CHAPTER I

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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

Founded 1906 by J. M. Dent (d. 1926)

Edited by Ernest Rhys (d. 1946)

ESSAYS & BELLES-LETTRES

SARTOR RESARTUS _and_ ON HEROES

BY THOMAS CARLYLE · INTRODUCTION

BY PROFESSOR W. H. HUDSON

THOMAS CARLYLE, born in 1795 at Ecclefechan, the son of a

stonemason. Educated at Edinburgh University. Schoolmaster for

a short time, but decided on a literary career, visiting Paris

and London. Retired in 1828 to Dumfriesshire to write. In 1834

moved to Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and died there in 1881.

SARTOR RESARTUS

ON HEROES

HERO WORSHIP

THOMAS CARLYLE

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.

NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.

_All rights reserved

Made in Great Britain

at The Temple Press Letchworth

for

J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Aldine House Bedford St. London

First published in this edition 1908

Last reprinted 1948_

INTRODUCTION

One of the most vital and pregnant books in our modern literature,

"Sartor Resartus" is also, in structure and form, one of the most

daringly original. It defies exact classification. It is not a

philosophic treatise. It is not an autobiography. It is not a romance.

Yet in a sense it is all these combined. Its underlying purpose is to

expound in broad outline certain ideas which lay at the root of

Carlyle's whole reading of life. But he does not elect to set these

forth in regular methodic fashion, after the manner of one writing a

systematic essay. He presents his philosophy in dramatic form and in a

picturesque human setting. He invents a certain Herr Diogenes

Teufelsdröckh, an erudite German professor of "Allerley-Wissenschaft,"

or Things in General, in the University of Weissnichtwo, of whose

colossal work, "Die Kleider, Ihr Werden und Wirken" (On Clothes: Their

Origin and Influence), he represents himself as being only the student

and interpreter. With infinite humour he explains how this prodigious

volume came into his hands; how he was struck with amazement by its

encyclopædic learning, and the depth and suggestiveness of its

thought; and how he determined that it was his special mission to

introduce its ideas to the British public. But how was this to be

done? As a mere bald abstract of the original would never do, the

would-be apostle was for a time in despair. But at length the happy

thought occurred to him of combining a condensed statement of the main

principles of the new philosophy with some account of the

philosopher's life and character. Thus the work took the form of a

"Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh," and as such it was offered

to the world. Here, of course, we reach the explanation of its

fantastic title--"Sartor Resartus," or the Tailor Patched: the tailor

being the great German "Clothes-philosopher," and the patching being

done by Carlyle as his English editor.

As a piece of literary mystification, Teufelsdröckh and his treatise

enjoyed a measure of the success which nearly twenty years before had

been scored by Dietrich Knickerbocker and his "History of New York."

The question of the professor's existence was solemnly discussed in at

least one important review; Carlyle was gravely taken to task for

attempting to mislead the public; a certain interested reader actually

wrote to inquire where the original German work was to be obtained.

All this seems to us surprising; the more so as we are now able to

understand the purposes which Carlyle had in view in devising his

dramatic scheme. In the first place, by associating the

clothes-philosophy with the personality of its alleged author (himself

one of Carlyle's splendidly living pieces of characterisation), and by

presenting it as the product and expression of his spiritual

experiences, he made the mystical creed intensely human. Stated in the

abstract, it would have been a mere blank _-ism_; developed in its

intimate relations with Teufelsdröckh's character and career, it is

filled with the hot life-blood of natural thought and feeling.

Secondly, by fathering his own philosophy upon a German professor

Carlyle indicates his own indebtedness to German idealism, the

ultimate source of much of his own teaching. Yet, deep as that

indebtedness was, and anxious as he might be to acknowledge it, he was

as a humourist keenly alive to certain glaring defects of the great

German writers; to their frequent tendency to lose themselves among

the mere minutiæ of erudition, and thus to confuse the unimportant and

the important; to their habit of rising at times into the clouds

rather than above the clouds, and of there disporting themselves in

regions "close-bordering on the impalpable inane;" to their too

conspicuous want of order, system, perspective. The dramatic machinery

of "Sartor Resartus" is therefore turned to a third service. It is

made the vehicle of much good-humoured satire upon these and similar

characteristics of Teutonic scholarship and speculation; as in the

many amusing criticisms which are passed upon Teufelsdröckh's volume

as a sort of "mad banquet wherein all courses have been confounded;"

in the burlesque parade of the professor's "omniverous reading"

(_e.g._, Book I, Chap. V); and in the whole amazing episode of the

"six considerable paper bags," out of the chaotic contents of which

the distracted editor in search of "biographic documents" has to make

what he can. Nor is this quite all. Teufelsdröckh is further utilised

as the mouthpiece of some of Carlyle's more extravagant speculations

and of such ideas as he wished to throw out as it were tentatively,

and without himself being necessarily held responsible for them. There

is thus much point as well as humour in those sudden turns of the

argument, when, after some exceptionally wild outburst on his

_eidolon's_ part, Carlyle sedately reproves him for the fantastic

character or dangerous tendency of his opinions.

It is in connection with the dramatic scheme of the book that the

third element, that of autobiography, enters into its texture, for the

story of Teufelsdröckh is very largely a transfigured version of the

story of Carlyle himself. In saying this, I am not of course thinking

mainly of Carlyle's outer life. This, indeed, is in places freely

drawn upon, as the outer lives of Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoi are

drawn upon in "David Copperfield," "The Mill on the Floss," "Anna

Karénina." Entepfuhl is only another name for Ecclefechan; the picture

of little Diogenes eating his supper out-of-doors on fine summer

evenings, and meanwhile watching the sun sink behind the western

hills, is clearly a loving transcript from memory; even the idyllic

episode of Blumine may be safely traced back to a romance of Carlyle's

youth. But to investigate the connection at these and other points

between the mere externals of the two careers is a matter of little

more than curious interest. It is because it incorporates and

reproduces so much of Carlyle's inner history that the story of

Teufelsdröckh is really important. Spiritually considered, the whole

narrative is, in fact, a "symbolic myth," in which the writer's

personal trials and conflicts are depicted with little change save in

setting and accessories. Like Teufelsdröckh, Carlyle while still a

young man had broken away from the old religious creed in which he had

been bred; like Teufelsdröckh, he had thereupon passed into the

"howling desert of infidelity;" like Teufelsdröckh, he had known all

the agonies and anguish of a long period of blank scepticism and

insurgent despair, during which, turn whither he would, life responded

with nothing but negations to every question and appeal. And as to

Teufelsdröckh in the Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer in Paris, so to

Carlyle in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, there had come a moment of sudden

and marvellous illumination, a mystical crisis from which he had

emerged a different man. The parallelism is so obvious and so close as

to leave no room for doubt that the story of Teufelsdröckh is

substantially a piece of spiritual autobiography.

This admitted, the question arises whether Carlyle had any purpose,

beyond that of self-expression, in thus utilising his own experiences

for the human setting of his philosophy. It seems evident that he had.

As he conceived them, these experiences possessed far more than a

merely personal interest and meaning. He wrote of himself because he

saw in himself a type of his restless and much-troubled epoch; because

he knew that in a broad sense his history was the history of thousands

of other young men in the generation to which he belonged. The age

which followed upon the vast upheaval of the Revolution was one of

widespread turmoil and perplexity. Men felt themselves to be wandering

aimlessly "between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be

born." The old order had collapsed in shapeless ruin; but the promised

Utopia had not been realised to take its place. In many directions the

forces of reaction were at work. Religion, striving to maintain itself

upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a

mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had

fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and

inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and

hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms

which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary

movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, and with it the

mood of disillusion and despair. The spirit of doubt and denial was

felt as a paralysing power in every department of life and thought,

and the shadow of unbelief lay heavy on many hearts.

It was for the men of this "sad time" that Carlyle wrote

Teufelsdröckh's story; and he wrote it not merely to depict the

far-reaching consequences of their pessimism but also to make plain to

them their true path out of it. He desired to exhibit to his age the

real nature of the strange malady from which it was suffering in order

that he might thereupon proclaim the remedy.

What, then, is the moral significance of Carlyle's "symbolic myth"?

What are the supreme lessons which he uses it to convey?

We must begin by understanding his diagnosis. For him, all the evils

of the time could ultimately be traced back to their common source in

what may be briefly described as its want of real religion. Of churches

and creeds there were plenty; of living faith little or nothing was

left. Men had lost all vital sense of God in the world; and because of

this, they had taken up a fatally wrong attitude to life. They looked

at it wholly from the mechanical point of view, and judged it by

merely utilitarian standards. The "body-politic" was no longer

inspired by any "soul-politic." Men, individually and in the mass,

cared only for material prosperity, sought only outward success, made

the pursuit of happiness the end and aim of their being. The divine

meaning of virtue, the infinite nature of duty, had been forgotten,

and morality had been turned into a sort of ledger-philosophy, based

upon calculations of profit and loss.

It was thus that Carlyle read the signs of the times. In such

circumstances what was needed? Nothing less than a spiritual rebirth.

Men must abandon their wrong attitude to life, and take up the right

attitude. Everything hinged on that. And that they might take up this

right attitude it was necessary first that they should be convinced of

life's essential spirituality, and cease in consequence to seek its

meaning and test its value on the plane of merely material things.

Carlyle thus throws passionate emphasis upon religion as the only

saving power. But it must be noted that he does not suggest a return

to any of the dogmatic creeds of the past. Though once the expression

of a living faith, these were now for him mere lifeless formulas. Nor

has he any new dogmatic creed to offer in their place. That mystical

crisis which had broken the spell of the Everlasting No was in a

strict sense--he uses the word himself--a conversion. But it was not a

conversion in the theological sense, for it did not involve the

acceptance of any specific articles of faith. It was simply a complete

change of front; the protest of his whole nature, in a suddenly

aroused mood of indignation and defiance, against the "spirit which

denies;" the assertion of his manhood against the cowardice which had

so long kept him trembling and whimpering before the facts of

existence. But from that change of front came presently the vivid

apprehension of certain great truths which his former mood had thus

far concealed from him; and in these truths he found the secret of

that right attitude to life in the discovery of which lay men's only

hope of salvation from the unrest and melancholy of their time.

