Abstract
Given his impatience with sentimentalists, humanitarians, and uplifters of all kinds, it is surprising at first glance to find Irving Babbitt among those who admired Abraham Lincoln, especially at the height of the Progressive Era's dreamy infatuation with the Lincoln mystique. In contrast to this temperamental romanticism, Babbitt chose Lincoln to represent true democracy, built on the permanent element of judgment and what he called a selective democracy of the sober second thought that resists the easy temptation of the passing impression