AUTHOR. No; that conception simply guided them in creating it from the idea of the unity of our action; or, speaking more generally, from the idea of the unity of the action of the universe, from which the idea of the unity of our action arose.

REPORTER.

What was their purpose in creating our government?

AUTHOR. Their purpose in creating our government was to carry the idea of the unity of our action out by more perfectly uniting our political action, or, as they expressed it, by forming a more perfect union of it.

REPORTER. Then our government is a form of the idea of the unity of our action to more perfectly unite our political action?

AUTHOR. Yes, or speaking more generally, it is a form of the idea of the unity of the action of the universe to more perfectly unite our political action.

REPORTER. Then it was the idea of the unity of our action, or speaking more generally, the idea of the unity of the action of the universe, that was given Abraham Lincoln ?

AUTHOR. Yes; and what he sought was the expression of it in a government to more perfectly unite our industrial action, as our fathers had expressed it in a government to more perfectly unite our political action, for it developed more perfectly in his mind than it developed in theirs, and gave him consciousness that it applied to the one as well as to the other.

REPORTER. But he did not express it in a government of our industrial action?

AUTHOR. No; for before it could be expressed in a government of our industrial action, our industrial action had to be more perfectly developed than it then was.

Moreover, to say nothing about the

institution of slavery being in the way, the expression of it in a government of our industrial action is a much more difficult matter than the expression of it in a government of our political action. And before it could be expressed in a government of our industrial action it had to be more fully developed in our minds than it then was.

REPORTER. But where did we get the idea of the unity of the action of the universe?

it ?

AUTHOR. We developed it.
REPORTER. But how did we develop

AUTHOR. That is quite a long story. REPORTER. But it must be a very interesting one, and as it is a dark day out I should like to listen to it.

And glancing through the window said, "It is gloomy."

And we drew nearer to the fire, and he proceeded.

AUTHOR. Now the method by which we develop our ideas of things is to first get an imperfect idea of them, then a more perfect one, and so on, until our idea of them is complete. And the first idea that we got of the action of the universe was that it is carried on by many persons like ourselves.

For observing that rivers overflowing their channels at certain seasons of the year left a sedimentary deposit upon the adjacent soil, without which we could not raise our crops, we got the idea that they were looking after us.

And as heat is just as essential to our crops as fertility of soil, seeing that it came from the sun, we got the idea that it was looking after us also. And as moisture is just as essential as heat, we said it was furnished in the same way and so on.

But this idea was soon modified, for we soon saw that the rivers did not al

ways rise just high enough to make the necessary deposit that they sometimes arose so high as to wash away our houses. That the sun did not always furnish the right amount of heat—that it sometimes furnished so much as to dry everything up. That we were not always furnished the right amount of moisture

that we were sometimes furnished so much as to drown us out. And we said that these persons were not always looking after us that they were sometimes getting after us. And we began to study how to keep them in a good humor, and finally got an idea of how to do so.

REPORTER. How did we get it?

AUTHOR. We got it in some such way as this:

One of the first things that we personified was fire. Like the sun, it furnished us both light and heat; and by striking a flint, or rubbing two sticks.