DISCOVERY 



245 



Anthropology and History. By Professor Wm. 

 McDouGALL. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2s.) 

 A lecture delivered to a scientific society in Oxford, 

 showing the important bearing of the study of anthro- 

 pology on that of liistory. Dr. McDougall has recently 

 been appointed to the chair of Psj'chology at Harvard. 



Discovery in Greek Lands. By F. H. Marshall. (Cam- 

 bridge University Press, 8s. dd.) 

 A short account of the principal excavations and dis- 

 coveries of the last fifty years in Greece, Crete, Asia Minor, 

 and Cyprus. 



Report of the Seybert Commission on Spiritualism. 

 (Lippincott, 6s.) 



The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. 



Vols. V and vi. By G. E. Buckle. (John 



Murray, i8s. each.) 

 These volumes complete the great work, and cover the 

 period 1868-1881. The principal contents for the reader 

 not interested specially in poUtics are the voluminous 

 correspondence with Queen Victoria, and the love-letters 

 to Lady Bradford. An interesting psychological study. 

 " There is no tale in Eastern or Western romance," says 

 a reviewer, " to be compared, for successful adventure, with 

 the Life of Benjamin Disraeli." 



Space and Time in Contemporary Physics. By Pro- 

 fessor M. Schlick. Rendered into English by 

 Henry L. Brose. (Clarendon Press, 6s. 6d.) 

 Einstein's theorj', and what it involves, dealt with in 



plain, non-mathematical language. 



Abraham Lincoln as now 

 Known to Us 



By Lord Charnwood 



[Continued from July No., p. 211) 



The preceding article has perhaps given indications 

 enough that Lincoln was a firm and sagacious adminis- 

 trator in matters in which his contemporaries seemed 

 to see vacillation and blundering. If we left out of 

 account all larger questions of principle, and considered 

 only how he dealt with the baffling problems of detail 

 which confronted his Government day by day, he would 

 remain a memorable figure in history, since the shrewd- 

 ness which he displayed was that which is only possible 

 to a man whose whole self is devoted to his task, and 

 for whom petty considerations of vanity or anger or 

 self-advancement have almost ce?ised to exist. The 

 background of an originally ambitious career and of 

 long practice in the minor arts of political combination 



from which these qualities emerged in his case enhances 

 their greatness ; and the incessant play of light humour 

 in which this personal nobility manifested itself gives 

 it unexampled charm. .\\l this, though we can hardly 

 pause to illustrate it here, meets the eye of anyone who 

 casually turns the pages of a few of the numerous books 

 about him. But all this, if it stood alone, would not 

 suffice to rank him among the great historic exponents 

 of principles of lasting moment. In showing that he 

 does take rank among these, we have to face the fact 

 that, as in lesser things he seemed at the time a 

 blunderer, so in larger things he seemed to many to be 

 without strong principle. His name is linked for ever 

 with what may be called the decisive victory of the 

 principle that all men have rights, yet he was not among 

 the zealots who consecrated their lives to hastening that 

 victory ; he had taken no part whatever in the out-and- 

 out " Abolitionist " agitation, and was even unsym- 

 pathetic towards it. It is true that several courageous 

 acts of his earlier career prove the sincerity of his hatred 

 of slavery, but they were acts of no historic consequence; 

 his only important action in the cause, before he became 

 President and war was thrust upon him, was the 

 negative action of protest against further e.xtension of 

 slavery. Thus he might easily be taken for an oppor- 

 tunist, though an opportunist with a conscience. He 

 really belonged to a far less common type ; he was a 

 moderate man, whose moderation goes along with pas- 

 sionate conviction ; a philosopher, with the power of 

 cool and detached thought, and with vision reaching 

 far and ranging wide, who yet retained the capacity of 

 instant and decisive action when the rare opportunity 

 came. 



Negro slavery in America did not really present a 

 simple issue which could be settled by saying, " This 

 thing is wrong and must be stopped." In the first 

 place, it was bound up with the question whether 

 .\merica could and should continue a single united 

 country ; and, in the second place, the legal relation of 

 master and slave was but one element in the condition 

 of the negro and in the whole social problem of the 

 South. Now, Lincoln approached the conflicting 

 requirements of perpetuating the Union, and not per- 

 petuating slavery, with greater comprehension and 

 decision than any other man, and possessed a sympa- 

 thetic insight into the character and needs of the 

 inferior race in which he stood almost alone among his 

 contemporaries. 



It would be granted by everyone that in every 

 critical decision of general policy in these matters, 

 from the moment when the Missouri Compromise ' was 

 repe;ded, Lincoln's course was happily guided. Up 

 to the outbreak of war he avoided resolutely any further 

 concession to the principle of slavery, and any provo- 

 ' See Discovery for July, p. 209. 



