Lincoln, on the contrary, much as he was a man of his own time and
people, was precisely an example of high and disinterested intellectual
culture. During all the formative years in which his life did not
superficially differ from that of his associates, he was in point of
fact using every chance which the material of Western life afforded to
discipline and inform his mind. These materials were not very abundant;
and in the use which he proceeded to make of them Lincoln had no
assistance, either from a sound tradition or from a better educated
master. On the contrary, as the history of the times shows, there was
every temptation for a man with a strong intellectual bent to be
betrayed into mere extravagance and aberration. But with the sound
instinct of a well-balanced intelligence Lincoln seized upon the three
available books, the earnest study of which might best help to develop
harmoniously a strong and many-sided intelligence. He seized, that is,
upon the Bible, Shakespeare, and Euclid. To his contemporaries the Bible
was for the most part a fountain of fanatic revivalism, and Shakespeare,
if anything, a mine of quotations.
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