During his mature years he rarely, if ever, proclaimed an idea
which he had not mastered, and he never abandoned a truth which he had
once thoroughly achieved.
III
LINCOLN AS MORE THAN AN AMERICAN
Lincoln's services to his country have been rewarded with such abundant
appreciation that it may seem superfluous to insist upon them once
again; but I believe that from the point of view of this book an even
higher value may be placed, if not upon his patriotic service, at least
upon his personal worth. The Union might well have been saved and
slavery extinguished without his assistance; but the life of no other
American has revealed with anything like the same completeness the
peculiar moral promise of genuine democracy. He shows us by the full but
unconscious integrity of his example the kind of human excellence which
a political and social democracy may and should fashion; and its most
grateful and hopeful aspect is, not merely that there is something
partially American about the manner of his excellence, but that it can
be fairly compared with the classic types of consummate personal
distinction.
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