Francis of Assisi differed from the ordinary Benedictine monk of the
thirteenth century.
The average Western American of Lincoln's generation was fundamentally a
man who subordinated his intelligence to certain dominant practical
interests and purposes. He was far from being a stupid or slow-witted
man. On the contrary, his wits had been sharpened by the traffic of
American politics and business, and his mind was shrewd, flexible, and
alert. But he was wholly incapable either of disinterested or of
concentrated intellectual exertion. His energies were bent in the
conquest of certain stubborn external forces, and he used his
intelligence almost exclusively to this end. The struggles, the
hardships, and the necessary self-denial of pioneer life constituted an
admirable training of the will. It developed a body of men with great
resolution of purpose and with great ingenuity and fertility in
adapting their insufficient means to the realization of their important
business affairs. But their almost exclusive preoccupation with
practical tasks and their failure to grant their intelligence any room
for independent exercise bent them into exceedingly warped and one-sided
human beings.
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