lly held that the most
complicated of human contrivances, and one which every day becomes more
complicated, can be worked at sight by any man able to talk for an hour
or two without stopping to think.

Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a ready-made ruler.
But no case could well be less in point; for, besides that he was a man
of such fair-mindedness as is always the raw material of wisdom, he had
in his profession a training precisely the opposite of that to which a
partisan is subjected. His experience as a lawyer compelled him not
only to see that there is a principle underlying every phenomenon in
human affairs, but that there are always two sides to every question,
both of which must be fully understood in order to understand either,
and that it is of greater advantage to an advocate to appreciate the
strength than the weakness of his antagonist's position. Nothing is
more remarkable than the unerring tact with which, in his debate with
Mr. Douglas, he went straight to the reason of the question; nor have
we ever had a more striking lesson in political tactics than the fact,
that, opposed to a man exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice
and bigotry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to
those baser motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of
barbarians, he should yet have won his case before a jury of the
people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu
politician. His wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as
of men; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest
acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the only
durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any abstract
right, but upon so much of justice, the highest attainable at any given
moment in human affairs, as may be had in the balance of mutual
concession. Doubtless he had an ideal, but it was the ideal of a
practical statesman,--to aim at the best, and to take the next best, if
he is lucky enough to get even that. His slow, but singularly
masculine, intelligence taught him that precedent is only another name
for embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in the
guidance of communities of men than in that of the individual life. He
was not a man who held it good public economy to pull down on the mere
chance of rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln's faith in God was qualified
by a very well-founded distrust of the wisdom of man