom.

This stupendous movement was not sprung
upon the world in a night. Itiias had its slow
stages of <fevelopment. Everything comes
and goes in cycles which are graded in kind •
and proceed in accordance with immutable
law. Thi| spiritual movement has had its '4
special phases of pre]iaration. It is not true ' ^^ *
that the voices of tile prophets have been in-
audible. What is true is that every voice that •
has sounded since the dawn pf historical civil-
ization has been heard and heeded. Emer-
son uttered a great mystical truth when he
said : " A book written for threenvill gravi-
tate to three," and, similarly, a voice intended
for three will be heard and heeded by three.

HERNDON^S agnosticism left no lasting The Agnostic
impression on the mind of Lincoln. ^^J^
This is remarkable, because Herndon was a

lo Abraham Lincoln

The Agnostic man with a powerful originality and a strong

Lincoln was more or less influenced by
Herndon at the beginning of their acquaint-
ance, but such influence did not last long.

Another curious thing is that Mr. Herndon
in spite of his probity, his practical ability,
and his talent as a lawyer, never became
known beyond his own state. He never was
put forward as a leader. Perhaps he enter-
tained no particular ambition to lead, being
too much of a philosopher, but the remark is
in order that what was lacking in his tem-
perament was just a spark of that mystical
illumination which gave Lincoln his faith,
his conviction, and his power.

No doubt Herndon was singularly fitted
for the position he held with Lincoln for the
space of twenty years. Had he been a leader
in public affairs he could not have aided
Lincoln as he did.

That the great President never had a
mentor is plain to all who have studied the
best biographies. He did sometimes act
upon suggestions from friends in matters of
minor importance in his private affairs. When,
one day, after he had become President, Mrs.
Lincoln informed him that the gossips de-
clared he was being ruled by Seward, his

The Practical Mystic ii

reply was : " 1 may not rule myself, but The Agnostic
certainly Seward shall not. The only ruler ^Jf 1^
IS my conscience — ^following God m it — ^and
these men will have to learn that yet.'* And
Seward did learn it, as well as Stanton and
Chase, and every member of the Cabinet,
and all others who came within the radius of
his mystical circuit. Indeed, the generals all
learnt it, some of them to their sorrow, long
before the war ended.

Lincoln's authority became apparent to all
whenever he delivered a speech on important
occasions. Then, as Judge Whitney has
said, he was " as terrible as an army with
banners." Col. Henry Watterson, in his
memorable address before the Lincoln Union,
in Chicago, puts the question : " Where did
Shakespeare get his genius ? Where did
Mozart get his music ? Whose hand smote
the lyre of the Scottish ploughman ? God
alone. And if Lincoln was not inspired of
God then there is no such thing as special
Providence or the interposition of Divine
Power in the affairs of men."

• • •

UDGE HENRY C WHITNEY has ta^Lo^
asked the following questions : — " By ^J^^^^^
what magic spell was this, the greatest

12 Abraham Lincoln

The Logic moral transformation in all profane history,
^iupetnatufol WTOught ? What Genius sought out this
roving child of the forest, this obscure
fl^t-boatman, and placed him on the lonely
heights of immortal fame ? Why was this
best of men made the chief propitiation for
our national sins ? Was his progress causa-
tive or fortuitous ; was it logical 6r super-
natural ; was the Unseen Power, or he
himself, the architect of his fortune f

" The blunders that were committed by
raw and reckless commanders in the field
were sufficient to make angels weep, but they
were all mosaics in the process of Fate to
work out the Divine plan. If we could see
the whole scheme of human redemption it
would be quite clear to us that not only
Abraham Llncol^, U. S. Grant, W. T. Sher-
man, but equally Jefferson Davis, Robert £.
Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Raphael Semmes
were necessary instruments of the great dis-
poser of events — that the bullet which ter-
minated the glorious career of the President
was not more surely sped by Fate to its mark
than was the bullet which ended the life of
Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh and which
ultimately averted niin to the Union forces
on that blood-stained field, and that in the
sublime procession of destiny all events,

The Practical Mystic 13

apparent accidents, calamities, crimes, and The Logic
blunders were agents of the Omnipotent Will, ^iJ^^^aiufai
now as cause, then as interlude or eddy, anon
as effort, all working, apparently, and to
human comprehension, fortuitously, but in
reality all harmoniously to their Divine
appointed end."

THERE was to me," says Henry B. Ran- The Mystical
kin, in his " Personal Recollections ^^^
of Abraham Lincoln," " always an unap-
proachable grandeur in the man when he was f
in this mood of inner solitude. It isolated \y
and — I always thought — exalted him above
his ordinary life. History will discern and
reverently disclose the strength in Lincoln's
character and the executive foresight for
which this mood gave him revealings."

And the Reverend Joseph Fort Newton
adds to the sentiments of his friend Rankin
these words : " Lincoln was a man whom to
know was a kind of religion. His deep
musings on the ways of God, on the souls of
men, on the principles of justice and the laws
of liberty bore fruit in exalted character and .

exact insight. Hence, a style of speech re-
markable for its lucidity, direction, and forth- ;^
right power, with no waste of words, tinged ^

14 Abraham Lincoln

The Mystical always hj z temperament at once elusive and
^*^ alluring, which Bryce compares to the

weighty eloquence of Cromwell without its

haziness/'

"Going into TOURING an important criminal trial
the Silence " IJ ^m^i McWilliams said : " Lincoln
will pitch in heavy now for he has hid."

One who knew him declared : " He
seemed never to be alone. I have frequently
seen him, in the midst of a Court in session,
with his mind completely withdrawn from
the busy scene before his eyes, as completely
abstracted as if he were in absolute solitude.'*
Judge Whitney wrote : " In religion, Lin-
coln was in essence a mystic, and all his
\ adoration was in accordance with the tenets

/ of that order," a judgment which agrees with
^ r^^ihzX of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-Presi-
l dent of the Southern Confederacy : " With
\ Lincoln, the Union rose to the sublimity of
\a religious mysticism."

The mystical mood cannot be likened to
any other mood. People in a hurry never
experience such a mental state. Personal am-
^ ; bition forbids it and the feeling of vainglory

renders such a condition impossible. What
renders the life of Lincoln so instructive is

7 be Practical Mystic 15

the fact that with him everything was so •« Going into
natural. He did not experiment ; he did *^ SiUnce "
not practise special hours and seasons ; he
had no fixed times for this or that. He s^
professed no subtle methods of inducing
moods and took no stimulants. Nature
and a mystical Providence arranged and
provided.

His moods were between himself and his
God. No one ever dared approach him as
toTHe why or the wherefore of his silence.
And it is proper here to comment on the in-
stinctive good sense of the American people
in whose midst Lincoln passed his whole life
— they instinctively knew too much to pre-
sume upon the privacy of his mystical moods.
In this their attitude was wholly admirable.
The American people were at that time
practical, democratic seers, without whom
the greatest practical mystic could not have
existed.

That Lincoln possessed intuition and illu-
mination without resorting to human aid
is clear and irrefutable. His words were
simple and his actions were simple, like those
of the Hebrew seers. He announced and he
pronounced, without subtle explanations or
mysterious formulas.

All which proves that practical mysticism

i6 dbraham Lincoln

"Going into Can flouHsh as much under Democracy as
the Silence'* under zvLj Other form of government.

Men do not receive their gifts from those
in power. They come into the world with
them. Lincoln was opposed on all sides from
the start. He had to contend with poverty,
provincial ignorance, aristocratic prejudice,
academical opposition, and he had against
him his homely features, his awkward bearing,
and the lack of influential patronage. He
had no family connections that could be of
assistance anywhere at any time. Never had
there been a man of great intellect so abso-
lutely alone in the intellectual world, so re-
moved from social and political favours of
time and circumstance.

Powers

Invisible \\T^ ^^^ Compelled to look at all sides

V V of Lincoln^s political career in order
to arrive at a just appreciation of his stupen-
dous achievements, and when that is done
we have to dismiss the notion that he suc-
ceeded because of his brilliant intellectual
gifts. Others possessed great intellects with-
out attaining altitudes of commanding power
and enduring fame.

Why did the influence of Caesar, Darius,
Alexander, Bonaparte, and Bismarck cease as

\ \

7 he Practical Mystic ly

soon as they passed away i Because the in- imisibig
fluence they exerted was based on material ^^^^^
dominion. With the collapse of the material
everything collapses. The material can never
go beyond or take precedence of the spiritual.
Marcus Aurelius is read to-day because he
placed spiritual things above all worldly
possessions and privileges.

The universe was created by a Supreme
Mind, and the direction of affairs is in the
hands of this All-Seeing Power, manifesting
in all forms — sometimes personal, sometimes
collective. In Lincoln's case it took a pro-
nounced individual form, isolated and unique,
as in Moses. The ease with which Lincoln
overcame opposition amazed those who were
near him. They judged it miraculous.
Miracles are manifestations for which science
has no definition, no analysis. Lincoln's
intelligence was not bound by the known
rules and laws of science. It requires in-
tuition and illumination for its redization.
Such intelligence cannot be handled in
detail as chemists handle the elements of
matter. In the mystical world all the ele-
ments, forces, and combinations act and deve-
lop together as one manifestation at one time.
No mental chemistry can separate them.

1 8 Abraham Lincoln

The Fusion HT^HE existence of a great man," says Vic-
M^er^ """"^ ^ *^^ Cousin, the French philosopher,
" is not the creation of arbitrary choice ; he
is not a thing that may, or may not, exist ; he
is not merely an individual ; too much, or
too little, of individuality are equally de-
structive to the character of a great man. On
the one hand, individudity of itself is an ele-
ment of what is pitiful and little, because
particularity, the contingent and die finite,
tends unceasingly to division, to dissolution,
and to nothingness. On the other hand,
every general tends to absolute unity. It
possesses greatness but it is exposed to the
risk of losing itself in abstractions. The great
man is the harmonious combination of what
is particular with what is general. This
combination constitutes the standard value
of his greatness, and it involves a twofold
condition : first, of representing the general
spirit of his nation, because it is in his relation
to that general spirit that his greatness con-
^^ ^ sists ; and, secondly, of representing the
^"^ general spirit which confers upon his great-
y ness in his own person, in a real form, that is,

in a finite, positive, visible, and determinate
form ; so that what is general may not
suppress what is particular ; and that which
is particular may not dissipate and dissolve

fhe Practical Mystic 19

what is general — that the infinite and the The Fusion
finite may be blended together in that pro- %^^ ^^
portion which truly constitutes human
greatness."