From this point of view the burden of Carlyle's message to his

generation will be readily understood. Men were going wrong because

they started with the thought of self, and made satisfaction of self

the law of their lives; because, in consequence, they regarded

happiness as the chief object of pursuit and the one thing worth

striving for; because, under the influence of the current rationalism,

they tried to escape from their spiritual perplexities through logic

and speculation. They had, therefore, to set themselves right upon all

these matters. They had to learn that not self-satisfaction but

self-renunciation is the key to life and its true law; that we have no

prescriptive claim to happiness and no business to quarrel with the

universe if it withholds it from us; that the way out of pessimism

lies, not through reason, but through honest work, steady adherence to

the simple duty which each day brings, fidelity to the right as we

know it. Such, in broad statement, is the substance of Carlyle's

religious convictions and moral teaching. Like Kant he takes his stand

on the principles of ethical idealism. God is to be sought, not

through speculation, or syllogism, or the learning of the schools, but

through the moral nature. It is the soul in action that alone finds

God. And the finding of God means, not happiness as the world

conceives it, but blessedness, or the inward peace which passes

understanding.

The connection between the transfigured autobiography which serves to

introduce the directly didactic element of the book and that element

itself, will now be clear. Stripped of its whimsicalities of

phraseology and its humorous extravagances, Carlyle's philosophy

stands revealed as essentially idealistic in character. Spirit is the

only reality. Visible things are but the manifestations, emblems, or

clothings of spirit. The material universe itself is only the vesture

or symbol of God; man is a spirit, though he wears the wrappings of

the flesh; and in everything that man creates for himself he merely

attempts to give body or expression to thought. The science of

Carlyle's time was busy proclaiming that, since the universe is

governed by natural laws, miracles are impossible and the supernatural

is a myth. Carlyle replies that the natural laws are themselves only

the manifestation of Spiritual Force, and that thus miracle is

everywhere and all nature supernatural. We, who are the creatures of

time and space, can indeed apprehend the Absolute only when He weaves

about Him the visible garments of time and space. Thus God reveals

Himself to sense through symbols. But it is as we regard these symbols

in one or other of two possible ways that we class ourselves with the

foolish man or with the wise. The foolish man sees only the symbol,

thinks it exists for itself, takes it for the ultimate fact, and

therefore rests in it. The wise man sees the symbol, knows that it is

only a symbol, and penetrates into it for the ultimate fact or

spiritual reality which it symbolises.

Remote as such a doctrine may at first sight seem to be from the

questions with which men are commonly concerned, it has none the less

many important practical bearings. Since "all Forms whereby Spirit

manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination,

are Clothes," civilisation and everything belonging to it--our

languages, literatures and arts, our governments, social machinery and

institutions, our philosophies, creeds and rituals--are but so many

vestments woven for itself by the shaping spirit of man. Indispensable

these vestments are; for without them society would collapse in

anarchy, and humanity sink to the level of the brute. Yet here again

we must emphasise the difference, already noted, between the foolish

man and the wise. The foolish man once more assumes that the vestments

exist for themselves, as ultimate facts, and that they have a value of

their own. He, therefore, confuses the life with its clothing; is even

willing to sacrifice the life for the sake of the clothing. The wise

man, while he, too, recognises the necessity of the vestments, and

indeed insists upon it, knows that they have no independent

importance, that they derive all their potency and value from the

inner reality which they were fashioned to represent and embody, but

which they often misrepresent and obscure. He therefore never confuses

the life with the clothing, and well understands how often the

clothing has to be sacrificed for the sake of the life. Thus, while

the utility of clothes has to be recognised to the full, it is still

of the essence of wisdom to press hard upon the vital distinction

between the outer wrappings of man's life and that inner reality which

they more or less adequately enfold.

The use which Carlyle makes of this doctrine in his interpretation of

the religious history of the world and of the crisis in thought of his

own day, will be anticipated. All dogmas, forms and ceremonials, he

teaches, are but religious vestments--symbols expressing man's deepest

sense of the divine mystery of the universe and the hunger and thirst

of his soul for God. It is in response to the imperative necessities

of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his

ideas and aspirations. Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all

other human things, they partake of the ignorance and weakness of the

times in which they were framed, it is inevitable that with the growth

of knowledge and the expansion of thought they must presently be

outgrown. When this happens, there follows what Carlyle calls the

"superannuation of symbols." Men wake to the fact that the creeds and

formulas which have come down to them from the past are no longer

living for them, no longer what they need for the embodiment of their

spiritual life. Two mistakes are now possible, and these are, indeed,

commonly made together. On the one hand, men may try to ignore the

growth of knowledge and the expansion of thought, and to cling to the

outgrown symbols as things having in themselves some mysterious

sanctity and power. On the other hand, they may recklessly endeavour

to cast aside the reality symbolised along with the discredited symbol

itself. Given such a condition of things, and we shall find religion

degenerating into formalism and the worship of the dead letter, and,

side by side with this, the impatient rejection of all religion, and

the spread of a crude and debasing materialism. Religious symbols,

then, must be renewed. But their renewal can come only from within.

Form, to have any real value, must grow out of life and be fed by it.

The revolutionary quality in the philosophy of "Sartor Resartus"

cannot, of course, be overlooked. Everything that man has woven for

himself must in time become merely "old clothes"; the work of his

thought, like that of his hands, is perishable; his very highest

symbols have no permanence or finality. Carlyle cuts down to the

essential reality beneath all shows and forms and emblems: witness his

amazing vision of a naked House of Lords. Under his penetrating gaze

the "earthly hulls and garnitures" of existence melt away. Men's habit

is to rest in symbols. But to rest in symbols is fatal, since they are

at best but the "adventitious wrappages" of life. Clothes "have made

men of us"--true; but now, so great has their influence become that

"they are threatening to make clothes-screens of us." Hence "the

beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes ... till they

become transparent." The logical tendency of such teaching may seem to

be towards utter nihilism. But that tendency is checked and qualified

by the strong conservative element which is everywhere prominent in

Carlyle's thought. Upon the absolute need of "clothes" the stress is

again and again thrown. They "have made men of us." By symbols alone

man lives and works. By symbols alone can he make life and work

effective. Thus even the world's "old clothes"--its discarded forms

and creeds--should be treated with the reverence due to whatever has

once played a part in human development. Thus, moreover, we must be on

our guard against the impetuosity of the revolutionary spirit and all

rash rupture with the past. To cast old clothes aside before new

clothes are ready--this does not mean progress, but sansculottism, or

a lapse into nakedness and anarchy.

* * * * *

The lectures "On Heroes and Hero-Worship," here printed with "Sartor

Resartus," contain little more than an amplification, through a series

of brilliant character-studies, of those fundamental ideas of history

which had already figured among Teufelsdröckh's social speculations.

Simple in statement and clear in doctrine, this second work needs no

formal introduction. It may, however, be of service just to indicate

one or two points at which, apart from its set theses, it expresses or

implies certain underlying principles of all Carlyle's thought.

In the first place, his philosophy of history rests entirely on "the

great man theory." "Universal History, the history of what man has

accomplished in the world," is for him "at bottom the History of the

Great Men who have worked here." This conception, of course, brings

him into sharp conflict with that scientific view of history which was

already gaining ground when "Heroes and Hero-Worship" was written, and

which since then has become even more popular under the powerful

influence of the modern doctrine of evolution. A scientific historian,

like Buckle or Taine, seeks to explain all changes in thought, all

movements in politics and society, in terms of general laws; his habit

is, therefore, to subordinate, if not quite to eliminate, the

individual; the greatest man is treated as in a large measure the

product and expression of the "spirit of the time." For Carlyle,

individuality is everything. While, as he is bound to admit, "no one

works save under conditions," external circumstances and influences

count little. The Great Man is supreme. He is not the creature of his

age, but its creator; not its servant, but its master. "The History of

the World is but the Biography of Great Men."

Anti-scientific in his reading of history, Carlyle is also

anti-democratic in the practical lessons he deduces from it. He

teaches that our right relations with the Hero are discipular

relations; that we should honestly acknowledge his superiority, look

up to him, reverence him. Thus on the personal side he challenges that

tendency to "level down" which he believed to be one alarming result

of the fast-spreading spirit of the new democracy. But more than this.

He insists that the one hope for our distracted world of to-day lies

in the strength and wisdom of the few, not in the organised unwisdom

of the many. The masses of the people can never be safely trusted to

solve for themselves the intricate problems of their own welfare. They

need to be guided, disciplined, at times even driven, by those great

leaders of men, who see more deeply than they see into the reality of

things, and know much better than they can ever know what is good for

them, and how that good is to be attained. Political machinery, in

which the modern world had come to put so much faith, is only another

delusion of a mechanical age. The burden of history is for him always

the need of the Able Man. "I say, Find me the true _Könning_, King,

Able Man, and he _has_ a divine right over me." Carlyle thus throws

down the gauntlet at once to the scientific and to the democratic

movements of his time. His pronounced antagonism to the modern spirit

in these two most important manifestations must be kept steadily in

mind in our study of him.

Finally, we have to remember that in the whole tone and temper of his

teaching Carlyle is fundamentally the Puritan. The dogmas of

Puritanism he had indeed outgrown; but he never outgrew its ethics.

His thought was dominated and pervaded to the end, as Froude rightly

says, by the spirit of the creed he had dismissed. By reference to

this one fact we may account for much of his strength, and also for

most of his limitations in outlook and sympathy. Those limitations the

reader will not fail to notice for himself. But whatever allowance has

to be made for them, the strength remains. It is, perhaps, the secret

of Carlyle's imperishable greatness as a stimulating and uplifting

power that, beyond any other modern writer, he makes us feel with him

the supreme claims of the moral life, the meaning of our own

responsibilities, the essential spirituality of things, the

indestructible reality of religion. If he had thus a special message

for his own generation, that message has surely not lost any of its

value for ours. "Put Carlyle in your pocket," says Dr. Hal to Paul

Kelver on his starting out in life. "He is not all the voices, but he

is the best maker of men I know." And as a maker of men, Carlyle's

appeal to us is as great as ever.

WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON.

_Life of Schiller_ (_Lond. Mag._, 1823-4), 1825, 1845.

(Supplement published in the People's Edition, 1873). _Wilhelm

Meister Apprenticeship_, 1824. _Elements of Geometry and

Trigonometry_ (from the French of Legendre), 1824. _German

Romance_, 1827. _Sartor Resartus_ (_Fraser's Mag._, 1833-4),

1835 (Boston), 1838. _French Revolution_, 1837, 1839.

_Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_, 1839, 1840, 1847, 1857.

(In these were reprinted Articles from _Edinburgh Review_,

_Foreign Review_, _Foreign Quarterly Review_, _Fraser's

Magazine_, _Westminster Review_, _New Monthly Magazine_,

_London and Westminster Review_, _Keepsake Proceedings of the

Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_, _Times_). _Chartism_,

1840. _Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History_, 1841.

_Past and Present_, 1843. _Oliver Cromwell's Letters and

Speeches: with Elucidations_, 1845. _Thirty-five Unpublished

Letters of Oliver Cromwell_, 1847 (Fraser). _Original

Discourses on the Negro Question_ (Fraser, 1849), 1853.

_Latter-day Pamphlets_, 1850. _Life of John Sterling_, 1851.

_History of Friedrich II. of Prussia_, 1858-65. _Inaugural

Address at Edinburgh_, 1866. _Shooting Niagara: and After?_

1867 (from "Macmillan"). _The Early Kings of Norway; also an

Essay on the Portraits of John Knox_, 1875.

There were also contributions to Brewster's _Edinburgh

Encyclopædia_, vols. xiv., xv., and xvi.; to _New Edinburgh

Review_, 1821, 1822; _Fraser's Magazine_, 1830, 1831; _The

Times_, 19 June, 1844 ("Mazzini"); 28 November, 1876; 5 May,

1877; _Examiner_, 1848; _Spectator_, 1848.

First Collected Edition of Works, 1857-58 (16 vols.).

_Reminiscences_, ed. by Froude in 1881, but superseded by C.

E. Norton's edition of 1887. Norton has also edited two

volumes of _Letters_ (1888), and Carlyle's correspondence with

Emerson (1883) and with Goethe (1887). Other volumes of

correspondence are _New Letters_ (1904), _Carlyle Intime_

(1907), _Love Letters_ (1909), _Letters to Mill, Sterling, and

Browning_ (1923), all ed. by Alexander Carlyle. See also _Last

Words of Carlyle_, 1892.

The fullest _Life_ is that by D. A. Wilson. The first of six

volumes appeared in 1923, and by 1934 only one remained to be

published.

CONTENTS

SARTOR RESARTUS

BOOK I

CHAP. PAGE

I. PRELIMINARY 1

II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 5

III. REMINISCENCES 9

IV. CHARACTERISTICS 20

V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 25

VI. APRONS 31

VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 34

VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 37

IX. ADAMITISM 43

X. PURE REASON 47

XI. PROSPECTIVE 52

BOOK II

I. GENESIS 61

II. IDYLLIC 68

III. PEDAGOGY 76

IV. GETTING UNDER WAY 90

V. ROMANCE 101

VI. SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRÖCKH 112

VII. THE EVERLASTING NO 121

VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 128

IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA 138

X. PAUSE 149

BOOK III

I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 156

II. CHURCH-CLOTHES 161

III. SYMBOLS 163

IV. HELOTAGE 170

V. THE PHOENIX 174

VI. OLD CLOTHES 179

VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS 183

VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 191

IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE 201

X. THE DANDIACAL BODY 204

XI. TAILORS 216

XII. FAREWELL 219

APPENDIX--TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 225

SUMMARY 231

ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY

LECTURE I

THE HERO AS DIVINITY. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian

Mythology 239

LECTURE II

THE HERO AS PROPHET. Mahomet: Islam 277

LECTURE III

THE HERO AS POET. Dante; Shakspeare 311

LECTURE IV

THE HERO AS PRIEST. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism 346

LECTURE V

THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns 383

LECTURE VI

THE HERO AS KING. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism 422

INDEX 469

SARTOR RESARTUS

BOOK FIRST

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch

of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less

effect, for five-thousand years and upwards; how, in these times

especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely

than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled

thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest

cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might

strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or

nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy

or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well

known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will

endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it

could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our

nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds

has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough:

what with the labours of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent

genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal

Society, the Creation of a World is little more mysterious than the

cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been

minds to whom the question, _How the apples were got in_, presented

difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on

the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we

not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language,

of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's

whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated;

scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but

has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically

decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not

a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular,

vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies,

Bichâts.

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand

Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite

overlooked by Science,--the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or

other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and

overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened,

his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its

being? For if, now and then, some straggling, broken-winged thinker

has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure region, the most have

soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property,

not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of

trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have

tacitly figured man as a _Clothed Animal_; whereas he is by nature a

_Naked Animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and

device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures

that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look

round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable,

deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing

that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where

abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy

of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris,

deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand

peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling

multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with

preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his _Höret ihr Herren und lasset's

Euch sagen_; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets

that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans

have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into

devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough

journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance and that political

slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt

to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, and

be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science,

which, as our Humorist expresses it,--

'By geometric scale

Doth take the size of pots of ale;'

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen

vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said.

In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the

consequence. Nevertheless, be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe

has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and

rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into

rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only

finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers,

for the mind of man? It is written, 'Many shall run to and fro, and

knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, Let each

considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not

this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united

tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such

adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some

out-lying, neglected, yet vitally-momentous province; the hidden

treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the

general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was

completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles,

planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the

immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man

was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and

look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass,

whithersoever and howsoever it listed.

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science,

especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how

our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a

political or other immediately practical tendency on all English

culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this,

not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such

Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language.

What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance

stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered

condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to

fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems

probable enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results

it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor

of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed

speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess,

that never, till these last months, did the above very plain

considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to

him; and then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of

a new Book from Professor Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo; treating

expressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or

not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present

Editor's way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines,

whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not

remained without effect.

'_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and

Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdröckh, J.U.D. etc._ _Stillschweigen und

Co^{gnie}._ _Weissnichtwo_, 1831.

'Here,' says the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, 'comes a Volume of that

extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken

with pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo.

Issuing from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and

Company, with every external furtherance, it is of such internal

quality as to set Neglect at defiance.' * * * * 'A work,' concludes

the wellnigh enthusiastic Reviewer, 'interesting alike to the

antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece

of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent Germanism and

Philanthropy (_derber Kerndeutschheit und Menschenliebe_); which will

not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but

must and will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdröckh to the first

ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honour.'

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the

first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends

hither a Presentation-copy of his Book; with compliments and encomiums

which modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet without

indicated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the

concluding phrase: _Möchte es_ (this remarkable Treatise) _auch im

Brittischen Boden gedeihen_!

CHAPTER II

EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES

If for a speculative man, 'whose seedfield,' in the sublime words of

the Poet, 'is Time,' no conquest is important but that of new ideas,

then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdröckh's Book be marked

with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an 'extensive

Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of

Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest

pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with

sea-wreck but with true orients.

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate

inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of

Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was

disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new

human Individuality, an almost unexampled personal character, that,

namely, of Professor Teufelsdröckh the Discloser. Of both which

novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the

significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytising creature, no

sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question

arose: How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in

equal need thereof: how could the Philosophy of Clothes, and the

Author of such Philosophy, be brought home, in any measure, to the

business and bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new-got gold is

said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much

more may new truth.

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was

to publish Article after Article on this remarkable Volume, in such

widely-circulating Critical Journals as the Editor might stand

connected with, or by money or love procure access to. But, on the

other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed,

and treated of, might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant?

If, indeed, all party-divisions in the State could have been abolished,

Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the

Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and

the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom,

the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort

have we, except _Fraser's Magazine_? A vehicle all strewed

(figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding

distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger

stands or sits; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a

vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut! Besides, to state the

Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of

Teufelsdröckh without something of his personality, was it not to

insure both of entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it been

otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of

obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special despair.

Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, shut out from all

public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to

revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own

mind.

So had it lasted for some months; and now the Volume on Clothes, read

and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the

personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of

all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic;

whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed

discontent,--when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr

Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in

Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. The

Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on

the 'agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was

exciting in its own German Republic of Letters; on the deep

significance and tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at length,

with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of conveying

'some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to

the distant West': a work on Professor Teufelsdröckh 'were undoubtedly

welcome to the _Family_, the _National_, or any other of those

patriotic _Libraries_, at present the glory of British Literature';

might work revolutions in Thought; and so forth;--in conclusion,

intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed

to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdröckh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke,

had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents.

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but

would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other fixed

substance is introduced, crystallisation commences, and rapidly

proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind

and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and

discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement:

and soon either in actual vision and possession, or in fixed

reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself,

so to speak, into a solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through

the twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable OLIVER YORKE

was now made: an interview, interviews with that singular man have

taken place; with more of assurance on our side, with less of satire

(at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated;--for the rest,

with such issue as is now visible. As to those same 'patriotic

_Libraries_,' the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent

amazement; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and almost

instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these,

we already see our task begun; and this our _Sartor Resartus_, which

is properly a 'Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh,' hourly

advancing.

* * * * *

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and

vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British

reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented

him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation

he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared

from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and

directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who

or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and even

insignificant:[1] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy

of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears,

let him hear.

[1] With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask,

or muffler: and, we have reason to think, under a feigned

name!--O. Y.

