A LECTURE BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN DELIVERED IN 1860 SAN FRANCISCO JOHN HOWELL 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY JOHN HOWELL The Lecture—“Discoveries and Inventions”—by our greatest American, presents a phase of Lincoln’s activity about which little is generally known. It shows as clearly as any of his other writings how great was Lincoln’s knowledge of the progress of mankind, particularly as related in the Bible, and it reveals also his debt to that Book of Books for inspiration and illustration, as well as

The manuscript is now owned by Dr. Melvin’s son, the Honorable Henry A. Melvin, a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, through whose courtesy this edition is published. A   This was published in “ Addresses and Letters of Lincoln ,” The Century Company, 1904....

All creation is a mine, and every man a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself , in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny. In the beginning, the mine was unopened, and the miner stood naked , and knowledgeless , upon it. Fishes, birds, beasts, and creeping things, are not miners, but feeders and lodgers merely. Beavers