that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur." 27 Pliable in deliberation, he was inflexible after he had reached a decision. He was the ideal leader; a man of the people, yet towering above the masses in his spiritual majesty. He was both humble and self-assertive. Though aware of his limitations, he was conscious of his power. His self-assertion was inordinate, to the point of arrogance. Self-distrust gave way to selfassurance in the crises. Impressed by his deferential manner, Seward and Chase were amazed when he refused to defer to them. At times he was confessing his inexperience; at other times he was declaring, "I know more about it than any of them." Hay writes: "It is absurd to call him a modest man. It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner never could forgive." 28 Just as he alternated between melancholy and mirth, so he oscillated from one extreme to the other in the various aspects of his nature. His selfassertion was powerful, but more driving than ever when his sense of inferiority was intensified by the weight of his own deficiencies; his compensation evolved characteristically into overcompensation. In displaying to a marked degree that it is possible by patient, resolute, persistent self-culture, to rise measurably above constitutional and hereditary limitations, his life is an inspiration to humanity. He was not great as one free from faults, but as one who faced his shortcomings, admitted his deficiencies, and then, in Carl Schurz: Abraham Lincoln. 1892. Quoted by W. Barton: op. cit., II, p. 45. INCOLN f polite s 27 Pliabl man of the is spirital deferential rites: "It as his intel ion of supe never could melanchar reme to the His sel than eve fied by the tion evolved it is possib itary limit and then, i compensation, overcame all his handicaps to lead a people out of darkness into the light. The best that lies in democracy is symbolized in the simplicity and nobility of Abraham Lincoln. FINIS 1 ? BIBLIOGRAPHY REFERENCES ON COMPENSATION Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology. Kegan, Paul, 1924. The Neurotic Constitution. Moffat, Yard, 1921. Study on Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Compensation. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 24, 1917. Character and Talent. Harper's Monthly Maga- Individual Psychology. Journal of Abnormal and H. A. Aikins: Woman and the Masculine Protest. C. Badouin and A. Lestchinsky: The Inner Discipline, English Bagby: The Inferiority Reaction. Journal of P. Bjerre: The History and Practice of Psychanalysis, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September 30, T. Burrow: Notes with Reference to Freud, Jung, and Adler. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 1917, 12, 161-167. Morris Fishbein: Is Psychoanalysis Voodoo? The Boston Sunday Globe, May 22, 1927. R. G. Gordon: Personality, Chap. XI. Harcourt, Brace, 1926. E. R. Groves: Personality and Social Adjustment, Chap. XV. Longmans, Green, 1923. G. Stanley Hall: A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear. American Journal of Psychology 1916, 25, 165168. George Humphrey: The Story of Man's Mind, pp. 290-296. Small, Maynard, 1923. Elizabeth Jordan: His Inferiority Complex. The Boston Herald, July 10, 1927. William McDougall: Outline of Abnormal Psychology, Chap. XVII. Scribners, 1926. J. C. and E. Nugent: The Poor Nut. Samuel French, 1925. John Oliver: Fear. Macmillan, 1927. J. J. Putnam: The Work of Alfred Adler, Considered with Especial Reference to that of Freud. Psychoanalytic Review 1916, 3, 121-140. H. Sachs: The Wish to be a Man. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 1920, 1, 262-267. Amy Tanner: Adler's Theory of Minderwertigkeit. Pedagogical Seminary 1915, 22, 204-217. André Tridon: Psychoanalysis and Behavior, Part III. Knopf, 1923. A. G. Tansley: The New Psychology, pp. 211-214. Dodd, Mead, sixth edition, 1922. Brenda Ueland: Giving Sex a Back Seat. Liberty, February 5, 1927. |