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning:

namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble

attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors; and minded to defend

these, according to ability, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a

view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or

if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation,

such a Volume as Teufelsdröckh's, if cunningly planted down, were no

despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear.

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connexion of

ours with Teufelsdröckh, Heuschrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes

can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate.

Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments

themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of

friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and

suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of

Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present

Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in

so full measure! But what then? _Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas_;

Teufelsdröckh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical

and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the world; have

feud or favour with no one,--save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with

the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times wage internecine

war. This assurance, at an epoch when puffery and quackery have

reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English

Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels

_No cheating here_,--we thought it good to premise.

CHAPTER III

REMINISCENCES

To the Author's private circle the appearance of this singular Work on

Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the

rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more

unexpected. Professor Teufelsdröckh, at the period of our acquaintance

with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life: a man

devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed; yet more likely, if he

published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both

of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban; than to

descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an

Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can

remember, the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us. If

through the high, silent, meditative Transcendentalism of our Friend

we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political,

and towards a certain prospective, and for the present quite

speculative, Radicalism; as indeed some correspondence, on his part,

with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected; though his special

contribution to the _Isis_ could never be more than surmised at. But,

at all events, nothing Moral, still less anything Didactico-Religious,

was looked for from him.

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing; which

indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever

remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of _Gukguk_,[2] and for a moment

lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was

_Zur Grünen Gans_, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the

Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect of the place assembled of an

evening); and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look truly

of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be

dubious, proposed this toast: _Die Sache der Armen in Gottes und

Teufels Namen_ (The Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name and ----'s)!

One full shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gurgle of

innumerable emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering,

returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night: resuming

their pipes; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke;

triumphant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly broke up, each

to his thoughtful pillow. _Bleibt doch ein echter Spass- und

Galgen-vogel_, said several; meaning thereby that, one day, he would

probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. _Wo steckt doch der

Schalk?_ added they, looking round: but Teufelsdröckh had retired by

private alleys, and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more.

[2] Gukguk is unhappily only an academical-beer.

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philosopher, such

estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou brave

Teufelsdröckh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick

locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest

face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy

eyes too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still and

dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic

fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was but the rest of

infinite motion, the _sleep_ of a spinning-top? Thy little figure,

there as, in loose, ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou sattest,

amid litter and lumber, whole days, to 'think and smoke tobacco,' held

in it a mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to

thee; thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than

another; thou hadst _in petto_ thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay,

was there not in that clear logically-founded Transcendentalism of

thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated Sansculottism,

combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible

rudiments of such speculation? But great men are too often unknown, or

what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp

of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom; and silently, mysterious

shuttles were putting in the woof!

* * * * *

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical data, in this

case, may be a curious question; the answer of which, however, is

happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated

trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the

best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdröckh was to be

gathered; not so much as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted

thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning

whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had

indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct

replies. For himself, he was a man so still and altogether

unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such

particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his

sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge,

wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits

spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without

father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with reference to his great

historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of

expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and

scenes, they called him the _Ewige Jude_, Everlasting, or as we say,

Wandering Jew.

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing; which

Thing doubtless they were accustomed to see, and with satisfaction;

but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of

their daily _Allgemeine Zeitung_, or the domestic habits of the Sun.

Both were there and welcome; the world enjoyed what good was in them,

and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdröckh passed and

repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and

nondescripts, more frequent in German Universities than elsewhere; of

whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they

must have a History, no History seems to be discoverable; or only such

as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they may

have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual

decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is,

are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much

other mystery is.

It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma, _Professor

der Allerley-Wissenschaft_, or as we should say in English, 'Professor

of Things in General,' he had never delivered any Course; perhaps

never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition.

To all appearance, the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in

founding their New University, imagined they had done enough, if 'in

times like ours,' as the half-official Program expressed it, 'when all

things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into Chaos, a

Professorship of this kind had been established; whereby, as occasion

called, the task of bodying somewhat forth again from such Chaos might

be, even slightly, facilitated.' That actual Lectures should be held,

and Public Classes for the 'Science of Things in General,' they

doubtless considered premature; on which ground too they had only

established the Professorship, nowise endowed it; so that

Teufelsdröckh, 'recommended by the highest Names,' had been promoted

thereby to a Name merely.

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this

new Professorship: how an enlightened Government had seen into the

Want of the Age (_Zeitbedürfniss_); how at length, instead of Denial

and Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirmation and

Reconstruction; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should

be, in the vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at

the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent

University; so able to lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold

his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Government

consider that occasion did not call. But such admiration and such

wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only

nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died

away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at

popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments,

court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove

from the helm.

As for Teufelsdröckh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grüne

Gans_, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over

his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Journals; sometimes

contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without

other visible employment: always, from his mild ways, an agreeable

phenomenon there; more especially when he opened his lips for speech;

on which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself into

silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear

a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances; such as,

when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience:

and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more

interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured

stone head of some public fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube

emits water to the worthy and the unworthy; careless whether it be for

cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations; indeed, maintains the

same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not.

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman,

however unworthy, Teufelsdröckh opened himself perhaps more than to

the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance,

and scrutinise him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not

three men in Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access

to the Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the

highest house in the Wahngasse; and might truly be called the pinnacle

of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs,

themselves rising from elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows it

looked towards all the four _Orte_, or as the Scotch say, and we ought

to say, _Airts_: the sitting-room itself commanded three; another came

to view in the _Schlafgemach_ (bedroom) at the opposite end; to say

nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, _duplicates_,

and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or

watch-tower of Teufelsdröckh; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see

the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and

lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_),

were for the most part visible there.

"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him

say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and

poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade,

where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his

victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow,

knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see

it all; for, except the Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so

high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow

bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift

horses, rolls-in the country Baron and his household; here, on

timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms: a

thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling-in with Food,

with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and

go tumbling out again with Produce manufactured. That living flood,

pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou

whence it is coming, whither it is going? _Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der

Ewigkeit hin_: From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are

Apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in

Bodies, that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their

solid Pavement is a picture of the Sense; they walk on the bosom of

Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou,

the red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and

feather in its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a

Tomorrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa

overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that

Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be

past thee, and seen no more."

"_Ach, mein Lieber!_" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned

from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity

to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke

and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of

Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over

the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of

Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels

of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are

bearing her to Halls roofed-in, and lighted to the due pitch for her;

and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are

abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick

Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous covelet of vapours,

and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies

simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are

dying there, men are being born; men are praying,--on the other side

of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the

vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed

saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into

truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in

obscure cellars, _Rouge-et-Noir_ languidly emits its voice-of-destiny

to haggard hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting,

and playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The

Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of

hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the

Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or

lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay

mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and

music and high-swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse

of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through

the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern

last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: comes no

hammering from the _Rabenstein_?--their gallows must even now be o'

building. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without

feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; their heads all in

nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and

staggers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the Mother, with

streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked

lips only her tears now moisten.--All these heaped and huddled

together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between

them;--crammed in, like salted fish in their barrel;--or weltering,

shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling

to get its _head above_ the others: _such_ work goes on under that

smoke-counterpane!--But I, _mein Werther_, sit above it all; I am

alone with the Stars."

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such

extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; but

with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light,

and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and

fixedness was visible.

These were the Professor's talking seasons: most commonly he spoke in

mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent, and smoked; while the

visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer

an occasional grunt; or to look round for a space, and then take

himself away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered

papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances,

'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below

tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn

handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated

with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature,

and Blücher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his

bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook,

errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very

orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of

Teufelsdröckh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly made her

may thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdröckh hastily saving

his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such

lumber as was not literary. These were her _Erdbeben_ (earthquakes),

which Teufelsdröckh dreaded worse than the pestilence; nevertheless,

to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been

to sit here philosophising forever, or till the litter, by

accumulation, drove him out of doors: but Lieschen was his right-arm,

and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed.

We can still remember the ancient woman; so silent that some thought

her dumb; deaf also you would often have supposed her; for

Teufelsdröckh, and Teufelsdröckh only, would she serve or give heed

to; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if it

were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his

wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame! she scoured, and sorted,

and swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the

ear; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coffee

ever at the due moment; and the speechless Lieschen herself looked out

on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her

clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence,

almost of benevolence.

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither: the only one we

ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke,

already known, by name and expectation, to the readers of these pages.

To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those

purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals,

perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in

dry weather or in wet, 'they never appear without their umbrella.' Had

we not known with what 'little wisdom' the world is governed; and how,

in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most

part be but mute train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but

stalking-horses and willing or unwilling dupes,--it might have seemed

wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor,

and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to

any woman, could this particular Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag

figure; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute

incessant fluctuation,--you traced rather confusion worse confounded;

at most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said withal, he was

'the very Spirit of Love embodied': blue earnest eyes, full of sadness

and kindness; purse ever open, and so forth; the whole of which, we

shall now hope, for many reasons, was not quite groundless.

Nevertheless friend Teufelsdröckh's outline, who indeed handled the

burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemüth

und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne

Schicksals-Gunst; ist gegenwärtig aber halb-zerrüttet, halb-erstarrt_,

"He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode

of utterance, or favour of Fortune; and so is now half-cracked,

half-congealed."--What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees

it, readers may wonder: we, safe in the stronghold of Historical

Fidelity, are careless.

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdröckh,

which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke

himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with

the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like

return; for Teufelsdröckh treated his gaunt admirer with little

outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend,

and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other

hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a

sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and

as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two,

looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a

living oracle. Let but Teufelsdröckh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's

also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye

and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause

in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh

(for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and

seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, _Bravo! Das

glaub' ich_; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short,

if Teufelsdröckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his

self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then

might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill

he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdröckh, at

the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and

meditate. Here, perched-up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower, and

often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable

Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness; here, in

all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on _Clothes_.

