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 172 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

found in a cardinal principle of Stephens's nature, which it is now time to take up and investigate. The man was essentially an intellectualist, and guided his life, far more than most men do, by systematic reasoning. I have al- ready made it quite clear that this does not mean that he was cold or insensible. Most certainly he was not. Neither does it mean that he had the calm, dispassionate, scientific spirit of the nineteenth century, which observes all facts curiously without special eagerness to relate them to preconceived theories. Stephens was a deductive thinker of an older type. He reasoned from accepted generalizations to very positive conclusions. And even in this line his thinking was neither profound nor orig- inal. In his letters he is perpetually turning over rather glaring commonplaces, and the comparison of his diary w4th that of Amiel, which I have already suggested, will show at once that the Southern statesman had ver}^ little power of going to the bottom of things.

Nevertheless, in a tumult of passions, and preconcep- tions, and prejudices, he strove mightily to clear his mind of cant, to get at the conclusions of calm reason as to the terrible questions put before him, and then to act on those conclusions singly, honestly, unflinchingly, with absolute disregard of party, or tradition, or convention. In a time when the still voice of thought was well-nigh drowned in the furious outcry of politicians and fanatics, surely this quality must receive a high degree of com- mendation.

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