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
the upper air, alike of the spiritual and the physical atmosphere, has
its perpetual currents, unvarying as the revolution of the globe or the
sailing of constellations; and these fail not to represent themselves
by eternal tradewinds upon the surface of our planet and of our life.
Now the grand inquiry about any man is,--Does he belong to the great
current, or to the lesser ones? He appertains to the great in
proportion to his access to principles. Or we may illustrate by another
analogy a distinction, of importance so emphatic. The Arctic voyagers
find two descriptions of ice. The field-ice spreads over vast spaces,
and moves with immense power; but goes with the wind and the
surface-flow. The bergs, on the contrary, sit deep, are bedded in the
mighty under-currents; and when the field-ice was crashing down with
tide and storm, Dr. Kane found these heroes holding their steady
inevitable way in the teeth of both. Thus may one discover men who are
very massive, very powerful, engrossing such enormous spaces that there
hardly seems room in the world for anybody else; but they are Field-ice
Men; they represent with gig