Additional particulars: of his age, which was of that standing middle

sort you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; the colour of his

trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we

might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the

Greatest; so that an enlightened curiosity, leaving Kings and suchlike

to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the

Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all

our writing and reporting, Teufelsdröckh could be brought home to him,

till once the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily

Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint

conjecture. But, on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in

this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the

buried Bag of Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, to his

opinions, namely, on the 'Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the

present gladly return.

CHAPTER IV

CHARACTERISTICS

It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes

entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like

the very Sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of

genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid

its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness,

double-vision, and even utter blindness.

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and

prophesyings of the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, we admitted that the

Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the

best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way

of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of

a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might

henceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be

declared that Professor Teufelsdröckh's acquirements, patience of

research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made

indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and

tortuosity and manifold ineptitude; that, on the whole, as in opening

new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his

Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount

popularity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of

such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treating it betokens

in the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed

inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success with our public.

Of good society Teufelsdröckh appears to have seen little, or has

mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks-out with a strange plainness;

calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the

Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were

it never so begilt and overhung: 'a whole immensity of Brussels

carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-molu,' as he himself expresses it,

'cannot hide from me that such Drawing-room is simply a section of

Infinite Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the time meet

together.' To Teufelsdröckh the highest Duchess is respectable, is

venerable; but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines laces: in

his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the

broad button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock; 'each is an

implement,' he says, 'in its kind; a tag for _hooking-together_; and,

for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a smithy before

smith's fingers.' Thus does the Professor look in men's faces with a

strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom; like a man

unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the

Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through

his whole system of thought, that all these short-comings,

over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they

have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental

Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things

as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more

lamentable.

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it is firmly

believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the

Work: nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be

true, as Teufelsdröckh maintains, that 'within the most starched

cravat there passes a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest

embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,'--the force of that rapt

earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul

pierce through? In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist

living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a

silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, except in the higher

walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with

unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the

still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting

words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; shears down,

were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter; and there

not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it

home, and buries it.--On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he

is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he

will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and

mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep

with eyes open, which indeed he is.

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most

known tongues, from _Sanchoniathon_ to _Dr Lingard_, from your

Oriental _Shasters_, and _Talmuds_, and _Korans_, with Cassini's

_Siamese Tables_, and Laplace's _Mécanique Céleste_, down to _Robinson

Crusoe_ and the _Belfast Town and Country Almanack_, are familiar to

him,--we shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the

Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing

commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course.

A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned?

In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability,

marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want

of intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted,

we find consummate vigour, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts

step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas,

issuing amid flame and splendour from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic

diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint

tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination,

wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude.

Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages;

circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so

often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdröckh is not a

cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths

stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular

attitudes, buttressed-up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and

ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even

sprawl-out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and

dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies

in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance

of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft

as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now

sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though

sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only

as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely

difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied

ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon

among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere

Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest.

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do

we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of

an ethereal Love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity;

he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it

seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then

again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such

indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and

ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if

indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost

with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this

great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge

foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and

stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only

children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably

the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity

frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but rather the gravity

as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of

an extinct volcano; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze: those

eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the

heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether

Fire!

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature,

this of Teufelsdröckh! Here, however, we gladly recall to mind that

once we saw him _laugh_; once only, perhaps it was the first and last

time in his life; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have

awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single

billow in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humour, with its heaven-kissing

coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death!

The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat

talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged

to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those

inimitable 'Extra-harangues'; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for

a _Cast-metal King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes

and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky

features, a radiant, ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like

the neighing of all Tattersall's,--tears streaming down his cheeks,

pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air,--loud, long-continuing,

uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the

whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed,

yet with measure, began to fear all was not right: however,

Teufelsdröckh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on

his inscrutable countenance there was, if anything, a slight look of

shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have

any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this;

and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be

altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the

cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an

everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter

as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing,

but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at

best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were

laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot

laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his

whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdröckh has one scarcely

pardonable fault, doubtless his worst: an almost total want of

arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to

the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a

certain show of outward method; but of true logical method and

sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and

subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a

Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative: but falls,

unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic

combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite

through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric or even

quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in

accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet,

wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and

solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were

hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited

to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be

part of our endeavour.

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES

'As Montesquieu wrote a _Spirit of Laws_,' observes our Professor, 'so

could I write a _Spirit of Clothes_; thus, with an _Esprit des Lois_,

properly an _Esprit de Coutumes_, we should have an _Esprit de

Costumes_. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man

proceed by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious

operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory endeavours,

an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth

are the site and materials whereon and whereby his beautified edifice,

of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded

mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid

peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram

stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate

sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,--will

depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian,

Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or

Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour! From the soberest

drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold

themselves in choice of Colour: if the Cut betoken Intellect and

Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart. In all which,

among nations as among individuals, there is an incessant,

indubitable, though infinitely complex working of Cause and Effect:

every snip of the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by

ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior

order are neither invisible nor illegible.

'For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect Philosophy of

Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a comfortable winter-evening

entertainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like men,

such Philosophies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay,

what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters

from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which lies in

Eternity, in Heaven?--Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain,

not why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and such a Law; but

even why _I_ am _here_, to wear and obey anything!--Much, therefore,

if not the whole, of that same _Spirit of Clothes_ I shall suppress,

as hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent: naked Facts, and

Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that omniscient

style, are my humbler and proper province.'

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdröckh has nevertheless

contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at least,

the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being

indispensable, we shall here glance-over his First Part only in the

most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by

omnivorous learning, and utmost patience and fairness: at the same

time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to

interest the Compilers of some _Library_ of General, Entertaining,

Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of

these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in

view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of

publication, 'at present the glory of British Literature'? If so, the

Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof.

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and

leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological,

metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we

shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still

less have we to do with 'Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to

the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock,

the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,'--very

needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with its profound

glances into the _Adam-Kadmon_, or Primeval Element, here strangely

brought into relation with the _Nifl_ and _Muspel_ (Darkness and

Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say, that its

correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore

have filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something

like astonishment.

But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdröckh hastens from the

Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole

habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental,

Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern

researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in

compressed shape (as the Nürnbergers give an _Orbis Pictus_) an _Orbis

Vestitus_; or view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries,

in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we

can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an irregular

Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King

Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three

journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum

belts; phylacteries, stoles, albs; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks,

Afghaun shawls, trunk-hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though

breeches, as the name _Gallia Braccata_ indicates, are the more

ancient), Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are

brought vividly before us,--even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not

forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that the Learning,

heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true

concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy parts smelted out and

thrown aside.

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures

of human life. Of this sort the following has surprised us. The first

purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or

decency, but ornament. 'Miserable indeed,' says he, 'was the condition

of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of

hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round

him like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick

natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on

wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in

morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements,

without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole

possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord

of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with

deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge

once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_).

Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in

his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for

Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people we find

tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want

of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the

barbarous classes in civilised countries.

'Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene

Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden, worthy

to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a

divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has

descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling

Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of

the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by

time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or

beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and self-perfecting

vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living,

ever-working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed

to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove

(perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.

'He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of _Movable

Types_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and

Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented

the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and

Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will

the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under

Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was

in the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the

country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of

Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or

_Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia_, Money. Yet

hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and

Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are

Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is

sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to

feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over

him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in

foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased

Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame,

divine Shame (_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the

Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a

mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us

individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of

us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us.

'But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 'Man is a

Tool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of

small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled,

of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his

legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three

quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses

him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise

Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before

him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his

smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you

find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is

all.'

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a

remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal, appears to us,

of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is

called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt

to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher?

Teufelsdröckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we

make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which,

indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a

Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on

it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up

his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how

would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians, who,

according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees;

and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole

country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human

being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very

Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as

no brute has or can have.

'Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufelsdröckh in his abrupt

way; 'of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we

consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by

man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of

Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain

black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport

me and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and

they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and

fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this

nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_;

and they do it.'

CHAPTER VI

APRONS

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on

_Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, 'whose

Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which

proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country'; what

though John Knox's Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that

she would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should

lie and be a bishop'; what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many

other Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit,

sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire,

is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such

sentences as the following?

'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to

modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as

it were, the Emblem and beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some

highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nürnberg Workboxes and Toyboxes,

has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him

with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his

trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise

half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there

not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much

has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons! Nay, rightly

considered, what is your whole Military and Police Establishment,

charged at uncalculated millions, but a huge scarlet-coloured,

iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding

itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy

(_Teufelsschmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to

me hitherto has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the

usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_) of Souls, I

notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's work were

done: what does he shadow forth thereby?' &c. &c.

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff

as we shall now quote?

'I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the Parisian Cooks, as

a new vent, though a slight one, for Typography; therefore as an

encouragement to modern Literature, and deserving of approval: nor is

it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm having

in view to introduce the same fashion, with important extensions, in

England.'--We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; and indeed

have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our

Literature, exuberant as it is.--Teufelsdröckh continues: 'If such

supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the highways

and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity be had recourse

to. In a world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ fire as a

destroying element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven is

omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not

beautiful to see five-million quintals of Rags picked annually from

the Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed,

printed-on, and sold,--returned thither; filling so many hungry mouths

by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or

Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-motion,

from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and

resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles,

through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they keep

alive!'--Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem

him, with a very mixed feeling.

Farther down we meet with this: 'The Journalists are now the true

Kings and Clergy: henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, must

write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of

Stamped Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names,

according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able

Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press,

perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its secret

constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive History already

exists, in that language, under the title of _Satan's Invisible World

Displayed_; which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo

Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring (_vermöchte nicht

aufzutreiben_).'

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does

Teufelsdröckh, wandering in regions where he had little business,

confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new,

spurious, imaginary Historian of the _Brittische Journalistik_; and so

stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature!

CHAPTER VII

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL

Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic,

when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the

Seventeenth Century; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is

here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest

harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a

Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream.

