" If, however, we adopt a broader
philosophy, and apply the more generous and more universal principle
that "everything succeeds which attacks favorable opportunity with
fitting endeavor," then we see that it was the strong vitality, the
active intelligence, and the indefinable psychological law of moral
growth that assimilates the good and rejects the bad, which Nature gave
this obscure child, that carried him to the service of mankind and to
the admiration of the centuries with the same certainty with which the
acorn grows to be the oak.
We see how even the limitations of his environment helped the end.
Self-reliance, that most vital characteristic of the pioneer, was his by
blood and birth and training; and developed through the privations of
his lot and the genius that was in him to the mighty strength needed to
guide our great country through the titanic struggle of the Civil War.
The sense of equality was his, also by virtue of his pioneer training--a
consciousness fostered by life from childhood to manhood in a state of
society where there were neither rich to envy nor poor to despise, where
the gifts and hardships of the forest were distributed impartially to
each, and where men stood indeed equal before the forces of unsubdued
nature.
The same great forces taught liberality, modesty, charity, sympathy--in
a word, neighborliness.
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