The type is described in Schiller's Song of the Founding of
the Bell:
Denn, wo das strenge mit dem zarten,
Wo mildes sich und starkes paarten,
Da giebt es einen guten Klang.
There is a tendency to apply the term "miraculous" to the career of
every hero, and in a sense such description is, of course, true. The
life of every man, however restricted its range, is something of a
miracle; but the course of a single life, like that of humanity, is
assuredly based on a development that proceeds from a series of
causations. Holmes says that the education of a man begins two centuries
before his birth. We may recall in this connection that Lincoln came of
good stock. It is true that his parents belonged to the class of poor
whites; but the Lincoln family can be traced from an eastern county of
England (we might hope for the purpose of genealogical harmony that the
county was Lincolnshire) to Hingham in Massachusetts, and by way of
Pennsylvania and Virginia to Kentucky. The grandfather of our Abraham
was killed, while working in his field on the Kentucky farm, by
predatory Indians shooting from the cover of the dense forest. Abraham's
father, Thomas, at that time a boy, was working in the field where his
father was murdered. Such an incident in Kentucky simply repeated what
had been going on just a century before in Massachusetts, at Deerfield
and at dozens of other settlements on the edge of the great forest which
was the home of the Indians.
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