The next sign of genius is the picture-making faculty. Men of talent evolve arguments, men of genius create emblems, parables and pictures. Minds oftentimes called profound use long abstractions, and are called deep thinkers, because nobody can understand them. But along comes a man of genius, and he squeezes the juice out of the abstract argument, and flings the rind away, and tells you what it is like.
Measured in terms of genius, the parables of Jesus are the greatest literary achievements in history. Æsop's fables teach by pictures. "Pilgrim's Progress" is pictorial.
Lincoln was exceedingly fortunate in his generation in that the three great books of pictures were in his hands during the imaginative epoch. Of course he was born with the talent for parable, because genius is one-half nature and the other half nurture. It was this natural gift and the training that taught him how when he had completed an argument and mastered the principle, to say, Now what is this great principle like, and how can I condense it into a picture and put it in a happy phrase that will sing itself across the land? This picture-making gift inspired him to quote the keen wisdom of that expression of Jesus, "The house divided against itself cannot stand." This skill in parables gave him the expression, "Better not swap horses in the middle of the stream," that gave him his second election. This vision power gave him that sentence equal to anything in Shakespeare, when Vicksburg fell, "Once more the Father of Waters goes unvexed to the sea." This faculty enabled him to sweep into one illustration a thousand arguments, so that the people could never forget the mother principle that explained the facts.
Nor may we forget what the great cause did for him. The era of the war was a great era, because God heaved society as the winds heave the waves, and men were swept forward with irresistible power upon the great movement of liberty. Great movements make great epochs and great men. A great ideal of God and righteousness and liberty lifts Savonarola and Florence to new levels; a great cathedral inspires Michael Angelo's great dome; a Divine Saviour and His transfiguration exalt Raphael; Paradise explains Dante; listening to the sevenfold Hallelujah chorus of God arouses the sweep and majesty of Milton's epic; the woes of three million slaves made eloquence possible for Phillips and Beecher. The saving of a Union, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal, represented a cause into which Lincoln could fling himself. The thought of meanly losing or nobly saving the last, best hope of earth, exalted, transformed, and armed the men, making feeblings strong, and strong men to be giants.