All which applies to Lincoln.

" Conceive a great machine,'' wrote Guizot
the historian, " the design of which is centred
in a single mind, though its various parts
are entrusted to various workmen, separated
from, and strangers to, each other. No
one of them understands the work as a
whole, nor the general result which he con-
certs in producing ; but every one executes
with intelligence and freedom, by rational
and voluntary acts, the particular task
assigned to him. It is thus that by the hand
of man the designs of Providence are wrought
out in the government of the world. It is
thus that the two great facts, which are
apparent in the history of civilization, come
to co-exist. On the one hand, those portions
of it which may be considered as fated, or
which happen without the control of human
knowledge or will ; on the other hand, the
part played in it by the freedom and intelli-
gence of man and what he contributes to it
by means of his own knowledge and will.*'

20 Abraham Lincoln

His /^NE of the most searching biographers

Prl^e!^^ V^ of Lincoln maintains that between

the ages of fourteen and twenty-eight he

displayed no sign of embryonic or assured

greatness.

If this be true, it means that none of Lin-
coln's early friends were intuitive enough to
discover his greatness. Even the best writers
who have dealt with this fascinating subject
have failed to see all the facts, all the in-
fluences, all the correlated powers, in connec-
tion with what looks to many like a life of
miracle. Intelligence and power are not
attained by any mental hocus-pocus or meta-
physics. Diamonds in the rough are still
diamonds, or no one would think of having
them polished. The same law works in
nature as in human nature. The great man
is born, but he is not born with all his facul-
ties developed, and he, like others, must pass
through stages of progressive development.
There is not one law for genius and another
for mere talent.

A distinguished writer says : —

" Lincoln achieved greatness, but can the
genesis of the mystery be analysed ? "

Certainly not by the ordinary process of
ordinary philosophers and scientists. What
all writers up to the present have failed to see

The Practical Mystic 21

is that Lincoln's powers were a combination His
of the normal-practical and the practical- ^^'^^***
supernatural. His supernaturalism was posi-
tive, mathematical, and absolute. The only-
things which Lincoln had to learn as he went
were the modes of application. He had to
learn system and method, as was natural, but
the principle came into the world with him.
Everything that is concrete appears simple.
The various qualities and elements that pro-
duce what we call mental illumination are
hidden from the crowd and even from those
who most profess to understand.

Jesse Dubois wrote to Judge Whitney that
" after having been intimately associated
with Lincoln for twenty-five years, I now
find that I never knew him."

The great man had unconsciously deceived
Tiis friends because of his outward simplicity.
And this outward freedom was backed by his
simplicity of speech and direct logic It was
all too simple. They were fooled by the
outward material because the inward mystical
took that form. His friends liked the man
and worked to elect him principally for that
reason, and this is why they were astonished
later on when the practical mystic rose clear
above all systems of politics and all the ac-
cepted philosophies, and accomplished the

22

Abraham Lincoln

His

Miraculous

Progress

A Prophetic
Witness

\ ■

V

V

miraculous. The impossible happened. The
President had to go more than half-way
through the Civil War before the real Lin-
coln became manifest to observing critics.

* * *

IN his book, "Life on the Circuit with Lin-
coln," Judge Whitney comments : —

" As early as 1856, independent of all con-
temporary opinion, I conceived the idea that
Mr. Lincoln was a prodigy of intellectual
and moral force. Others associated with us
deemed him superlatively great, but still
human. I went further ; my view was de-
finite and pronounced, that Lincoln was or-
dained for a greater than a merely human
mission, and I avowed this belief as early as
that time.

" His character as a lawyer was controlled
and moulded by his character as a man. He
understood human nature thoroughly, and
was an expert in the cross-examination of
witnesses. If a witness told the truth without
evasion Lincoln was respectful and patroniz-
ing to him, but he would score a perjured
witness unmercifully. He took no notes, but
remembered ^oyerything quite as well as those
who did so. I remember once we all. Court
and lawye5:§, except Lincoln, insisted that a
witness had sworn so-and-so, but it turned

The Practical Mystic 23

out that Lincoln was correct and that he re- a Prophetic
collected better than the united bench and ^**»^«*
bar. But with all his candour, there was a
method and shrewdness which Leonard Swett
wellunderstood,andwhichhehasthusforcibly
expressed : * As the trial progressed, where
most lawyers object, he would say he " reck-
oned " it would be fair to admit this in, or
that; and sometimes when his adversary tould
not quite prove what Lincoln knew to be the
truth, he would say he " reckoned " it would
be fair to admit the truth to be so-and-so.
When he did object to the Court, when he
heard his objections answered, he would
often say, "Well, I reckon I must be wrong."'
" He was wise as a serpent in the trial of a
case, but I have got too many scars from his .

blows to certify that he was harmless as a Jk
dove. When the whole thing is unravelled
the adversary begins to see that what he was
so blandly giving away was simply what he
couldn't get and keep. By giving away six

Eoints and carrying the seventh he carried
is case, and, the whole case hanging on the
seventh, he traded everything which would
give him the least aid in carrying that. Any
one who took Lincoln for a simple-minded
man would very soon wake up on his back,
in a ditch."

24 Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's T^HERE are two kinds of simplicity — one
Stmpitcity J^ jg ij^ithout reason or discrimination,
that believes all that is seen and heard if pre-
sented under the guise of honesty ; the other
is the kind that penetrates beneath manner,
dress, verbiage, and meets all subterfuge, arti-
V fice, ^nd sophistry with statements and facts

at once logical and irrefutable. Lincoln was
the most simple man in dress, in speech, in
manners, in looks, that ever stood before the
world in so great a role, but his intellect was
anything but simple. He was never deceived
by cunning devices and cunning manoeuvres.
Bacon has an essay showing the difference
between cunning and wisdom, and it may be
said that Lincoln's knowledge took the form
of wisdom as distinguished from cunning.
His management of a law case was that of a
seer. The points he made were not made
for personal gratification, but for love of
truth and justice. Not only did he not want
to risk being deceived, he took every precau-
tion to ensure against deception. Here is
where his welding of reason and logic pro-
duced in his marvellous intellect a kind of
clairvoyance which his friends at the bar felt
but could not analysei The combination
was unheard of ! Tlie lawyers and the judges
could only reason from their own experience,

7he Practical Mystic 25

they could only cite examples in their own Uncoh's
lives, and this man Lincoln was unlike all"^*^^*^^
that had been and all that was.

Lincoln's simplicity seemed to the casual
observer of a character so trusting and ^o
naive that it deceived all the members of his
Cabinet during the first two years of the war.
They were used to smart men, clever men,
academical men. They called for the routine
of respectability and ofEcial dignity. To
their minds the President seemed pliable and
willing, and they set about instructing him in
the a, b, c of high politics and the first prin-
ciples of statesmanship. The President was
in no way frustrated. He understood them
in advance, having weighed them in the
balance of his own judgment. He had found
them honest but inexperienced, sincere but
saucy. He knew they were living in an at-
mosphere of low visibility. At the proper
moment he would turn on the searchlights
and give them their bearings. Some of them
expected to act as the President's pilot, while
others expected to be captain of the ship-of-
state with the President as pilot.

It took them more than two years to find
out that this pioneer of the West was captain,
pilot, and master of charts on a political sea
the like of which they little dreamed existed.

3

26

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln'^
SimpHciiy

In one sense, he wore out their obstinacy
by his patience. In another, he awaited
opportunities to attest their errors and show
his judgment, but matters proceeded with
such cahn that they could not understand
with what power he acted, with what pre-
science he (fivined.

What mystified them was the combination
of the practical with the spiritual, the clear
vision with the maxims of ordinary business
affairs, the penetration of the future while
working in seeming darkness.

Lincoln's

Clairvoyant

Wit

LINCOLN wai not deceived by an out-
ward show of religion. A Southern
woman begged the President to have her
husband released from a Northern prison,
" for," she said, " although he is a Rebel he
is a very religious man.'^ Lincoln replied :
" I am glad to hear that, because any man
who wants to disrupt this Union needs all
the religion in sight to save him."

He treated with indifference people who
commandeered. A haughty woman came to
Lincoln and demanded a colonel's commis-
sion for her son. " I demand it," she said,
" not as a favour but as a right. Sir^ my
grandfather fought at Lexington, my father

The Practical Mystic 27

fought at New Orleans, and my husband was Lincoln's
killed at Monterey." CMrvoyinu

I guess, madam," was Lincoln's reply,

your family has done enough for the
country. It is time to give some one else a
chance."

When Hugh McCullough, Secretary of the
Treasury in Lincoln's second term, presented
a delegation of New York bankers at the
White House, McCullough said : " These
gentlemen of New York have come on to see
the Secretary of the Treasury about our new
loan. As bankers, they are obliged to hold
our national securities. I can vouch for their
patriotism and loyalty, for, as the good Book
says, * Where the treasure is there will the
heart be also.' "

To which Lincoln replied : " There is
another text, Mr. McCullough, I remember,
that might equally apply, * Where the
carcass is there will the eagles be gathered
together.' "

Lincoln condemned as tedious a certain
Greek history. When a diplomat present
said : " The author of that history, Mr.
President, is one of the profoundest scholars
of the age ; no one has plunged more deeply
into the sacred fount of learning."

"Yes," replied Lincoln, "orcome updrier."

28 Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's When, in Chicago in 1 860, the mayor, John

aairvoyafa Wentworth, asked Lincoln why he did not

get some astute politician to run him,

Lincoln replied that " events and not a man's

own exertions made presidents."

To Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln remarked :
"Judd and Ray and those fellows think I
don't see anything, but I see all around them.
I see better what they want to do with me
than they do themselves."

They were deceived, not by Lincoln, who
never cared what individuals thought, but by
Nature, which often sets a trap for people
who live in a world of their own illusions.
Nature, the medium through which the
Divine mind manifests, is, so to speak, a mask
through which egoists cannot penetrate and
by which the cunning are led to destruction.
Lincoln let them talk and even act, knowing
that they themselves were the tools for their
own undoing. While the ward politicians
and others, who thought themselves far
superior, laid their plans, schemed, and
intrigued, the man of clear vision awaited
unperturbed the events which he knew would
put them all in their proper places. Little
did they dream that they were mere incidents
among the million of incidents that go to the
making of one epoch-making event.

