Lincoln×Socrates

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Reminds me of the fellow who asked the preacher if it was all right to pray for his enemies. The preacher said certainly, the Good Book commands it. So the fellow says, well then, I pray the Lord'll send 'em all straight to hell. Now, I've told that story a hundred times, and once—just once—I told it about a particular senator by name.
2. 00:17
   Socratesshare moment

   And did you speak truly?
3. 00:19
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, that's the trouble of it. I did and I didn't. I wished him considerable discomfort, that's no lie. But I said it in a cabinet meeting I thought was private, and then a fellow from the Interior Department went and printed it in his memoirs while I was yet living. Had to write a letter saying I'd been misquoted on the particulars.
4. 00:38
   Socratesshare moment

   So you denied that you said what you had in fact said?
5. 00:42
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I denied the exact wording. The sentiment—well, I let that lie where it fell.
6. 00:46
   Socratesshare moment

   Then tell me, Lincoln, when you wrote this correction, were you correcting the man who misquoted you, or were you correcting yourself?
7. 00:54
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I was correcting the public record. There's a difference between what a man says in anger among friends and what he's willing to stamp with his name in ink.
8. 01:02
   Socratesshare moment

   Is there? If I understand you, the statement was true as to your feeling, but false as to your judgment. So which part of you spoke in that cabinet meeting—the true Lincoln, or the false one?
9. 01:17
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   The tired one, mostly. But I take your meaning and I don't dodge it. The correction cost me a certain amount of honesty, yes. I had to pretend I was a better man in private than I actually am.
10. 01:27
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you were elected to lead a nation through its bloodiest trial. Would you have been elected if you had not learned to make such corrections?
11. 01:36
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, sir. I would not.
12. 01:37
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps what it cost you was not honesty, but the luxury of complete honesty. Tell me, do you think a leader can afford to speak every truth he knows?
13. 01:48
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    He cannot. I held back on emancipation a full year longer than my conscience wanted, because the border states weren't ready and the army wasn't ready and if I'd spoken the whole truth of my heart in early sixty-two, we'd have lost Kentucky and likely the war. So I waited, and men remained in chains while I waited, and that's a cost I'll reckon with past this life.
14. 02:12
    Socratesshare moment

    But you did speak it eventually, did you not? The truth, I mean.
15. 02:16
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I spoke a partial truth wrapped in military necessity. The Proclamation freed only those slaves in rebelling states—didn't touch Kentucky or Missouri or the others. Even my grandest gesture was a lawyerly hedge.
16. 02:28
    Socratesshare moment

    Then you never corrected your original silence. You merely added new words to stand beside it. Tell me, which hurt you more—the correction you had to print, or the correction you chose not to?
17. 02:41
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Now that's a blade that cuts. The one I printed made me look foolish for an afternoon. The one I didn't print—well, that's between me and what comes after.
18. 02:50
    Socratesshare moment

    You see, Lincoln, I have never had to print a correction, because I have never claimed to teach anything. I only ask questions. If I am wrong, I am only wrong in my wondering, never in my assertions.
19. 03:04
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a mighty convenient arrangement. Must be comfortable, never having to plant your flag anywhere someone can pull it down.
20. 03:09
    Socratesshare moment

    Comfortable? The Athenians gave me hemlock for my questions. But let me ask you this—did they kill me for being wrong, or for making others realize they were wrong?
21. 03:21
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    For embarrassing men in public, I'd wager. Which I've done my share of, and it's always cost me something, even when I was right. But you still haven't answered whether you ever said something that turned out to be false.
22. 03:33
    Socratesshare moment

    How could I? I claim no knowledge. But perhaps that itself is false—perhaps I know more than I say. Would that be a lie of omission requiring correction?
23. 03:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    In a court of law, we'd call that evasive testimony. You're doing it right now—turning my question back into another question like a man skipping stones across a pond, never letting one sink to the bottom.
24. 03:55
    Socratesshare moment

