emands of the outer life, was not susceptible of great
strain except on demand of the spiritual vision. Hence his attitude
toward the study of the law. It thrilled and entranced him, called into
play all his powers--observation, reflection, intelligence--just so
long as it appeared in his imagination a vast creative effort of the
spiritual powers, of humanity struggling perilously to see justice done
upon earth, to let reason and the will of God prevail. It lost its
hold upon him the instant it became a thing of technicalities, of mere
learning, of statutory dialectics.

The restless, inward Lincoln, dwelling deep among spiritual shadows,
found other outlets for his energy during these years when he was
establishing himself at the bar. He continued to be a voracious reader.
And his reading had taken a skeptical turn. Volney and Paine were now
his intimates. The wave of ultra-rationalism that went over America in
the 'forties did not spare many corners of the land. In Springfield, as
in so many small towns, it had two effects: those who were not touched
by it hardened into jealous watchfulness, and their religion naturally
enough became fiercely combative; those who responded to the new
influence became a little affected philosophically, a bit effervescent.
The young men, when of serious mind, and all those who were reformers by
temperament, tended to exalt the new, to patronize, if not to ridicule
the old. At Springfield, as at many another frontier town wracked by
its growing pains, a Young Men's Lyceum confessed the world to be out of
joint, and went to work glibly to set it right. Lincoln had contributed
to its achievements. An oration of his on "Perpetuation of Our Free
Institutions,"(10) a mere rhetorical "stunt" in his worst vein now
deservedly forgotten, so delighted the young men that they asked to have
it printed--quite as the same sort of young men to-day print essays on
cubism, or examples of free verse read to poetry societies. Just what
views he expressed on things in general among the young men and others;
how far he aired his acquaintance with the skeptics, is imperfectly
known.(11) However, a rumor got abroad that he was an "unbeliever,"
which was the easy label for any one who disagreed in religion with the
person who applied it. The rumor was based in part on a passage in an
address on temperance. In 1842, Lincoln, who had always been abstemious,
joined that Washington Society which aimed at a reformati