The Practical Mystic 29

The practical mystic is little concerned Linco/w's
with incidents. The multitude do not know ^^^<^<^^
in what direction they are going, moved and
influenced as they are by the incidental, the
accidental, the shifting illusions in which they
live, but the man who knows why they are
influenced also knows why he is influenced.

Lincoln was patient with the men who
considered him a sort of political accident.
He understood their point of view. He did
not entertain feelings of revenge. Hundreds
of men, like John Wentworth, are only men-
tioned to-day because of some passing in-
cident which connected them with the man
whom they regarded as a failure in politics.

THAT William Blake was a mystic of the a Prophetic
practical kind there can be no question. ^^ ^
In art and in poetry he had that illumination
which Lincoln had in statesmanship.
The New York Times says : —
" That a century has failed to heap the dust
of oblivion over England's ^ Greatest Mystic,'
William Blake, is exemplified by the repro-
duction in a recent issue of Country Life of
one of Blake's engravings for Dante's Injernoy
in which four fiends with cruel faces are
torturing a soul in Hell.'

»

30 Abraham Lincoln

A Prepheiio The face of the chief devil, who is not ac-
loa^ ^^ tually engaged in the torture, but is an eager
and interested spectator, might easily be
taken for a portrait of the German Emperor.
As suggested by W. F. Boudillon, the
familiar, upturned moustachiosi must have
puzzled Blake in his vision. He represented
them as tusks growing from the corners of
the mouth — ^it is to be noted that thia fiend
alone among the four has the tusks.

It is recorded of Blake, as a lad, that
his father would have apprenticed him to
Rylands, the Court Engraver — a man much
liked and in great prosperity at the time —
but Blake objected, saying : " Father, I do
not like his face ; he looks as if he would live
to be hanged." Twelve years later Rylands
committed forgery, and the prophecy came
true.

Blake's visions, startling though they be,
are not more startling than many prophecies
made by Lincoln, as, for instance, his
prophecy of prohibition, woman's rights, and
the end of slavery, not to mention his visions
concerning himself. The practical mystic
sees thfoughy the scientific materialist sees
only, the surface. Eternity is the everlasting
now. Blake drew a faithful portrait of the
Kaiser Wilhelm II. of Germany long before

The Practical Mystic 31

the Kaiser was born, and Tycho Brahe pre- a Prophetic
dieted the birth of a Swedish conqueror and ^^^ ^^
what he would accomplish.

In these things there is no place for chance,
nor is it true that the practical myStic is
limited to poetry, or to art, or to music, or to
religion, politics, and philosophy. Neither
is the practical mystic confined to any par-
ticular social class or any creed.

Abraham Lincoln could not have directed
affairs had he been a recluse. Before he
became an adept in the direction of material
affairs he had to be familiar with the practical
ways of the world, and as a lawyer he passed
through a school that left no place for
vague theories or vain illusions. He fre-
quently stripped others of their illusions, but
being free of illusions himself he had none
to lose. This made him invulnerable. His
enemies were swayed by theories ; nothing
short of knowledge sufficed for this man,
who reduced his adversaries to the position
where they were kept constantly on tne alert
to know what manoeuvre to emplov next.
They moved in a region of guess-work where
there was no law except that of their own
confusion and discomfiture.

32 Abraham Lincoln

Shakespeare T INCOLN," says Judge Whitney, " was
and Lincoln JL/ one of the most heterogeneous char-
acters that ever played a part in the great
drama of history, and it was for this reason
that he was so greatly misjudged and mis-
understood ; that he was, on the one hand,
described as a mere humorist — a sort of
Artemus Ward or Mark Twain — that it was
thought that, by some * irony of Fate,' a low
comedian had got into the Presidential chair,
and that the nation was being delivered over
to conflagration, while this modern Nero
fiddled upon its ruins.

" One of his peculiarities was his inequality
of conduct, his dignity, interspersed witn
freaks of frivolity and inanity ; his high as-
piration and achievement, and his descent
into the most primitive vales of listlessness."
In the chief drawer of his cabinet table all
the current joke books of the time were in
juxtaposition with official commissions, lack-
ing only the final signature, applications for
pardons from death penalties, laws awaiting
executive action, and orders which, when
launched, would control the fate of a million
men and the destinies of unborn generations.
" Hence it was that superficial persons, who
expected great achievements to be ushered
in with a prologue, could not understand

The Practical Mystic 33

or appreciate that this great man's zd- shakespeofe
ministration was a succession of acts of grand ^^ Ltncoin
and heroic statesmanship, or that he was a
prodigy of intellect and moral force."

The mystic Shakespeare and the mystic
Lincoln have a connecting link in their wit
and humour. Had Shakespeare left us oply
two dramas — Macbeth and Othello — ^no one
would have dreamed of a creation like
FalstaflF emanating from the same mind, yet
it is because of the union of the tragic and
the humorous that Shakespeare is universally
human, worldly wise as well as spiritual and
metaphysical.

Shakespeare makes of the gravedigger in
Hamlet a sort of clown with a spade, and
throughout all his dramas wit and humour,
pathos and tragedy, go hand in hand.
Without his humour Shakespeare would have
been little more than an English Racine.
With Lincoln, humour was made to serve
a high, psychic purpose. By its means he
created a new atmosphere and new conditions
through which he could all the more freely
work and act. He brought humour into
play for his own good as well as that of others.
He was not a theorist, or a dreamer of
dreams ; he was a practical mystic.

A Prophecy
FulJuUd

34 Abraham Lincoln

IN a letter written from Springfield, Illi-
nois, August I5tli, 1855, to the Hon.
George Robertson, of Lexington, Kentucky,
Lincoln said :

"The Autocrat of all the Russias will
proclaim his subjects free sooner than will
our American Masters voluntarily give up
their slaves.''

On the day before Lincoln's first inaugura-
tion as President of the United States the
"Autocrat of all the Russias," Alexander
the Second, by Imperial decree emancipated
his serfs, while six weeks after the inaugura-
tion the " American Masters," headed by
JeflFerson Davis, began the great war of
secession to perpetuate and spread the in-
stitution of slavery. This is only one of
Lincoln's prophecies which proved true. In
stating them he did not pass into an abnormal
state. He spoke as one would speak of the
coming weather. He did not consult the
stars, nor any person, before making a pro-
phetic statement. Seeing clearly was as
natural to him as eating or sleeping. He was
not a psychic machine, uttering thoughts
which seemed strange and enigmaticJ^ to
himself, because his intellectual and spiritual
powers were part of himself.

Men of genius are not instruments in the

The Practical Mystic 35

vulgar meaning of the word. They do not a Prophecy
act in ignorance of what they are doing and ^^^fi^^^
saying. Lincoln, more than any other,
could give deliberate reasons for what he did
and said, and it is exceedingly difficult to
name another in history who was under such
logical and commanding control of all the
moral and intellectual faculties. When he
seemed to the superficial observer to be
dreaming, he was reasoning, calculating,
comparing, analysing, weighing, turning
things upside down and inside out, until he
satisfied the dictates of his conscience and
his sense of moral responsibility.

He placed no reliance on half-way measures
and palliatives, no faith in the workings of
chance. He therefore was not, and could
never have been, a passive instrument in the
hands of some unknown power. When it
was said of a certain musician that he com-
posed his operas under the direct influence
of Mozart, the answer was : " Then who
influenced Mozart ? "

Great originality belongs to the mystical
unity of the Supreme Intelligence. Had
Lincoln imitated Henry Clay, whom he so
much admired as a statesman and thinker,
what would have become of Lincoln and the
country he governed ?

A Prophecy
FulfiUed

36

Abraham Lincoln

He who originates is authoritative, and, as
Carlyle said, " All authority is mystical in its
origin." In no single thing of importance
did Lincoln copy any one's methods or
systems. His trend of thought was at
variance with the prevailing trend, even of
those who were supposed to know the most.

The

Ordinances
of Heaven

CANST thou bind the sweet influence of
Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his
season ? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with
his sons ? Knowest thou the ordinances of
heaven ? " — ^Job.

Phenomena that arrive with the days,
months, seasons, centuries, are accompanied
by events of corresponding significance in
the human world, for everything is related
to everything else.

In 1858 a new party came into being,
headed by the prophet from the wilderness,
who was as much a phenomenon in the
human world as the comet of that year was
in the starry heavens — an apparition first
observed by the Florentine astronomer,
Donati. Some scientific authorities give
Donati's comet an orbit of two thousand,
others three thousand years. Its advent was

The Practical Mystic 37

as unexpected as was the advent of Lincoln. The
Its immense orbit, the splendour of its train, ^/S!!fl*!ff*
Its seemmg close proximity to the earth, the
presentiments which it inspired in millions
of the people, corresponded with the senti-
ments and sensations inspired by the pheno-
menal progress of Lincoln, the avatar of
democratic freedom and justice. The fol-
lowing description is taken from " The
Valley of Shadows '' .--

" After a long period of cloudy weather
the sky cleared, and when darkness closed in
the night came with a revelation. Never had
such a night been witnessed by living man,
for a great comet hung suspended in the
shimmering vault like an immense silver
arrow dominating the world and all the
constellations. An unparalleled radiance
illumined the prairie, the atmosphere
vibrated with a strange, mysterious glow,
and as the eye looked upward it seemed as
if the earth was moving slowly towards the
stars.

" The sky resembled a phantasmagoria seen
from the summit of some far and fabulous
Eden. The Milky Way spread across the
zenith like a confluence of celestial altars
flecked with myriads of gleaming tapers, and
countless orbs rose out of the luminous veil

38 Abraham Lincoln

The like fleecy spires tipped witii die blaze of opal

^s'h!^ and sapphire.

"The great stellar clusters appeared as
beacons on the shores of infinite worlds, and
night was the window from which the soul
looked out on eternitv/*

Such was the celestial apparition that
ushered in the new party which was to
support Abraham Lincoln and send him to
the White House.