The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with

that breath of genius which makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so

learned, precise, graphical, and everyway interesting have we found

these Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a pertinent question for

parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Translation thereof

might henceforth be profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's

valuable Work _On Ancient Armour_? Take, by way of example, the

following sketch; as authority for which Paulinus's _Zeitkürzende

Lust_ (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, referred to:

'Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the Fifteenth Century,

we might smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were they to rise

again, and see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke

the Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again; thus

the Present is not needlessly trammelled with the Past; and only grows

out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its

branches, but lie peaceably underground. Nay it is very mournful, yet

not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short

while, would find his place quite filled-up here, and no room for him;

the very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has become

obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of

Progress secured; and in Clothes, as in all other external things

whatsoever, no fashion will continue.

'Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff-belts,

complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and

fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole

has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character,--I shall here say

nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, are

wonderful enough for us.

'Rich men, I find, have _Teusinke_' (a perhaps untranslateable

article); 'also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that

when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical

turn, have a whole chime of bells (_Glockenspiel_) fastened there;

which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of

walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond they are of

peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked

caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (_schief_): their

shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on

the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses:

some also clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my authority,

the men have breeches without seat (_ohne Gesäss_): these they fasten

peakwise to their shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap

them.

'Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and

before, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on

the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length; which

trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their

silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman! Consider their welts, a

handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of hem; the long

flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe,

wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound

silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames

(_Flammen_), that is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's

headgear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort

forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that

can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem,

not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts; all ending atop in a

thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their

Ruff-mantles (_Kragenmäntel_).

'As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; but the men have

doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted

together with batter (_mit Teig zusammengekleistert_), which create

protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the

art of Decoration; and as usual the stronger carries it.'

Our Professor, whether he hath humour himself or not, manifests a

certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could

emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we

might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches,

cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of

Dress offers so many, escape him: more especially the mischances, or

striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with

due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread in the

mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm

in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen 'was

red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her

tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in

any glass, were wont to serve her?' We can answer that Sir Walter knew

well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed

parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same.

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only

slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader

parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,--our Professor fails not

to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a

chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay

his _devoir_ on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted

several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a

spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round

him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this reflection:

'By what strange chances do we live in History? Erostratus by a torch;

Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by

his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a

bed-tester; Boileau Despréaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of

a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his

breeches,--for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was

the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends,

yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.'--Has

Teufelsdröckh to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible

talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even

travelling Englishmen manifest?

'The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, 'which I anywhere find

alluded to in History, is that used as regimental, by Bolivar's

Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in

diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut-off the corners, and make

it circular): in the centre a slit is effected eighteen inches long;

through this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck:

and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from many

strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm); and not only dressed,

but harnessed and draperied.'

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity,

and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this part of

our subject.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES

If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume,

Teufelsdröckh, discussing merely the _Werden_ (Origin and successive

Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will

he in the Speculative-Philosophical portion, which treats of their

_Wirken_, or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first

feels the pressure of his task; for here properly the higher and new

Philosophy of Clothes commences: an untried, almost inconceivable

region, or chaos; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how

unspeakably important is it to know what course, of survey and

conquest, is the true one; where the footing is firm substance and

will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us!

Teufelsdröckh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political,

even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest,

in its thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's

earthly interests 'are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up,

by Clothes.' He says in so many words, 'Society is founded upon

Cloth'; and again, 'Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as

on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean

beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would

sink to endless depths, or mount to inane limboes, and in either case

be no more.'

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation

this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and innumerable practical

Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to

attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that

of common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each

holding by the skirts of the other; but at best that of practical

Reason, proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and

kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that

of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a

mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we

complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call

mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to exclaim:

Would to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were come! For it

seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality;

as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At

present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments,

picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original Volume, and

carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some outline or

foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more

invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention: let

these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce,

Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a

looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole

undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?--As

exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation:

'With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufelsdröckh, 'there come

seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear

you ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am _I_; the thing

that can say "I" (_das Wesen das sich_ ICH _nennt_)? The world, with

its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the

paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce

and Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society

and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded,--the sight

reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe,

and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with another.

'Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;--some

embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind? _Cogito, ergo sum._

Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I

am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies

around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of

jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious

Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written

Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless

Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the

remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and

many-coloured visions flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering,

whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare

half-waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us,

like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind us,

hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows

as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves

most awake! Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a

dream-theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor

and dividend are both unknown? What are all your national Wars, with

their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the

Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is

what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly

wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise

who know that they know nothing.

'Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly

unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's

secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he

suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and

Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles

are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good

Logic-mortar, wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. _The

whole is greater than the part_: how exceedingly true! _Nature abhors

a vacuum_: how exceedingly false and calumnious! Again, _Nothing can

act but where it is_: with all my heart; only, WHERE is it? Be not the

slave of Words: is not the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and

long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the genuine sense, as truly as

the floor I stand on? But that same WHERE, with its brother WHEN, are

from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto; say rather, the

Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and

Life-visions are painted! Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation

taught certain of every climate and age, that the WHERE and WHEN, so

mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial

terrestrial adhesions to thought; that the Seer may discern them where

they mount up out of the celestial EVERYWHERE and FOREVER: have not

all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eternal; as

existing in a universal HERE, an everlasting NOW? Think well, thou too

wilt find that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise

Time; there _is_ no Space and no Time: WE are--we know not

what;--light-sparkles floating in the æther of Deity!

'So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an

air-image, our ME the only reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold

production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force,

the "phantasy of our Dream"; or what the Earth-Spirit in _Faust_ names

it, _the living visible Garment of God_:

"In Being's floods, in Action's storm,

I walk and work, above, beneath,

Work and weave in endless motion!

Birth and Death,

An infinite ocean;

A seizing and giving

The fire of Living:

'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,

And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by."

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunder-speech of

the _Erdgeist_, are there yet twenty units of us that have learned the

meaning thereof?

'It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high

speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange

enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and

Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the

girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and

the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his

own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the

valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein

warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces

also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of

colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting.

While I--good Heaven!--have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces

of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of

oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and walk abroad a moving

Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the

Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me

more slowly! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew; day after day,

this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film

of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the

Ashpit, into the Laystall; till by degrees the whole has been brushed

thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material

to grind down. O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I too a

compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of

tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated,

homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive?

'Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to

plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity,

live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is,

and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and

digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to

hate, is his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him

by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of

the World happen _twice_, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be

noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it

occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he

gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and

his Self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked, without

vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and

button them.

'For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and

how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorises and

demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind;

almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season,

you see grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped

sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something

great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious

wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, "a

forked straddling animal with bandy legs"; yet also a Spirit, and

unutterable Mystery of Mysteries.'

CHAPTER IX

ADAMITISM

Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the

conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing

over that singular passage, was inclined to exclaim: What, have we got

not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract? A

new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is the

Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm?

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdröckh, what benefits unspeakable all

ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a

watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest

muling and puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, and looking

forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been

without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A terror to

thyself and mankind! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first

receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short? The village

where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact; and neighbour after

neighbour kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver

or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again,

wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni,

or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever name, according to year and

place, such phenomenon is distinguished? In that one word lie included

mysterious volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or

altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast

thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall;

never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy

Body, wherein that strange THEE of thine sat snug, defying all

variations of Climate? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys;

half-buried under shawls and broad-brims, and overalls and mud-boots,

thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that

'Horse I ride'; and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the

world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet

beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or

woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl,--forests sounding and

creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the storms heap themselves

together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou flewest through the

middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild music hummed in

thy ears, thou too wert as a 'sailor of the air'; the wreck of matter

and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide.

Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had

thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best:

here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed

might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy.

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdröckh forgotten what

he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and their 'condition

miserable indeed'? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake

ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a 'thick

natural fell'?

Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is

saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes,

in these times, 'so tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no

redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of

necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdröckh, though a

Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go

forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do

it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of

Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight

into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might

call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before

vouchsafed to any man. For example:

'You see two individuals,' he writes, 'one dressed in fine Red, the

other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, "Be hanged and

anatomised"; Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!)

marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed-up, vibrates his

hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton

for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing

can act but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no

_clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those

ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so

related to commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither;

but each stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is

spoken, so is it done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action;

and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work.

'Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is

a Spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that

_he wears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has

not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a

plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?--Society,

which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon

Cloth.

'Often in my atrabiliar-moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials,

Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how

the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke

this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and

innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are

advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my

remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,--on a

sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the--shall I speak it?--the

Clothes fly-off the whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees,

Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of

them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and I know not

whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical infirmity, in

which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, thought

right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like.'

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret!

Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in

his Morning Newspaper without a shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all

men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently

treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the

nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdröckh, with a

devilish coolness, goes on to draw:

'What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall in reality;

should the buttons all simultaneously start, and the solid wool

evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream? _Ach Gott!_ How each skulks

into the nearest hiding-place; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt- und

Staats-Action_) becomes a Pickleherring-Farce to weep at, which is the

worst kind of Farce; _the tables_ (according to Horace), and with

them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police,

and Civilised Society, _are dissolved_, in wails and howls.'

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a

naked House of Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils

on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the

Ministerial, the Opposition Benches--_infandum! infandum!_ And yet why

is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of

these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night; 'a

forked Radish with a head fantastically carved'? And why might he not,

did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St Stephen's, as well as

into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, with other similar Radishes,

hold a Bed of Justice? 'Solace of those afflicted with the like!'

Unhappy Teufelsdröckh, had man ever such a 'physical or psychical

infirmity' before? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled

confession (which we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded-on

by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) incurably

infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only

the maddest?

'It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable Teufelsdröckh,

'in how far the SCARECROW, as a Clothed Person, is not also entitled

to benefit of clergy, and English trial by jury: nay perhaps,

considering his high function (for is not he too a Defender of

Property, and Sovereign armed with the _terrors_ of the Law?), to a

certain royal Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and

the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to

grant him.' * * *

* * * 'O my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but as "turkeys

driven with a stick and red clout, to the market": or if some drivers,

as they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the

rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!'

