164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



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 t^vo sides to every question, 

 both of which must be fully understood in order to un- 

 derstand 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 remarka- 

 ble than the unerring tact with which, in his debate with 

 Mr. Douglas, he went straight to the reason of the ques- 

 tion ; nor have w^e ever had a more striking lesson in 

 political tactics than the fact, that, opposed to a man 

 exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and big- 

 otry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in ap- 

 pealing 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 affixirs, 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 