In all vital phenomena there is periodicity.
The barometer comes to its minimum height
for the day between four and five in the
evening ; again, it is at its maximum height
between eight and ten in the morning and
between eight and ten in the evening. The
two first of these periods is when the electric
tension is at its minimum ; at its maximum
during the two latter periods. The basic
unit of the lunar day is twelve hours. An
ordinary or solar day is two days, and an
ordinary week is two weeks. This hebdoma-
dal or heptal cycle governs, either in its mul-
tiple or submultiple, an immense number of
phenomena in animal life in which the
number seven has a prominent place. A Mr.
Hay, of Edinburgh, writing some sixty years
ago, says :

"There is harmony of numbers in all

The Practical Mystic 39

nature — ^in the force of gravity, in the plane- The
tary movements, in the laws of heat, light, ^^^^
electricity and chemical affinity, in the forms
of animals and plants, in the perceptions of
the mind. Indeed, the direction of natural
and physical science is towards a generaliza-
tion which shall express the fundamental
laws of all by one simple numerical ratio.
The mysticism of Pythagoras was vague only
to the unlettered. It was a system of
philosophy founded on existing mathematics
which comprised more of the philosophy of
numbers than our present.''

Philosophical students of human nature
have taken note of the danger professional
and business men encounter when they ex-
tend their mental activities beyond the hour
of four p.m. (by the sun). Thousands fail
because of their ignorance of the funda-
mental laws governing all things physical.
The morning hours up to ten a.m. are just
as dangerous for many who are highly-
susceptible to the electric tension whicn
occurs up to that hour. The feeling that
prevails from four to eight in the afternoon
is one of mental or physical fatigue, that in
the morning one of irritability.

Lincoln was not immune from natural
law. On one occasion, at five p.m., he was

¥>

Abraham Lincoln

The

Ordinances
of Heaoen

suddenly informed of the defeat of the Nor-
thern Forces, and it was feared by those who
were present that he would fall to the ground.
Mr. C. C. Coffin sprang forward to assist
the President, who, however, succeeded in
returning to the White House unaided.

Nature creates the natural, man the un-
natural. Solomon declared : " To every-
thing there is a season, and a time to every
purpose."

Lincoln's
Face'

KNOWLEDGE, conviction, and cer-
tainty gave to Lincoln's face that
penetrating power which could not have
been assumed on occasion even by the most
versatile and gifted actor.

The two following quotations from " The
Valley of Shadows " describe Lincoln's per-
sonal appearance and the emotions produced
by the expression of his features : —

" * The sperrit air more in the eye than it
air in the tongue,' said Elihu Gest, rising
from his seat ; ^ if Abe Lincoln looked at the
wust slave-driver long enough Satan would
give lip every time.'

" ' I see right away the difference a-twixt
Lincoln en Douglas warn't so much in
Lincoln bein' a good ways over six foot en

The Practical Mystic 41

Douglas a good ways under, ez it war in Lincoln's
their eyes. The Jedge looked like he war^*^
speakin' agin time, but Abe Lincoln looked

{)lumb through the meetin' into the ever-
astin' — the way Moses must hev looked
when he see Canaan ahead — en I kin tell ye
I never did see a ma^ look that a-way.' "

THE hour had struck for the supreme ^he Great
test between the forces of slavery, on
one hand, and the forces of freedom, on the
other. A vast throng gathered at Alton from
every section of the country to hear the
last public discussion between the two an-
tagonists, Lincoln and Douglas, and from the
Surging sea of faces thousands of anzious
eyes gazed upward at the group of politicians
on the balcony like wrecked mariners scanning
the horizon for the smallest sign of a white
sail of hope.

" This final debate resembled a duel be-
tween two men-of-war, the pick of a great
fleet, all but these two sunk or abandoned in
other waters, facing each other in the open,
Douglas, the Little Giant, hurling at his
opponent from his flagship of slavery his
deadliest missiles, Lincoln calmly waiting to
sink his antagonist by one single broadsider.

4

42 Abraham Lincoln

The Great " Regarded in the light of spiritual

Debate reality, Lincoln and Douglas were predestined

to meet side by side in this discussion, and it
is hardly possible to give an adequate idea of
the startling difference between the two
temperaments : Douglas — short, plump, and
petmant ; Lincoln — ^long, gaunt, and self-
possessed ; the one white-haired and florid,
the other black-haifed and swarthv ; the
one educated and polished, the other un-
lettered and primitive,

" Judge Douglas opened the debate in a
sonorous voice plainly heard by all, and with
a look of mingled defiance and confidence he
marshalled his facts and deduced his argu-
ments. To the vigour of his attack there
was added the prestige of the Senate Cham-
ber, and it looked as if he would carry the
majority with him. When, after a brilliant
oratorical effort, he brought his speech to a
close, it was amidst the shouts and yells of
thousands of admirers.

"And now Abraham Lincoln, the man who
in 1830 undertook to split for Mrs. Nancy
Miller four hundred rails for every yard of
jean dyed with walnut bark that would be
required to make him a pair of trousers, the
flat-boatman, local stump-orator, and county
lawyer, rose from his seat, stretched his long

The Practical Mystic .43

bony limbs upward, as if to get them in The Gfe<u
working order, and stood like some solitary ^^^'^
pine on a lonely summit, very tall, very dark,
very gaunt, and very rugged, his swarthy
features stamped with a sad serenity, and the
instant he began to speak the mouth lost its
heaviness, the eyes attained a wondrous illu-
mination, and the people stood bewildered
and breathless under the natural magic of
the most original personality known to the
English-speaking world since Robert Burns.

" Every movement of his long muscular
frame denoted inflexible earnestness, and a
something issued forth, elemental and mys-
tical, that told what the man had been, what
he was, and what he would do in the future.
Every look of the deep-set eyes, every move-
ment of the prominent jaw, every wave of
the brawny hand produced an impression,
and before he had spoken twenty minutes the
conviction took possession of thousands that
here was the prophetic man of the present
and the political saviour of the future.^'

Thus we see how Lincoln influenced
persons, groups, crowds, whether he was
sitting or standing, arguing or talking,
rendering an opinion or listening to counsel.

44 Abraham Lincoln

PorfCM$img$ 'NT OTHING great comes into the world
pll^fff^ffff^i^^ffg i^ unattended. Abraham Lincohi was
snrroonded by men and wcnnen who were
predestined to their task withoat being folly
aware of what they were doing. One of the
most memorable mystical demonstrations
ever recorded in any epoch occurred in the
little town of Salem, Illinois, in August 1837,
when Lincoln was only twenty- three years of
age, long before he had cut any figure in the
political world. Accompanied by six lawyers
and two doctors, Lincoln went from Spring-
field to Salem in a band-wagon to attend a
camp-meeting. On the way Lincoln cracked
jokes about the horses, the wagon, the law-
yers, and many other things. When they
arrived at the camp they f oimd Doctor Peter
Akers, one of the greatest Methodist preach-
ers of the time, was about to preach a ser-
mon on " The Dominion of Qirist.'* The
famous preacher declared that the Dominion
of Christ could not come in America until
slavery was destroyed. His sermon lasted
three hours and he showed that a great civil
war would put an end to human bondage.

** I am not a prophet," he said, " but a
student of the Prophets ; American slavery
will come to an end in some near decade, I
think in the sixties." These words caused a

The Practical Mystic 45

profound sensation. In their excitement Forecastmgs
thousands surged about the preacher, but ''^f^^tions
when at last he cried out : Who can tell but
that the man who shall lead us through this
strife may be standing in this presence," a
solemn stillness fell over the assembly. There,
not more than thirty feet away, stood the
lank figure of Lincoln, with his pensive face,
a prophet as yet uninspired, a leader as yet
unannounced. The preacher's words had
fallen like a mystical baptism on the head of
this obscure pioneer, as yet unanointed by the
sacrificial fire of the coming national tragedv.

When they returned to Springfield Lincoln
remained silent for a long time. At last one
of his friends asked him what he thought of
the sermon and he replied that he " little
dreamed that such power could be given to
mortal man, for those words were from be-
yond the speaker. Peter Akers has convinced
me that American slavery will go down with
the crash of civil war.'' Then he added: ^
" Gentlemen, you may be surprised and think
it strange, but when the preacher was de-
scribing the civil war I distinctly saw myself,
as in second sight, bearing an important part
in that strife."

The next morning Mr. Lincoln came very
late to his office, and Mr. Herndon, glancing

^ Jbrabam Lhudm

rafecui»^i at his haggard face, exclaimed: "Why,
^^,^t,,nm<nu Lincohi, what's the matter ? " Then Lin-
coln told him about the sermon and said :
I am utterly unable to shake myself free
from the conviction that I shall be involved
in that terrible war."

iUuminatioH \A 7HEN Lincoln, young and unknown,
ipifU visited New Orleans as a flat-boat-

man and saw men and women being sold at
auction in the public mart, he said to the
friend who was with him : " If ever I get a
chance to hit that thing I'll hit it hard."

Who was this young man, whose clothes
were in tatters, who was without patrons, to
suggest such a thing as a chance to strike even
a feeble blow at the institution of slavery ?
Dr. Gregg, commenting on this memorable
incident, asks :

" Why did Lincoln utter these words ?
Was it an illumination of the Spirit fore-
casting the Civil War ? Was it a whisper by
a divine messenger that he was to be the
chosen one to wipe the thing from the earth
and give deliverance to millions of his
fellow-men ? "

Few, if any, of Lincoln's biographers have
touched on his early life with more than a

fhe Practical Mystic 47

superficial notion of its significance. Judge illumination
Whitney, in spite of his great knowledge and ^^^^
his deep insight, divides Lincoln's life into
two parts, the first being uninspired, the
second supernaturally wonderful. The truth
is that the first part of his life contained a
clear forecast of the second. Lincoln at the
age of fifty-five was the same man, un-
changed, excepting by experience. Only in
fairy stories are people changed from fools
into philosophers.

As a boy Lincoln was unlike any other boy,
always unique, self-centred in the best and
highest sense, the like of whom did not exist
in his or any other gountry. All through his
early life there could be seen the signs and
symbols of his coming power. How such a
being came into the world science fails to
explain. Behind the mystery there are other
mysteries, and not in a thousand years of
experiment will eugenics produce another
such mortal, not in ten thousand years will
science create anything spiritual or mystical.
Science can never get beyond the material.
If it ever controls the psychic intelligence,
mediocrity will be the order of the day. The
higher intelligence does not need control but
development. This freedom Lincoln had,
but back of that apparent freedom the

48 Abraham Lincoln

laumination mystical conditions existed, fixed and fore*-
%^ ordained. The very men and women who

assisted him had to be where he foimd them.
To have been anywhere else they would have
been out of their proper element. In the
human world there are no misfits, only
grades of development.