CHAPTER X

PURE REASON

It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is

a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging,

for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilised Life,

which we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags,

turkey-poles, and 'bladders with dried peas.' To linger among such

speculations, longer than mere Science requires, a discerning public

can have no wish. For our purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked

World_ is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will

be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about 'Kings wrestling naked

on the green with Carmen,' and the Kings being thrown: 'dissect them

with scalpels,' says Teufelsdröckh; 'the same viscera, tissues,

livers, lights, and other life-tackle are there: examine their

spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed, and little

Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, who understands

draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of

unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon-science,

and has actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the

more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so unspeakable

difference? From Clothes.' Much also we shall omit about confusion of

Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere 'Hail

fellow well met,' and Chaos were come again: all which to any one that

has once fairly pictured-out the grand mother-idea, _Society in a

state of nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some

sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without

Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist,

let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless

Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over

which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole

nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief

riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:

'Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how,

without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and

true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?'

Nevertheless, it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdröckh; at

worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in

looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even

sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly

on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and

manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic

patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation

of most readers,--there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes

him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand

unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdröckh is, that with all this

Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative;

whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except

those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the

visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods.

'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is man? An omnivorous

Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A

Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there

lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses),

contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like,

and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for

himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of

Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and

Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably

over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not

thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He

feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the

spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here,

though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with

his lips of gold, "the true SHEKINAH is Man": where else is the

GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as

in our fellow-man?'

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of

our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature,

bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapour

and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and

environment, we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and

Love;--though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again,

and hide it from view.

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and

indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing

that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings:

thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as

well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose,

Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a

reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit,

the manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be

more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way

conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the

higher, celestial Invisible, 'unimaginable, formless, dark with excess

of bright'? Under which point of view the following passage, so

strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:

'The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even

with armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. "The

Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, "must station himself in

the middle": how true! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has

descended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly

brother of all.

'Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in

Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in

our imagination? Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot

love; since all was created by God?

'Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and

fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man

himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate,

a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an

inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with

eyes!'

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in

the feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of

universal Wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for

the denizen of so singular a Planet as ours. 'Wonder,' says he, 'is

the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible

in Man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short

season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_.' That progress of Science,

which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration

and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdröckh, much as he

otherwise venerates these two latter processes.

'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small

chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic

alone; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is

the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and

Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what

is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off,

and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it

alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of

the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head

(having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought

without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like

cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing,

in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and

plenteous increase to all Time.'

In such wise does Teufelsdröckh deal hits, harder or softer, according

to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with

charitable intent. Above all, that class of 'Logic-choppers, and

treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these

days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics'

Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and

goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often,

as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full

day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and

guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the street

populous with mere justice-loving men': that whole class is

inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he

perorates:

'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and

worship) were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried

the whole _Mécanique Céleste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the

epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in

his single head,--is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no

Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.

'Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world

by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp

of what I call Attorney-Logic; and "explain" all, "account" for all,

or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso

recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is

everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is

an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattlestall,--he shall

be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt

protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when

he kicks his foot through it?--_Armer Teufel!_ Doth not thy cow calve,

doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou

not die? "Explain" me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into

private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it

up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world

all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a

Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.'

CHAPTER XI

PROSPECTIVE

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it

would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a

cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings

in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the

highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more

and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian

brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian

lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or

the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired,

gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights

he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are

his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an

Aggregate but a Whole:

'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there." Thou

thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a

Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of

the world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest

from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou

findest it swept away; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is

nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie

motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force,

and utterly dead?

'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire

which grows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor,

where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace

thy lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off from

the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool,

that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air

that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar;

therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force

of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force

brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the

great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious

Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose

iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All; whose dingy

Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the

mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little

textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force,

commanding, and one day to be all-commanding.

'Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing

hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a

withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the

bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual

metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are

Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how

could it _rot_? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the

litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest

object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the

philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.'

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant,

high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

'All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its

own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only

spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. Hence

Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant.

Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic not of want

only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand,

all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or

hand-woven: must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies,

wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason

are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful;--the

rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes

or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye?

'Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with

Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is

Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing

or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a

light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed

with a Body.

'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather

be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of thought. I said that

Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are

her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive

elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised

as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now

solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the

osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors

its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical

style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _Attention_ a

_Stretching-to_? The difference lies here: some styles are lean,

adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite

pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the

flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own

case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham

Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked),

and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its

false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Mäntel_), and tawdry

woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole

hampers,--and burn them.'

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a

more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief

grievance; the Professor continues:

'Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth

shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the

Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever

represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of

Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one

pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that

men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe

and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies

in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.'

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-bordering on the

impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual

difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling.

Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the

expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts

now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light,

uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last

week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the

kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the

whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable

courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere

literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo

Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and

miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and

free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was

broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas,

with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown

down, and again taken up.

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments,

Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral

trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we know well already: that

however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science

originating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy

(_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which

originates equally in the Character (_Gemüth_), and equally speaks

thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is

known and seen; 'till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_),

and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in

short till a Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically

written, and philosophico-poetically read.' 'Nay,' adds he, 'were the

speculative scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring

age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not,

till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped-out an answer; and either

in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a

complete picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual

Endeavour lies before you. But why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say

we, 'do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdröckh's Biography? The

great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that "Man is

properly the _only_ object that interests man": thus I too have noted,

that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else

but Biography or Auto-Biography; ever humano-anecdotical

(_menschlich-anekdotisch_). Biography is by nature the most

universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially

Biography of distinguished individuals.

'By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed),' continues he,

with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from

Teufelsdröckh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh

unaccountable, 'by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in

that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all

readers do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as

you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken

a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps

unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and

emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdröckh also a father and

mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat?

Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his;

looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where

only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he

fought duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love?

By what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and

sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this

wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now

dwells?

'To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet

silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and

Traveller from a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled;

has parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned

by bad cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless at every stage

(for they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the

whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the

picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in

indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these

nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty

Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished,

unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds?

'No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by the

unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography

only, but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such;

wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest

insight: and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will

stand clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through

America, through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally

conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of this terrestrial Planet!'

And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling when, in

place of this same Autobiography with 'fullest insight,' we find--Six

considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in

gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs,

beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie

miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written

in Professor Teufelsdröckh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and

treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but

of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the

most enigmatic manner.

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here,

speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the Wanderer,' is not once

named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological

Disquisition, 'Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, 'The

continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite

private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand

Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are

omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly

loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also

are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connexion,

without recognisable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously

minute, they almost remind us of 'P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus

does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order,

appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same

imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the

confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration,

'On receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie washbills, marked _bezahlt_

(settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of

the various cities he has visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in

most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant.

So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now

instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo

which by intermixture will farther volatilise and discompose it! As we

shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six

Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all

vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of

Teufelsdröckh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at

most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of

efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of

Editor and of Reader; rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic

Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six

Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our

delineation of it.

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles)

deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed

_cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable

Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of

high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by

union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for

British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin

and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did

any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor.

For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards

than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up from

the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass,

there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil

beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply

the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor,

endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and

written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering,

clutching, piercing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole

Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up.

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the

Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health

declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving

him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What

is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith?

And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the

barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own,

which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this

Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to

reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding

germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth

some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards

failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us; the

former also is not all our own.

BOOK SECOND

CHAPTER I

GENESIS

In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether

from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight

is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning

remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great

man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole

circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner

of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered

manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this

First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite

obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so

that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or

transit out of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary

portion is nowhere forthcoming.

'In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, on

various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, 'dwelt Andreas

Futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful

though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier

Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great;

but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and

pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he,

Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the

apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which

Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as

beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that

would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the Only

(_der Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had

been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the

pass-word, "_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!" before any of his

staff-adjutants could answer. "_Das nenn' ich mir einen König_, There

is what I call a King," would Andreas exclaim: "but the smoke of

Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes."

'Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than

the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military

subordination; for, as Andreas said, "the womankind will not drill

(_wer kann die Weiberchen dressiren_)": nevertheless she at heart

loved him both for valour and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier

Sergeant and Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero

and Cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite.

Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage,

downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood Büsching's _Geography_,

had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade

of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over

him and hovered round him as only a true housemother can: assiduously

she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old

regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and

environment, where on pegs of honour they hung, looked ever trim and

gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and

forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-coloured from

amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling-in through the very

windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in

methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially

on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call

it his. Such a _Bauergut_ (Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran;

whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what

you saw.

'Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk,

when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did

nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial Balance

(_Libra_), it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and,

with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished

housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without

further parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some

Basket, overhung with green Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben

Leute, hier bringe ein unschätzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller

Acht, sorgfältigst benützt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren

Zinsen, wird's einst zurückgefordert._ "Good Christian people, here

lies for you an invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all

carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy

penalty, will it one day be required back." Uttering which singular

words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger

gracefully withdrew; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in

expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was

clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard;

he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood

quietly closed: the Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had

the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so

gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it all a

trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only

that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic

Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their

little parlour-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with lit

candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see

what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white

wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest

sleep, a little red-coloured Infant! Beside it, lay a roll of gold

Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a

_Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing

but the Name was decipherable; other document or indication none

whatever.

'To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth.

Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire

of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had

passed through the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected

with this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise.

Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was:

What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured Infant? Amid

amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external

satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent

people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into

whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their

endeavour: thus has that same mysterious Individual ever since had a

status for himself in this visible Universe, some modicum of victual

and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and

knowledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDRÖCKH,

professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without

effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of

Things in General.'

