I do not know them in their identities and cannot claim to know them personally ... I claim to know them in the spirit ... as Lincoln ... the representative man of his age ... the aristotelian hero of moderation ... the cavalier the puritan and the new man of the west to decide between them and his name is Lincoln ... that kind of moderation ... the puritan's drive for excellence the cavalier's savoir-faire and good grace ... the man of law the man of emotion of compassion ... twirled together by society ... twisted together by war ... sucked into the vortex fallen into the abyss ... a shaft of light from the center of the one to the heart of the other ... ecce homo ... behold the man of myth ... only take myth seriously ... as devoutly as the puritan as deadly as the determined cavalier ... and you have what I mean by the spirit ... they talk to you if you read if you study ... if you listen ... the spirits of the past if not the future ... caught for a moment in their prisms filled with light and a variety of color or sloshing in filth and leaving a ring of misery ... if you leave your body and go out of your mind ... into myth
cf for example cawardine's Lincoln
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