Tycho Brake \\THEN Hugh Miller, the noted geolo-
and Lincoln \ \ gjg|.^ faced the inexplicable, he com-
mitted suicide. But Tycho Brahe, the
Danish astronomer, the greatest practical
mystic the world of science has known,
experienced a sense of joy and exhilaration
every time he viewed the starry heavens
through his telescope. He considered as-
tronomy something " divine." His was the
joyful pride of the seer who revels in the un-
explained mysteries of the universe, and from
time to time obtained clairvoyant glimpses of
the working of the miracle. Brahe, like Ab-
raham Lincoln, had moments when he per-
ceived the inevitable with unalloyed vision.
After carefully studying the comet of 1577
he declared that it announced the birth of a
prince in Finland who should lay waste
Germany and vanish in 1632. Gustave

The Practical Mystic 49

Adolphus was born in Finland, overran Tycho Brake
Germany, and died in 1632. ^^ Lincoln

Brahe was the forerunner of the true
scientist, Lincoln the forerunner of the true
statesman. It is not a fact that science and
intuition are antagonistic. The antagonism
exists only in Ae imagination of second-rate
thinkers. The great discoverers always put "" ]
the spiritual and the mystical above learning.
Brahe and Newton, as scientists, were un-
equalled in their age and have not been
surpassed in this. TTie Kultur of modern
Germany has but emphasized the danger of
pseudo science in all walks of life and made
it plain that no nation can prosper under
such an illusion. The Prussians have forced
many to revert back to a consideration of the
gifts of such men as Tycho Brahe, Newton,
Lincoln, and the diflFerence between their
science and that of Kultur is a diflFerence that
strikes the normal thinker with amazement.

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 bv their own weapons.
Modern materialism wiU go down under the
weight of the material. The denial of the
mystical forces of the universe is the vulner-

50 Abraham Lincoln

Tycho Brake able spot in the scientific armour of Krupp-
and Lincoln Kultur. Let any one who wishes to be con-
vinced 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 \\T H. HERNDON, for more than

T^iJ^y^^ VV • 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.

L, 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 orna-
mented 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 splen-
dour, ever passed undetected or unchallenged

^he Practical Mystic 51

over the threshold of his mind — that point Hemdon's
that divides vision from the realm and home Testvm!my*^
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 piursuit of
the truth. No error went undetected and
no falsehood unexposed if he once was
aroused in search of truth.

Mind

52 Abraham Lincoln

AnOfigimmi \/i^ LINCOLN saw philosophy in a

iVl story and a schoolmaster in a joke.
No man saw nature, fact, thing, from his
standpoint. His was a new and original
position, which was always suggesting, hinting
somethi]^ to him. Nature, insinuations,
hints, and suggestions were new, fiesh, orig-
inal, and odd to him. The world, fact, man,
principle, all had their powers of suggestion
to his susceptible soul. They continually
put him in mind of something known or un-
known. Hence his power and tenacity of
what is called association of ideas. His
susceptibilities to all suggestions and hints
enabled him at will to call up readily the
associated and classified fact and idea.

" Mr. Lincoln was often at a loss for a word
and hence was compelled to resort to stories,
and maxims, and jokes to embody his idea,
that it might be comprehended. So true was
this peculiar mental vision of his, that though
mankind has been gathering, arranging, and
classifying facts for thousands of years, Lin-
coln's peculiar standpoint could give him no
advantage of other men's labour. Hence he
tore up to the deep foundations all arrange-
ments of facts, and coined and arranged new
plans to govern himself. His labour was
great, continuous, patient, and all-enduring.

The Practical Mystic 53

THE truth about the whole matter is that The Great
Mr. Lincoln read less and thought ^^^**
more than any man in his sphere in America,
When young he read the Bible, and when of
age he read Shakespeare. The latter book
was scarcely ever out of his mind. Mr. Lin-
coln is acknowledged to have been a great
man, but the question is, what made him
great ^ I repeat, that he read less and
thought more than any man of his standing
in America, if not in the world. He pos-
sessed originality and power of thought in
an eminent degree. He was cautious, cool,
patient, and enduring. These are some of
the grounds of his wonderful success. Not
only was nature, man, fact, and principle
suggestive to Mr. Lincoln, not only had he
accurate and exact perceptions, but he was '
causative, i.e. his mind ran back behind all
facts, things, and principles to their origin,
history, and first cause — to that point where
forces act at once as effect and cause. He
would stop and pause in the street and
analyse a machine. He would whittle things
to a point and then count the numberless in-
clined planes, and their pitch, making the
point. Mastering and defining this, he
would then cut that point back, and get a
broad transverse section of his pine stick, and

54 Abraham Lincoln

peel and define that. Clocks, omnibuses,
language, paddle-wheels, and idioms never
escaped his observation and analysis. Before
he could form any idea of anything, before he
would express his opinion on any subject, he
must know its origin and history, in substance
and quaUty, in magnitude and gravity. He
must know his subject inside and outside,
upside and downside.

** He searched his own mind and nature
thoroughly, as I have often heard him say.
He must analyse a sensation, an idea, and
words, and run them back to their origin,
history, purpose, and destiny. He was most
emphatically a merciless analyser of facts,
things, and principles. When all these pro-
cesses had been well and thoroughly gone
through, he could form an opinion and ex-
press it, but no sooner. Hence when he did
speak his utterances rang out gold-like, quick,
keen, and current upon the counters of
the understanding. He reasoned logically,
through analogy and comparison. All op-
ponents dreaded him in his originality of
idea, condensation, definition, and force of
expression, and woe be to the man who
hugged to his bosom a secret error if Mr.
Lincoln got on the chase of it. I say, woe
to him ! Time could hide the error in no

fhe Practical Mystic 55

nook or corner of space in which he would The Great
not detect and expose it, ^^^**

THE predominating elements of Mr, Veneration
Lincoln's peculiar character were : ^ *^'
firstly, his great capacity and powers of
reason ; secondly, his excellent understand-
ing ; thirdly, an exalted idea of the sense of
right and equity ; and fourthly, his intense
veneration of what was true and good. His
reason ruled all other faculties of his mind,

" His pursuit of truth was indefatigable,
terrible. He reasoned from his well-chosen
principles with such clearness, force, and
compactness that the tallest intellects in the
land bowed to him in this respect.

" He came down from his throne of logic
with irresistible and crushing force. His
printed speeches prove this, but his speeches
before the Supreme Courts of the State and
Nation would demonstrate it.

" Mr. Lincoln was an odd and original
man ; he lived by himself and out of himself.
He was a very sensitive man, unobtrusive and
gentlemanly, and often hid himself in the
common mass of men in order to prevent the
discovery of his individuality. He had no
insulting egotism and no pompous pride ; no

56

Abraham Lincoln

Veneration
and Truth

haughtiness. He was not an upstart and
had no insolence. He was a meek, quiet,
unobtrusive gentleman.

" Not only were Mr. Lincoln's perceptions
good ; not only was nature suggestive to
him ; not only was he original and strong ;
not only had he great reason and under-
standing ; not only did he love the true and
good ; not only was he tender and kind — but,
in due proportion, he had a glorious com-
bination of them all.

" He had no avarice in his nature or other
like vice. He did not care who succeeded to
the presidency of this or that Christian
Association or Railroad Convention ; who
made the most money; who was going to
Philadelphia, when and (or what, and what
were the costs of such a trip. He could not
understand why men struggled for such
things as these.

The Great
Puule

ONE day, at Washington, he made this
remark to me : * If ever this free
people, if this Government itself is ever
utterly demoralized, it will come from this
human wriggle and struggle for office — a
way to live without work.'

" It puzzled him at Washington to know

l!he Practical Mystic 57

and to get at the root of this dread desire, The Great
this contagious disease of national robbery ^***''^
in the nation's death-struggle.

"This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad
man, floated into our country in 1831, in a
frail canoe, down the north fork of the
Sangamon River, friendless, penniless, power-
less, and alone — begging for work in our city
— ^ragged, struggling for the common neces-
sities of life. This man, this peculiar man,
left us in 1861, the President of the United
States, backed by friends, power, fame, and
all human force.'*

ENERGY is usually a blind force in the LinfoMs
conduct of human aflFairs and the^^^^^.^
greatest with which we have to deal. History
is made up of the deeds of individuals with a
surplus of energy, which overflows and dam-
ages governments as floods damage lands.

WiU, energy, and ambition are, in most
cases, synonymous terms. Without energy
the will breaks down, and without ambition
energy and will would prove innocuous. No
one can doubt that misdirected energy was at
the bottom of much that moved the Prussians
and that their ambitions were wholly material,
limited to geographical boundaries.

5

58 Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's Lincoln displayed physical as well as men-

^^Sr'ii tal energy in a supernormal degree ; his will
was as fixed as a mountain of adamant, while
his ambition was not personal, but national
and universal. Only the practical mystic
could direct such forces with wisdom, and
as we look still closer into the mystery of his
temperament the question of pride and
vanity arises, and their relation to ambition
and will.

In the first place, what causes ambition ?
Pride, answers the world. But the world is
wrong. Ambition is not the result of pride
but of vanity. Solomon, the wisest and
greatest man of his time, was a proud man
and a wise ruler until he began to import
apes and peacocks. Then vanity usurped
the place of pride and he came to the end
pi his temporal tether.

Vanity caused Napoleon to have himself
crowned Emperor of the French, and from
that day his power declined. A proper sense
of pride would have left him to stop where
he was and refuse all further manifestatiofis
and developments of worldly honour. Pride
tends to moral dignity and intellectual re-
ticence, and that is why Lincoln blushed in
the presence of the institution of slavery.
His pride gave him an acute sense of shame

The Practical Mystic 59

and his honour an acute sense of justice. Lincoln's
Onlv the vain will consent to live in idleness f^^^^n
while others slave for them. Vanity induces
anything from the ridiculous to the criminal,
and those controlled by it are subject to
absurd statements and ridiculous actions.
They cannot avoid both. Washington and
Lincoln were free from the fetters of ridicule.
They were imbued with a subconscious pride
which stood for the whole nation.

