Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858

But while the typical American organization is of this admitted delicacy and lightness, it is still capable, under high and powerful impulse of extraordinary feats of endurance. This has of late been admirably illustrated. Not long since, there returned to our shores a hero who—as Dante was believed by the people of Italy to have entered the Inferno of Fire—had actually descended into the opposite Inferno of Frost, and done unprecedented battle with the demons of that realm. Dr. Kane was slight, delicately framed, lean, with sharp, clear-cut features, of quivering mobility and fineness of texture, having the aspect rather of an artist than an explorer,—not at all the personage to whom most judges would assign great power of endurance. And as one follows him through those thrice Herculean toils,—sees him not only bearing cheerfully the great burden of his own cares and ills, but lifting up, as it were, from his companions, and assuming upon his own shoulders, the awful oppression of the polar night, as Atlas of old was fabled to support the heavens,—not even one's admiration at such force of soul can wholly exclude wonder at such fortitude of body. Whence, we ask, this power of endurance? We can trace it to no ordinary physical resource. It comes from no ordinary physical resource. It is pure brain-power. It streams down upon the body, in rivers of invigoration, from the cerebral hemispheres. A conversational philosopher, discoursing to a circle of intelligent New England mechanics, said,—"It is commonly supposed that the earth supports man. Not so; man upholds the earth!" "How!" exclaimed a wide-eyed auditor; "upholds the earth? How do you make that out?" "How?" answered the philosopher, with superb innocence,—"don't you see that it sticks to his heels?" When the question is asked, How the slight frame of this Arctic hero could support such tests, the answer must be analogous,—It clung to his brain. The usual order of support is reversed; and here is that truer Mercury, in whom the winged head, possessing as function what its prototype only exhibited as ornament and symbol, really soars in its own might, bearing the pendent feet.

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 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 gigantic force the impulse of the hour. But there is another class, making, perhaps, little show upon the surface, or making it by altitude alone, who represent the grand circulations of law, the orbital courses of truth. It is a question of depth, of penetration. And depth, be it observed, secures unity; diversity, contrariety, contention are of the surface. Numbers need not concern us, whether one hundred, or one hundred millions, provided all are imbedded in the central, commanding truths of the human consciousness. And if the Man of the New World be characteristically one who will attach himself to the eternal master-tides, that fact alone fits him for his place.

Of course no sane man would intimate that organization alone can bring about such results. The Arabian horse will hardly manufacture a Saladin for his back. But let the Saladin be given, and this marvel of nerve and muscle will multiply his presence,—will, as it were, give two selves. So, if the Teutonic man who comes to our shores were innately empty or mean, this nervous intensity would only ripen his meanness, or make his inanity obstreperous. But in so far as he has real depth of nature, this radical organization will aid him, quickening by its heat what is deepest within him; and when he turns his face toward principles, this flying brain-steed will swiftly bring him to his goal. Nay, it is best that even meanness should ripen. The slaveholder of South Carolina must avouch a false principle to cover his false practice,—must affirm that slavery is a Divine institution. It is well. A Quaker, hearing a fellow blaspheme, said,—"That is right, friend; get such bad stuff out of thee!" A lie is dangerous, till it is told,—like scarlatina, before it is brought to the surface: when either breaks out, it is more than half conquered. The only falsehoods of appalling efficacy for evil are those which circulate subtly in the vital unconsciousness of powerful but obscure or undemonstrative natures,—deadly from the intimacy which also makes them secret and secure, and silently perverting to their own purposes the normal vigors of the system. A Mephistopheles is not dangerous; he is too clear-headed; he knows his own deserts: some muddiness is required to harbor self-deceptions, in order that badness may reach real working power. To all perversion iron limits are, indeed, set; but obscure falsehood works in the largest spaces and with the longest tether.—Thus the expressive intensity which appertains to this organization is serviceable every way, even in what might, at first blush, seem wholly evil effects.

While thus the brain-hand of the American is formed for grasping principles, for apprehending the simple, subtile, universal truths which slip through coarser and more sluggish fingers, there is also an influence on the moral and intellectual faculties, coming in to accept and use these cerebral ones. We are more in conversation with the heart and pure spiritual fact of humanity than any other people of equal power and culture. We necessarily deal more with each other on a bond and basis of common persuasion, of open unenacted truth, than others. This matter is of moment enough to justify somewhat formal elucidation.