Dr. Kane was one of the purest examples of the American organization;
and as he issued victorious from that region where "the ground burns
frore, and cold performs the effect of fire," the Man of the New World
was represented, and in him came forth with proven strength. The same
significance would not attach to all feats of endurance, even where
equally representative. Here are Hercules and Orpheus in one,--the
organization of a poet, and the physical stamina of a gladiator.

Now this peculiar organization offers the physical inducement for two
great tendencies,--one relating to the perception of truth, the other
to the feeling of social claims,--while these tendencies are supported
on the spiritual side by the great disciplines of our position; and the
genius which these foreshow is precisely that which ought to be the
genius of the New Man.

This organization is that of the seer, the poet, the spiritualist, of
all such as have an eye for the deeper essences and first principles of
things. Concede intellectual power, or the spiritual element, then add
this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative,
radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles.
And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as
well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable
to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,--How
far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like
the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions,
and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class
of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it
is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of
men seldom or never lift their heads above this weathercock region. Yet