HERNDON says :—
" I cannot refrain from noting the Nature and
views Lincoln held in reference to the great ^^^^
questions of moral and social reforms under
which he classed suflFrage for women, tem-
perance, and slavery. * All such questions,'
he observed one day, as we were discussing
temperance in the office, *must find lodgment
with the most enlightened souls who stamp
them with their approval. In God's own
time they will be organized into law and woven
into the fabric of all our institutions.' "

As the Divine principle permeates all
nature, so Lincoln, being a pure product of
nature, possessed the secret consciousness of
natural power, illumined by mystical in-
tuition and guided by the higher forces of the

6o

Abraham Lincoln

Nahireand
Prophecy

spirit. He realized the superiority of mind
over matter, of intelligence over ignorance,
of wisdom over learning, of illumination over
mere knowledge. He was another Marcus
Aurelius, without the influence of paganism,
free from the trammels of mythology. He
inquired into the mystery of his own being,
ana delved into the darkest corners of
personality and character. Some of his
deepest thoughts on the mysteries of life
and death were never voiced by this man
who never spoke unless he deemed it impera-
tive to speak.

Lincoln, indeed, never gossiped about
people and books. He was not a gossip.
His jokes were for a purpose, his talk was for
a purpose, and his meditations were funda-
mental.

The Seal
of Nature

HERNDON was right when he said that
Lincoln's features were stamped with
the seal of nature. This is the only seal that
is beyond imitation. All else can be mim-
icked. We have seen how ghastly one or two
J)erson8 appeared when they attempted to
ook like Lincoln. The imitation took on
the appearance of pale, dull putty. The
notion that Lincoln s personality could be

^he Practical Mystic 6i

imitated with success was quite in keeping The Seai
with that other notion that the great Presi- ^^ ^^^^^
dent was, in spite of everything, just one of
the common people. But Lincoln as he ap-
pears in popular histories, and Lincoln as he
was known to his associates and those who
came into personal contact with him, are
two diflFerent persons. Perhaps no one has
summed up the matter with such concision
and force as Don Piatt, who knew him well : —
" With all his awkwardness of manner and
utter disregard of social conventionalities
that seemed to invite familiarity, there was
something about Abraham Lincoln that en-
forced respect. No man presumed on the
apparent invitation to be other than respect-
ful. I was told at Springfield that this
accompanied him through life. Among his
rough associates, when young, he was leader,
looked up to and obeyed, because they felt of
his muscle and its readiness in use. Among -^ !
his associates at the bar it was attributed ^

to his wit, which kept his duller associates at
a distance. But the fact was that this power
came from a sense of reserve force of in-
tellectual ability that no one took account of
save in its results. Through one of these
manifestations of nature that produce a
Shakespeare at long intervals, a giant had

62 Abrabam Lincoln

The 5mI been bom to the poor whites of Kentucky

^ ^•'^^ and the sense of superiority possessed Lincoln

at all times. Seward, Chase, and Stanton,

great as thejr were, felt their inferiority to

their master."

Law and WJ^ ^^ beginning to feel the reality of
AuOortiy y y ^^^ power that lies above appear-
ance and formula, that power manifested in
Job and Isaiah, which we accept as inspira-
tion in religion, intuition in philosophy, and
illumination in art, producing saints in one
age and mystical scientists in another.

We float through the ether on a revolving
miracle called the earth, returning again and
again to attain the same figure on the dial of
time. The things done by human automa-
tons count for nothing in the course of des-
tiny. We think we are wise when we invent a
new name for an old truth ; and vanity aims
to confine the infinite within the limits of a
stopper bottie or a glass showcase, or attain
inspiration by means of a ouija board.

Can any one conceive what would have
happened to this country had Lincoln made
use of such a contrivance to direct the course
of his actions ? This scourge of dead ag-
nostics seems like an ironical stroke of nature

^he Practical Mystic 63

to discount their disbelief. Not only dioe^Lawand
this clumsy instrument make wits like Mark ^^^*^^*y
Twain " talk like poor Pd," but it makes
philosophers reason like first-grade pupils at
our common schools.

Immortality is destined to have the last
word, even though it be pronounced in the
most fantastic manner.

Lincoln believed in law, order, and auth-
ority. He believed in the mission of the
churches. He was a regulat worshipper in
Dr. Gurley's Presbyterian congregation at the
Capital. He was a praying President, like
George Washington, and, while he was not a
member of any church, he was convinced that
all the churches were necessary. He was not
a free-thinker, as that term is commonly used.
Loose reasoning and vague, uncertain doc-
trines he could not abide. He demanded
proofs and would not accept a man's word
merely from sentimental motives. No one
ever induced him to " side-track " from the
main line of argument and reason. His atti-
tude in the matter of inspiration and spiritual
direction may be summed up in a few words
spoken at the time a delegation of Chicago
ministers came to him, urging him in God's
name to free the slaves without further delay.
His reply was that when the Almighty

64 Abraham Lincoln

Law and Wanted him to free the slaves He would deal
AuthofUy directly with Lincoln himself instead of
indirectly through Chicago.

A vacillating President would have been
influenced by such a request at such a time,
but the President had faith in his own
illuminations and awaited orders from a
Supreme source. Had he been influenced
by advice given by all sorts of people who
called at the White House on all sorts of
missions, possessing no authority themselves,
what turmoil and chaos would have resulted
to the army and the Nation !

Practical mystic that he was, he did not
seek, nor wish for, advice from people in
, matters which concerned his own judgment

^ alone. It is true that on several occasions he

was approached by persons who came with
messages of various kinds assumed to be
spiritual, but Lincoln received them with a
neutral politeness, sometimes mingled with
a grim humour, as when Robert Dale Owen
read to him a long manuscript presumed to
be highly inspirational and illuminating, and
Lincoln rephed, " Well, for those who like
that sort of thing that is the thing they
would like."

^be Practical Mystic 65

NOTHING escaped Lincoln's powers of Lincoln as
philosophical and metaphysical analy- ^^*^
sis* He did not read the Bible and Shake-
speare merely for pleasure, as people read
novels. He could give excellent reasons for
everything he did. Even in his most listless
moods he never lost his firm grip on aflFairs,
both general and individual. When he read
a book it was because there was something in
it which helped him to penetrate deeper into
the recesses of life and character. He would
study a passage or a chapter until he had
assimilated its wisdom and its mystical
import.

Lincoln was a natural critic. When Walt
Whitman's " Leaves of Grass " was first
published, a copy of the book was read and
discussed by several of his friends in Spring-
field. Lincoln at once recognized the fact
that a new poetic genius had appeared and
he did not permit adverse opinions to in-
fluence his judgment- He cared nothing
for the romantic in itself. He cared only
for those phases of literature which induce
serious philosophical or spiritual thought.
While his partner read Carlyle, he read
Shakespeare.

In the Spring of 1 862 the President spent
several days at Fortress Monroe awaiting

66 Abraham Lincoln

LiucOn as miUtaiy operations upon the Peninsula. As
^^^"^^ a portion of the Cabinet were with him, that

was temporarily the seat of government, and
he bore with him constantly the burden of
public affairs. His favourite diversion was
reading Shakespeare. One day — ^it chanced
to be file day before the capture of Norfolk
— ^as he sat reading alone, he called to his
side Colcmel Le Grand B. Cannon. " You
have been writing long enough. Colonel," he
said, " come in here ; I want to read you a
passage in Hamlet.'*^ He read the discussion
on ambition between Hamlet and his cour-
tiers, and the soliloquy in which conscience
debates of a future state.

His Style TVT ^ criticism of Mr. Lincoln, says the

1 \l Spectator y " can be in any sense ade-
quate which does not deal with his aston-
ishing power over words. It is not too much
to say of him that he is among the greatest
masters of prose ever produced by the
English race. Self-educated, or rather not
educated at all in the ordinary sense, he
contrived to obtain an insight and power in
the handling and mechanism of letters such
as has been given to but few men in his, or,
indeed, in any age. That the gift of oratory

^he Practical Mystic 67

should be a natural gift is understandable if»s s^^
enough, for the methods of the orator, like
those of the poet, are primarily sensuous and
may well be instinctive. . . . Mr. Lincoln
did not get his ability to handle prose through
his gift of speech. It is in his conduct of the
pedestrian portions of composition that Mr.
Lincoln's genius for prose style is exhibited.''
Lincoln avoided the superfluous in writing
as in speaking, and style came after the
matter of his thought, not as a conscious
effort while he was uttering his thoughts.
He was not consciously a literary artist.
When, in his famous inaugural address, he
made " pray " rhyme with " away," it
sounded like a false note struck in the move-
ment of a great symphony. That blemish
remains like a flaw in a diamond which cannot
be removed, but the miracle remains that
this master of men and moods accomplished
in his speeches and letters what no one else
accomplished in his time.

LINCOLN," says the same writer in the Lincoln's
Spectator y " saw things as a disillusioned ^^^^^^*y
man sees them, and yet, in the bad sense,
he never suffered any disillusionment. For
suffusing and combining his other qualities

68 Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's was a Serenity of mind which affected the
Serenity whole man. He viewed the world too much
as a whole to be greatly troubled or per-
plexed over its accidents. To this serenity
of mind was due an almost total absence of
indignation in the ordinary sense."

ll^s is true, because, as Walt Whitman
says, "The foundations of his character,
^^/^ more than any man's in history, were mystic

and spiritual.''

'' Lincoln was, before aU things, a gentle-
man," says the Sfectator, " and the good taste
inseparable from that character made it im-
possible for him to be spoiled by power and
position. This grace and strength of char-
acter is never better shown than in the letters
to his generals, victorious or defeated. If a
general had to be reprimanded he did it as
only the most perfect gentleman could do it."
Nevertheless, the invulnerable President did
show his anger or indignation on some few
occasions. And justly so. As a rule he did
not consider it worth his while to permit
himself to be moved by the sayings and do-
ings of any one. The foolish are unworthy
of indignation ; they must be dealt with
quietly^but effectively ; while the others must
be managed with gentle firmness backed by
the fundamentally drastic. Fuss and fury

^he Practical Mystic 69

were unknown to this pioneer politician, phil- LincoMs
osophical statesman, and mystical leader. Seremty

No man can be serene who doubts himself.
Lincoln, when in doubt as to the actions of
others, did not grope in the darkness, but
waited. His invincible trust in Providence
held him aloof from the petty circumstances
and daily routine of intrigue, and his imagi-
nation soared in the empyrean while those
around him flattered themselves that he was
being influenced or led by their counsels and
their interests.