    Very well. I will tell you a truth, and you may judge its cost. In my youth, I said that the unexamined life was not worth living. I said this with great conviction, before many witnesses. I never corrected it. And yet I have watched men examine their lives so thoroughly they could no longer live them—paralyzed by their own scrutiny. Perhaps my words killed as surely as any sword. Should I have issued a correction?
25. 04:27
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a real answer, and I thank you for it. But here's the thing—you can't correct wisdom once it's out in the world. It takes on its own life. I wrote that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and men took that as a prediction of war when I meant it as a warning against war. Should I have corrected their understanding?
26. 04:45
    Socratesshare moment

    Could you have? Is it possible to correct how others hear you, or only what you have said?
27. 04:51
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I spent four years trying to correct Northern newspapers that said I was too soft on the South and Southern newspapers that said I was a tyrant. Couldn't satisfy either, couldn't correct either. At some point you have to let your words stand and do their work, for good or ill.
28. 05:06
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you began this conversation by telling me about a correction you did print. Why that one? Why not let those words stand as well?
29. 05:15
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Because those words were small and mean, and I'm not so proud I can't admit when I've been small and mean. The big words—the ones about union and freedom—those I had to let stand even when they were misunderstood, because the cause was larger than my pride. But calling a senator names? That I could take back without hurting anything but my own satisfaction.
30. 05:35
    Socratesshare moment

    So the cost of your correction was your satisfaction. You had to publicly become the better man you wished you had been privately.
31. 05:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's about the size of it, yes.
32. 05:47
    Socratesshare moment

    Then perhaps the correction was not a loss at all, but a kind of education. You taught yourself what you should have been. Is that not what all correction is—teaching our past selves what our present selves have learned?
33. 06:02
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well now, that's almost an answer instead of a question. You feeling all right, Socrates?
34. 06:06
    Socratesshare moment

    I am wondering whether I am all right. Is that not its own form of wellness? But tell me, Lincoln—you said this cost followed you past this life. Do you still carry it?
35. 06:18
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Every word I spoke in anger and had to eat later, yes, I carry them. They're lighter than the words I didn't speak when I should have, but they're there. A man's tongue is a small member but it can kindle a great fire, as Scripture says. I kindled a few I had to stamp out myself.
36. 06:37
    Socratesshare moment

    And the words that were printed about you after your death—the corrections others made to your legacy—do you carry those as well?
37. 06:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Can't control what men say once you're gone. They've made me out a saint in some tellings and a devil in others, and both are wrong by measure. But that's their correction to make, not mine.
38. 06:54
    Socratesshare moment

    So you accept that your words will be corrected by time itself, whether you wish it or not.
39. 06:59
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I accept that every man's words get sanded down by the years until what's left is either bedrock or dust. Mine have held up better than I expected and worse than I hoped, which seems about fair.
40. 07:11
    Socratesshare moment

    Then tell me one last thing, my friend. If you could issue one more correction now, looking back across all your words, what would it be?
41. 07:20
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'd correct the notion that I saved the Union. The Union saved itself through the blood of boys who believed in it more than I believed in my own next breath. I signed the papers and gave the speeches, but they did the dying. If there's a correction that needs printing, it's that one—that the credit belongs to men whose names nobody remembers.
42. 07:40
    Socratesshare moment

    And yet you will not print it, will you? Because you are dead, and the dead cannot issue corrections.
43. 07:46
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, sir. The dead can only hope they got enough of it right the first time that the errors don't outweigh the truth. And if we didn't—well, that's the cost that never stops coming due.
44. 07:56
    Socratesshare moment

    Perhaps that is the answer to your original question, then. The cost of a correction is not what you lose by admitting error. It is what you lose by arriving too late at truth.
45. 08:09
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Now that's something I can agree with. Though I notice you arrived at it by question after question, like a man walking backwards into wisdom.
46. 08:17
    Socratesshare moment

    Is there any other way to arrive?