Nevertheless, at bottom, Abraham Lincoln differed as essentially from the ordinary Western American of the Middle Period as St.Francis of Assisi differed from the ordinary Benedictine monk of the thirteenth century.
The average Western American of Lincoln's generation was fundamentally a man who subordinated his intelligence to certain dominant practical interests and purposes.

He was far from being a stupid or slow-witted man.

On the contrary, his wits had been sharpened by the traffic of American politics and business, and his mind was shrewd, flexible, and alert.

But he was wholly incapable either of disinterested or of concentrated intellectual exertion.

His energies were bent in the conquest of certain stubborn external forces, and he used his intelligence almost exclusively to this end.