re had bestowed on him high and rare powers. Superficial observers
who saw his homely aspect and plain manners, and noted that his
fellow-townsmen, when asked why they so trusted him, answered that it
was for his common-sense, failed to see that his common-sense was a part
of his genius. What is common-sense but the power of seeing the
fundamentals of any practical question, and of disengaging them from the
accidental and transient features that may overlie these
fundamentals--the power, to use a familiar expression, of getting down
to bed rock? One part of this power is the faculty for perceiving what
the average man will think and can be induced to do. This is what keeps
the superior mind in touch with the ordinary mind, and this is perhaps
why the name of "common-sense" is used, because the superior mind seems
in its power of comprehending others to be itself a part of the general
sense of the community. All men of high practical capacity have this
power. It is the first condition of success. But in men who have
received a philosophical or literary education there is a tendency to
embellish, for purposes of persuasion, or perhaps for their own
gratification, the language in which they recommend their conclusions,
or to state those conclusions in the light of large general principles,
a tendency which may, unless carefully watched, carry them too high
above the heads of the crowd. Lincoln, never having had such an
education, spoke to the people as one of themselves. He seemed to be
saying not only what each felt, but expressing the feeling just as each
would have expressed it. In reality, he was quite as much above his
neighbours in insight as was the polished orator or writer, but the
plain directness of his language seemed to keep him on their level. His
strength lay less in the form and vesture of the thought than in the
thought itself, in the large, simple, practical view which he took of
the position. And thus, to repeat what has been said already, the
sterling merit of these speeches of his, that which made them effective
when they were delivered and makes them worth reading to-day, is to be
found in the justness of his conclusions and their fitness to the
circumstances of the time. When he rose into higher air, when his words
were clothed with stateliness and solemnity, it was the force of his
conviction and the emotion that thrilled through his utterance, that
printed the words deep upon the minds and drove them