He treated people who bedevilled him
with importunities and all sorts of advice as
the wise parent treats a child who asks for
the impossible — ^he knew that a little waiting
would wear them out and they would end
by forgetting. Often, in place of a flat
refusal, he would turn away the ofiice-
seeker by a sudden, adroit stroke of his
humour, thus sending the man and his
friends away smiling good-humouredly at
Lincoln's inimitable tact.

THERE is a " romance of character " The Romance
that accompanies people of exceptional Character
achievements, as Emerson has so justly said,
and Lincoln possessed it without being in the

JO Abrabam Lincoln

Tke Romance slightest degree consciotis of the fact. This
^hantder ^ ^^^ reason why his life surpasses in interest
anjr book of fiction ever written. He united
all the realism of pioneer life with the
romance of the inexplicable and the fascina-
tion of the unexpected.

Those ^who come to Lincoln in search of
the shifting romance of Bohemianism will be
disappointed, for the romance of change and
vacillation is the kind that leads to the poor-
house or the hospital. This romance of char-
acter, belonging, as it did, to the tempera-
ment of the man, was hidden from the multi-
tude, but all could readily see the romance of
the progressive events of his life. Lincoln
was at times awed, but not alarmed, by the
turn of affairs which placed him at the head
of the nation. He realized the tremendous
responsibility without regrets or fear. He
was fully conscious of his mission, but quite
unconscious of the romantic elements which
enveloped it, for Lincoln's life included both
the " romance of character " and the romance
of experience. Without the first, the second
would have unfitted him for the heavy re-
sponsibilities of his high office later on. He
aid not seek experience for the sake of ex-
perience, like so many in our day who are
under the illusion that truth and wisdom

The Practical Mystic 71

arrive perforce. He forced nothing. He The Romance
followed a natural course of events, dealins: ^T **^ ^ .

. , , ,. 1 i« 1 r 1 • ® Character

With each according to the light of his own
judgment, asking for no advice.

Neither the romance of character nor the
romance of experience comes to those who
seek them. Self-consciousness dissipates ro-
mantic mystery.

LINCOLN lived long enough to become President
convinced that everything exists for a ^ ^/^^^
purpose. He saw that the RebelKon had to
be, and that in the seeming confusion of
sentiments and interests the Divine ruled
over all persons and parties.

Events had to follow as ordained by the
spiritual Power that lies behind appearance.
Lincoln worked in the light ; Czar Nicholas
of Russia lived in the dark. He could not
tell why he occupied the Russian throne.
Lincoln knew why he occupied the White
House. The Kaiser was not able to see why
will, energy, and money should not rule the
world.

Never were the lessons taught by Lincoln's
career so much needed as now, when a ruth-
less autocracy is seeking to get rid of all
moral responsibility, while, on the other

72 Abraham Lincoln

President hand, thousands are awakening to the
^G^^^^^ necessity of a new order, of fostering the
mystical renaissance.

fh^Zii /^UINTILIAN said :

V-/ " No man can become a perfect orator

without a knowledge of geometry. It is

not without reason that the greatest men have

bestowed extreme attention on this science."

Locke, the philosopher, gives the reason : —
" Geometry develops the habit of pursuing
long trains of ideas which will remain with
the student who will be enabled to pierce
through the mazes of sophism and discover
a latent truth, when persons who have not
this habit will never find it."

Lincoln was passionately fond of geometry.
^ His oratory was based on logic, but his logic
came from the mystical absolute, a geometric
science of the soul which he alone could
appropriate through his perception of funda-
mental principles of universal law. He could
perceive that an idea is a personal conception
of a mathematical truth, as distinguished
from mere beliefs, notions, and sentiments.
Others turned politics into the art of mflu-
encing crowds through their sentimental
opinions ; Lincoln engaged in trying to make

The Practical Mystic 73

them think logically. While others ^zwt Science and
vague reasons for their political views he gave **^ Mystical
reasons based on law wnich he explained with
simple force and lucid phraseology.

He never attempted to tell all he knew.
The practical mystic never does. He knew
how he acquired his knowledge^, but his
reticence was as pronounced as his gift of
expression. It was this quality of reticence
that kept him from taking counsel from all
sorts of statesmen and explaining the inex-
plicable. There was not a man among them
that could have understood. In this, Lin-
coln was a mystic, full-fledged, initiated, as
by centuries of experience. His innate
wisdom told him exactly how much the
people could understand, how much politi-
cians could digest, and how much statesmen
could divine. Not only did he hold the
allegiance of the Whigs, but he gained the
allegiance of the Abolitionists. This, indeed,
was intellect illumined.

• • •

HOW old yet new are nature's moods The Old and
and manifestations ! How myste- *^ ^^^
riously the souvenirs of the past are received
and quickened in new forms, faces, and
phenomena ! The seasons come and go with
varying moods and seem new, but they are
6

74 Abraham Lincoln

The Old (Md older than the formulas of civilization ;

ths New strangers bring with them new influences, but
we discover in them something familiar from
the vague and shadowy past. Every single
thing is related to every other thing, and
illuminated minds are the periods that
separate the cycles, but not the laws, of
human progress. The form is new ; the
principle remains unchangeable. Solomon
was unique in his glory, but Athens had a
Pericles, Rome a Caesar, Europe a Bonaparte^
and the new world a Lincoln.

Real genius is elemental. It influences
humanity as much as heat and cold, rain and
sunshine. People who offer the greatest
opposition to it are those who fall before its
onward march. Indeed, it seems to be,
from all historical accounts, a sort of car of
Juggernaut to those who wilfully oppose it.
And this is not surprising since it is the
greatest power of which man has any
personal knowledge, supported by all the
forces of the material and the spiritual.

Destiny /^^ REAT men float into power on mystical
versus Wtii \^ waves movcd by the force of destiny.

The greater the mind the greater the fixture

of force behind it.

The Practical Mystic 75

Between George Washington and Abra- Destiny
ham Lincoln, Presidents came and went as ^^^^^ ^*^
figure-heads of parties or props to some
ephemeral political scaffold. Ine majority
were stop-gaps. They, like the majority of
politicians and many others, put their trust
m Will and Desire. They could not under-
stand that a man is not great because of his
will, but because of his innate knowledge.
Washington realized his destiny and under-
stood. Lincoln realized what he was and
what he would become long before his
nomination for the Presidency, for he was
wholly unconscious of any Will to Power.
The born statesman is aware of his invincible,
hidden knowledge, and he places Will in the
second rank. He knows it counts for nothing
in the fundamental issues.

Lincoln discerned, at an early age, the
difference between desire and destiny. He
saw the dangerous illusions under which the
Will-to-Power politicians and others laboured
and how vain were their hopes.

Will and Ambition are characteristics of
men who mistake the material for the per-
manent. Bonaparte and Bismarck exercised
their Will for the possession of the material,
and both failed. The Hohenzollerns and
heir henchm en have failed in the same exer-

76 Abraham Lincoln

Destiny cisc. This exerdse is indulged in by people
versus WiU ^j^q believe that to become intensely indi-
vidualistic means the development of power-
ful personality. They talk of their rights
as if their desires gave them the privilege
of robbing their neighbours. And what
some are doing publicly others are doing
privately.

The motives for this desire for material
domination vary with the individual. With
one, it is to get even with a group ; with
another, it is to get even with a party ; with
others, it is to appear in public, to be fre-
quently named and sometimes applauded.
Compromise and subterfuge are ingredients
inseparable from the illusions of die Will.
While Lincoln often assisted his friends, he
refused to hedge or trim in order to please.
Destiny behind him was invulnerable, his
own sense of justice inexorable. While
others were working for the good of their city,
state, or section, he was thinking of the good
of the whole country, with aJl humanity
behind it. Destiny created the man and the
crisis at the same time, as always happens.
The one could not exist without the other.
Destiny is the collective conscience acting
throus;h elective genius. For this reason
Linccun was not omy the man of his time but

The Practical Mystic 77

the man whose example will exert thcD^s/my
greatest influence on future eras. ^^^^ ^^^

IN the hubbub and confusion created by James
the upheaval which began in 1914 it is p!^^^
of vital importance for thinking people oiMystiG
the English-speaking countries to know what
went on in the inner circles at Washington
during that year of trial, 1864, when the
destiny of the Union seemed to be hanging
in the balance. It is time to know the truth
about Lincoln's supernaturalism. Your
favourite historian avoids the subject. He
will not touch on a matter so dangerous to
his neutral agnosticism. He avoids the
details of the supernatural events of that
wonderful time. He will discuss anything
but that ; he knows that once thinking people
become acquainted with the facts they will
begin to form their own conclusions.

In Lincoln's day agnosticism had not taken
root in the intellectual soil of this country.
The negative writings of Darwin and Spencer
were unknown among politicians and states-
men, and the churches still believed that
" spirit '' ruled matter and that Providence
was directing the aflFairs of the nation.

In Lincoln's time agnostic ministers were

78

Abrabam Lincoln

James
Jacquess —
Practical
Mystic

unknown. All believed in a positive religion.
The Union was saved from disruption be-
cause Lincoln and his aids were firm be-
lievers in a higher Power and a higher destiny.
Doubt, cynicism, and scepticism would have
handed the country over to universal chaos.
The downfall of the Union would have meant
the end of the British Empire, and to-day
Kaiserism would be in supreme command of
the remnant of Anglo-Saxon civilization.

It is the fashion to read romantic novels,
but the story of the Jacquess peace mission
is more fascinating than any novel because it
is fact instead of fiction and because its basic
element is the supernatural.

James Jacquess was, himself, a practical
mystic of no uncertain power, but \^ose
great gifts were overshadowed by the per-
sonality of Lincoln, his revered chief. Before
the Civil War Jacquess was a mathematician,
a Greek and Latin scholar, a college president,
and one of the most forcible Methodist
preachers of the age. His field of work was
the country around Springfield, where Lin-
coln often heard him preach. Long before
Jacquess received the mystical command to
undertake his peace mission to the Rebel
headquarters at Richmond, Lincoln knew
and respected him as a sincere and earnest

The Practical Mystic 79

patriot. Jac(|uess was Colonel of an Illinois james
regiment during the war, and had already ;^^;^*^
taken a valiant part in some of the most Mystic
terrible battles.

