Lincoln, The American
by
FRANK O. LOWDEN
Governor of Illinois
Boston, Mass.
February 12, 1919
[Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.]
Springfield, Ill.
Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers
1919
15793—1M{3}
Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois delivered the following
address before the Middlesex Club at the Hotel Somerset
in Boston, Mass., Wednesday evening February
12, 1919:
Principles rather than policies appealed to Abraham Lincoln. All greatquestions seemed to him to involve some moral quality. It was his habit,therefore, to resolve them into their simple fundamentals. It thushappens that many of his words are as apt and forceful to-day as whenthey were first spoken by him. Your Club has recognized this fact andhas made “Lincoln, the American,” the theme of the evening. In harmonywith this thought, I shall try to put before you some of the things forwhich Lincoln stood, which directly apply, as it seems to me, to thegrave problems with which we and all the world with us are nowconfronted.
A hundred and ten years ago to-day, two men were born. Both have beendust for many years. Yet each played a large part in the Great World Warthat we hope has reached its close. These men were Charles Darwin andAbraham Lincoln. Darwin devoted his life to the study of materialthings. In that world in which he lived he found heredity andenvironment to be the controlling facts. Out of his study came thedoctrine of the survival of the fittest. The savants of Germany madethat doctrine the corner-stone of a new philosophy which they calledKultur.
According to Kultur, the world belonged to the strong and to the strongalone. Might was right, and the world was in the relentless grip ofphysical force. Justice, gentleness, righteousness were words inventedby the weak to protect themselves against the strong. To pity a foe wasweakness; to spare him was a crime. Kultur was a denial of the morallaw; was a blind faith in the power of the laws of life which Darwin haddeclared.
On the same day, in a cabin in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln was born. Ifheredity and environment had been all there was in human life, we nevershould have heard his name. While Darwin delved in rocks to findvanished forms of life, Lincoln studied men. He learned to know men. Bythem his sympathies were quickened; the moral depths of his being werestirred; the right and wrong of human conduct engaged his deepestthought. Just as the laws of physical being unfolded under the eye ofthe great scientist, so the laws of the moral {4}universe disclosedthemselves to the great man. It was said that Darwin could take a singlebone of some extinct and unknown animal and reconstruct that animalperfectly. Lincoln at the same time could take a single wrong to societyand reconstruct society, to the everlasting benefit of all. Lincolnnever read The Origin of Species, but he knew that, under the moral law,an injury by a superior race to an inferior reacted upon itself. Hesaid—“This is a world of compensation and he who would be no slave mustconsent to have no slave. And those who deny freedom