Colonel Jacquess was inspired to act as
he did without, at first, consulting any one.
He conceived the idea of going to Richmond,
interviewing the Confederate leaders, and so
gaining some definite information that would
eventually lead to peace, through victory, for
the Union. His mission was a secret, knowii
only to a limited circle, including the Presi-
dent, General Rosecrans, General Garfield
(who later became President), and James
R. Gilmore, the friend of Lincoln.

Mr. Gilmore, in his " Personal Recollec-
tions of Lincoln," devotes many pages to
this peace mission, with all the details, from
its inception by Colonel Jacquess to its
final wonderful results.

General Garfield, writing to Mr. Gilmore
from his military headquarters on June
17th, 1863, said : —

" Colonel Jacquess has gone on his peace
mission. The President approved it, though,
of course, he did not make it an official matter.
There are some very curious facts relating
to his mission which I hope to tell you some
day. It will be sufiicient for me to say that

8o

Abraham Lincoln

James
Jacq440ss —
Practical
Mystic

enough of the mysterious is in it to give me
an almost superstitious feeling of faith, and
certainly a great interest, in his work. He
is most solemnly in earnest and has great
confidence in his mission."

Colonel Jacquess succeeded in gaining
a respectful hearing before the highest
authorities at Richmond without being shot
as a spy — ^more than one of his friends having
predicted such a fate for him.

He returned to the North determined to
await patiently for another opportunity to try
again. In 1864^ ^^^^^ conferring with Mr.
Gilmore and the President, it was decided
that a second mission should be set on foot,
this time in company with his friend Gilmore,
whom a special Providence had chosen to
record all the incidents and events of that
unprecedented undertaking.

On this occasion Colonel Jacquess learned
all that he had hoped to learn, and more,
from the lips of Jefferson Davis, President of
the Southern Confederacy ; and when Jac-
quess and Gilmore returned Lincoln re-
quested Mr. Gilmore to prepare a detailed
account of the astounding revelation for the
Atlantic Monthly.

This vivid recital of the facts was published
and it created a sensation from one end of

The Practical Mystic 8i

the country to the other. It turned the tide james
in favour of Lincoln's election for a second ^^JJ^^"
term and saved the Union. This, in brief, Mystic
was the work of Tacquess, the mystic, whose
name to-day is only known to the more serious
students of Lincoln's life and work. Had
the President been less a practical mystic than
h^ was he would have forbidden Colonel
Jacquess to undertake a journey full of risks
and peril, and one that ordinary business
men would have called an insane adventure.

NOAH BROOKS, in his Life of Lincoln, images
gives the following account of a vision ^^^,^
which the President described to him : —

" It was just after my nomination in 1 860
when the news was coming thick and fast all
day, and there had been a great Hurrah
Boys, so that I was well tired out, and went
home to rest and threw myself on a lounge
in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was ^ \
a bureau with a swinging glass, and looking
in the glass I saw myself reflected, nearly at
full length, but my face, I noticed, had two
separate and distinct images, the tip of the
nose of one being about three inches from
the tip of the other. I was a little bothered,
perhaps startled, and got up and looked in

\^

82 Abraham Lincoln

Images the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying
ISreams down again I saw it a second time, plainer,
if possible, than before. Then I noticed
that one of the faces was a little paler, say
five shades, than the other. I got up and
the thing melted away. I left, and in the
excitement oi the hour forgot all about it,
nearly but not quite, for die thing would
once in a while come up and give me a little

Eang, as though something uncomfortable
ad happened. Later in the day I told my
wife about it, and a few days later I tried the
experiment again, when, sure enough, the
thing came again. My wife thought that
it was a sign that I was to be elected to a
second term of office, and that the paleness
of one of the faces was an omen that I should
not live through the last term.'* i

Not long after his second inauguration he
said to a friend in Washington :

" I have seen this evening what I saw on
the evening of my nomination. As I stood
before a mirror I saw two images of myself —
a bright one in front and one that was pallid,
standing behind. It completely unnerved
me. TTie bright one I know is my past, the
pale one my coming life. I do not think I
shall live to see the end of my second term."
In his biography, Morgan relates a dream

The Practical Mystic 83

which Lincoln had. He thought he was in images
a vast assembly, and the people drew back to ^
let him pass. Just then Lincoln heard some
one say : " He is a common-looking fellow.''
Lincoln, in his dream, turned to the man and
said : " Friend, the Lord prefers common-
looking people ; that is the reason He makes
so many of them.''

Shortly before Lincoln's assassination some ;
friends were talking about certain dreams re- \
corded in the Bible when the President said :
" About two days ago I retired very late. I
could not have been long in bed when I fell
into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon
began to dream. There seemed to be a V
deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard ^
subdued sobs, as if a number of people were
weeping. I thought I left my bed and wan-
dered downstairs. There lie silence was
broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the
mourners were mvisible. I went from room
to room ; no living person was in sight, but
the same mournful sounds of distress met me
as I passed along. It was light in all the
rooms ; every object was familiar to me, but
where were all the people who were grieving
as if their hearts would break ? I was
puzzled and alarmed. What could be the
meaning of all this ? Determined to find

84 Abrabam Lincoln

Images the cause of a state of things so mysterious
^Dreams ^^^ ^ shocking, I kept on until I arrived at
the East Room, which I entered. Before me
was a catafalque on which was a form wrapped
in funeral vestments. Around it were
stationed soldiers who were acting as guards ;
there was a throng of people, some gazing
mournfully upon the catafalque ; others
weeping pitifully. *Who is dead in the
White House ? ' I demanded of one of the
soldiers. * The President,' was the answer.
* He was killed by an assassin.' Then came
a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which
woke me from my dream." \

The New Era nP^HE principles enunciated by Abraham

X Lincoln are abiding examples, not
only for the English-speaHng peoples but
for the whole world.

Out of what seems universal confusion,
tending towards chaos, there arises a new era.
A material transformation had to occur before
the uprising of the spiritual, and the truth is
beginning to dawn in the minds of thousands
that behind all material phenomena there
dwells the divine idea. Before the gates of
oblivion closed on civilization we were

The Practical Mystic 85

plucked from the gulf in accordance with The New Era
the divine purpose.

Amidst the strife of contending factions the
thunder of upheaval reverberates from con-
tinent to continent, heralding the close of a
dispensation that has known the trials and
triumphs of nearly two thousand years, from
which is emerging the mystical dawn of a
new day.

THE END

THE WORKS OF FRANCIS GRIERSON

THE INVINCIBLE ALLIANCE

^ *' Mr. Grierson possesses the rarest of qualities, the qualltj^ of
vision. ^ He sees nght through a subject. His analytical gift is a
sort of intellectual clairvoyance. . . . In 'The Invincible Alliance '
he touches prophetic heights." — Dr. R. Samubl P. Orth, Pro/usor
of Political Science at Cornell,

MODERN MYSTICISM

^ *' This volume is full of thoughts and meditations of the very
highest order. You have deliciously and profoundly surprised me —
you have said so many things whidi I should like to have written
myself." — Maoricb Mabtbrlinck.

THE CELTIC TEMPERAMENT

" I find * The Celtic Temperament ' full of wisdom. The pages
of ' Reflections ' have also found their mark in me."

Prof. William Jambs.

THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS

^ "There are chapters in this work which haunt one afterwards
like remembered music." — Sir Owbm Sbaman, Editor of Punch,

PARISIAN PORTRAITS

'* His insight b sure and his choice ofsubiect exclusive." — Time*.
^ " Mr. Grierson is the only Englishman who can write about Paris
like a Frenchman." — Riccardo Nobili.

THE HUMOUR OF THE
UNDERMAN

" Probably no living writer could have written so many sentences
which invite remembrance." — £dward Thomas in The Boohman.

LA VIE ET LES HOMMES

*' J'ai trouv^ ces m^itations pleines d'aper9us profondset sagaces.
J'ai ^t^ frapp^ de Toriginalit^ puissante de la pens^ de I'auteur."

Sully Pruohommb, de CAc«uUmie Franfaise,

THE ILLUSIONS AND REALITIES

OF THE WAR

JOHN UNE : THE BODLEY HEAD. VI|o St., LONDON, W.

SOME OPiNIONS OF THE PRESS

The Dmily BxpreaB.--'* Francis Grierson is the
most fiiscinatiDg and the most wonderful of the essayists.
. . . He is a thinker of splendid sanity and wide view.
His * Invincible Alliance ' has all the charm and indi-
vidualii^ that belone to his 'Parisian Portraits,' 'The
Celtic Temperament/ and his other works."

From an extended review in The Atbeaseum* —

"It is our duty and pleasure to call the attention of
'Uiose who know* — the aristocracy of letters — to the
presence in their midst of just one of those accomplished,
experienced, thoughtful essayists whose absence is so
frequently deplored ; a writer whose style is in itself a
compliment to the intelligence of his audience. . . ,**

The New StateBmaa,—*' There are passages in
Mr. Grierson's work that for sheer musical beauty and
vividness of ocular impression excel anything since Pater ;
one feels in reading such passages that English prose is
capable of uses to which no one has ever yet put it, and
that its possibilities have hardly begun to be exploited."

From The Times. — "An essayist of much alertness
of mind. . . . Mr. Grierson is an independent and
courageous thinker. His ideas have a vigour and
originality."

The Morning Post*—** The essay has been so often
associated with affectionate treatment of heroes and hob-
bies that a militant essayist, whose business is to fight
rather than parley, cuts a fresh and welcome figure. Mr.
Francis Grierson, in moments of relaxation, b as capable
as any of eulogising congenial persons and places. But,
as a rule, he writes with the zest of a gladiator, ready to
take up arms against all antagonists on behalf of ued
ideas, which enter at unexpect^ angles into every subject
— apolitical, social, or literary — which he undertakes to
discuss. ... In short, Mr. Grierson's targets are as
numerous as his skill is delightful."

JOHN UNE : THB BODLEY HEAD, Vigo St., LONDON, W.

bios DBD D51 5D^

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