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well

might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen

Futteral, in his twelfth year, 'produced on the boyish heart and fancy

a quite indelible impression. Who this Reverend Personage,' he says,

'that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and

then, as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An

inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since

struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my

loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to

that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way

invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie

screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut

out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to

and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden by those far

thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the

Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms

need not strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to

know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and

the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with

infinite regard; but he too had to repel me; he too was not thou.

'And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Autobiographer, with one of

his sudden whirls, 'wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more

than I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the

Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and

pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were,

like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true

Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt

never behold, but only with the spiritual.'

'The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and

embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,

Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece

of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name

I have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay

there any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate

to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's

Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of

Subscriber-Lists (_Pränumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other

Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name

Teufelsdröckh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs.

Again, what may the unchristian rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean?

Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to

shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humour?

Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an

Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into

self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage

have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been;

or indeed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have

I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung

at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by

the Time-Spirit (_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good

soul first given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst

nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future,

and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same Spirit not

of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and

Protest, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air.

'For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay

almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round

the earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more

tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty

centuries) than the very skin. And now from without, what mystic

influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in

those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft,

and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree!

Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most

important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not

only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if

thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was giving

names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of

the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic,

stars or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions,

virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the

Proverb says, _Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost

similar sense may we not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes

Teufelsdröckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes?_'

* * * * *

'Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his

Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light;

sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling;

in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of

Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened

Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of

this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what

it might. Infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he

could perform the miracle of--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not

like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless,

powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through

the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, grows

Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries

and Religions!

'Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had

they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high

consummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain

talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out

that he was a grand-nephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter,

suddenly deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland; of whom,

as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at

Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his

spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that

kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried.

He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut-out

for him than whimpering.'

* * * * *

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these

miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr

Teufelsdröckh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem

to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and

more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep undercurrents of

roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not

doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen

Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been

deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the

Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some cultivated native of that district

might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like

invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo

itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find out

even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme

senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose

himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride?

CHAPTER II

IDYLLIC

'Happy season of Childhood!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: 'Kind Nature,

that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut

with auroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided, a soft

swathing of Love, and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers,

danced-round (_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage

still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as

yet a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free.

The young spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we

mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful

sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of

Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless

down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the granite mountain

to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless Universe,

we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is forever

denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long

rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no

more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old

Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: "Rest? Rest? Shall I not

have all Eternity to rest in?" Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus

conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not;

and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids,

on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are

one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is

dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth,

too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but

a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the

kernel.'

In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as Poets are wont,

look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say

nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells

on with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing

'in trustful derangement' among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard

flanking it as extreme out-post from below; the little Kuhbach gushing

kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the

Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how

'the brave old Linden,' stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in

radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered-up from the

central _Agora_ and _Campus Martius_ of the Village, like its Sacred

Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often

greedily listening), and the wearied labourers reclined, and the

unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced

to flute-music. 'Glorious summer twilights,' cries Teufelsdröckh,

'when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned

his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad

body-guard (of Prismatic Colours); and the tired brickmakers of this

clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would

not tell of them!'

Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the

Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the

Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial

shades from those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall

here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our

as yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under that 'brave old

Linden'? Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the

following? 'In all the sports of Children, were it only in their

wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative

instinct (_schaffenden Trieb_): the Mankin feels that he is a born

Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest present you can make

him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for

destruction; either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious

sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to Coöperation,

for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little Maid again,

provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls.'

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is

that relates it: 'My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or

rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one

and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four

limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine the

architectural, how much less the moral significance!'

More graceful is the following little picture: 'On fine evenings I was

wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it

out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach

by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set-up the

pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I,

looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without

relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of

World's expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me;

nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an

eye for their gilding.'

With 'the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry' we shall not

much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a 'certain deeper

sympathy with animated Nature': but when, we would ask, saw any man,

in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this:

'Impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early

morning, the Swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy

quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for

breakfast on the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching-in

again, with short squeak, almost in military order; and each,

topographically correct, trotting-off in succession to the right or

left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the

Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the

night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did

not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence,

perhaps humour of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful

submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned

gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or

discoloured-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this lower world?'

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius

is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly

favourable influences accompany him through life, especially through

childhood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and continue

dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an

inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man

of the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the

other, crushed-down perhaps by vigour of animal digestion, and the

like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably

stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. 'With which opinion,' cries

Teufelsdröckh, 'I should as soon agree as with this other, that an

acorn might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil and

climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak.

'Nevertheless,' continues he, 'I too acknowledge the all-but

omnipotence of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a

doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a

sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it

is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note-down

with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their Education,

what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it: to which

duty, nowadays so pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also

zealously address myself.'--Thou rogue! Is it by short-clothes of

yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is

educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is

laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times of ours, or

writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he

continues: 'If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings,

Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young

Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify,

perhaps these following were also of the number:

'Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the

young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency

given him by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his

battle-reminiscences, and gay austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect,

could not but appear another Ulysses and "much-enduring Man." Eagerly

I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth;

from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades

itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded itself within me.

Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old

Men under the Linden-tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me;

and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in

partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I

began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of

a World; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography; to

which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute.

'In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which,

slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through

our Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards

visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this

Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and

setting by mere Law of Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on

made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a

monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that,

independently of Schiller's _Wilhelm Tell_, I made this not quite

insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _Any

road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the

world!_

'Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as I learned,

threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and

belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, with the month of May,

snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for

cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest:

there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all,

I chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who

taught _you_ the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic

incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill chance, and when

time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighbourly

Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud,

long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it

again before nightfall?

'But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's-culture, where

as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and

simultaneously poured-down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here,

assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an

unspeakable hurly-burly. Nutbrown maids and nutbrown men, all

clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for

dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted

Graziers from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also

topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns in leather

jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads; shouting in

half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing.

Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows;

Nürnberg Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz

bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the _Wiener

Schub_ (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously superintending games of

chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine

(_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion;

and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a

particoloured Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place and of Life

itself.

'Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly

Firmament; waited-on by the four golden Seasons, with their

vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim Winter brought its

skating-matches and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and

Christmas-carols,--did the Child sit and learn. These things were the

Alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and partly read the

grand Volume of the World; what matters it whether such Alphabet be in

large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read

it? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was

a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft

element of Joy; out of which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder after

wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming.

'Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my

felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into

the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay

even in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a

thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever

waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost

over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final

night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy

he for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of Duty, and

plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as

basis and as bourne for our whole being, it is there.

* * * * *

'For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we have

not much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down

mostly to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till

we have understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that.

If good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good Activity

together, were the thing wanted, then was my early position favourable

beyond the most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate

Temper, ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more

could I have wished? On the other side, however, things went not so

well. My Active Power (_Thatkraft_) was unfavourably hemmed-in; of

which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! In an orderly

house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your

training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and

do. I was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce;

everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus

already Freewill often came in painful collision with Necessity; so

that my tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself might taste that

root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is

mingled and tempered.

'In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer

to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is our universal duty and

destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too

thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of

ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of

fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly

Discretion, nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my

upbringing! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded,

everyway unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic

solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the

stem from which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful

soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every

deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such I must ever love

the good Gretchen, did me one altogether invaluable service: she

taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and

habitude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. Andreas too

attended Church; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the

other world expected pay with arrears,--as, I trust, he has received;

but my Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated

sense, was in the strictest acceptation Religious. How indestructibly

the Good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy

entanglements of Evil! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw

bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in Heaven: such

things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your

being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility

in the mysterious deeps; and Reverence, the divinest in man, springs

forth undying from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou rather

be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God

in Heaven and in Man; or a duke's son that only knew there were

two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?'

To which last question we must answer: Beware, O Teufelsdröckh, of

spiritual pride!

CHAPTER III

PEDAGOGY

Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow

serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated,

indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop; but (except

his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still

intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there.

Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an

incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would

trouble Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine

of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as

with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least

all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in

the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his

Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in

this latter capacity; how when, to use his own words, 'he understands

the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to

handle it.

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our

Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo

character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and everyway excellent

'Passivity' of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist

Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of

much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes

the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdröckh is oftenest a man

without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a

man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual,

close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or

even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A

dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European; above all,

disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will

behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to

do his endeavour.

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a

man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion

of his History, Teufelsdröckh looks down professedly as indifferent.

Reading he 'cannot remember ever to have learned'; so perhaps had it

by nature. He says generally: 'Of the insignificant portion of my

Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be

taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner

of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a

downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild

are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he,

good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions;

and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the

University. Meanwhile, what printed thing soever I could meet with I

read. My very copper pocket-money I laid-out on stall-literature;

which, as it accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By

this means was the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany

of things and shadows of things: History in authentic fragments lay

mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the

whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive

for a mind as yet so peptic.'

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. Indeed,

already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness,

there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much;

symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical.

Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other

phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages

stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following?

'It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and

watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had

flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune,

from beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the morning

when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the midday when Cæsar, doubtless

with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his _Commentaries_ dry,--this

little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on

across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the

Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand

World-circulation of Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has

lasted and lasts simply with the World. Thou fool! Nature alone is

antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on

is six-thousand years of age.' In which little thought, as in a little

fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh

unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of TIME, and its

relation to ETERNITY, which play such a part in this Philosophy of

Clothes?

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers

so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there

are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there

stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. 'With my first view of the

Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, 'my evil days began. Well do I

still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full

of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of

the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and

_Schuldthurm_ (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in

to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some

human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised

creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the

Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering

Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere

does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him

on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly

and more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in

that mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and

epitome!

'Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I

was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards

me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and

alone.' His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: 'They were

Boys,' he says, 'mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude

Nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the

duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on

all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits, that though

'perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he succeeded ill in

battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear,

owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he

was 'incredibly nimble'), than to his 'virtuous principles': 'if it

was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, 'it was only a shade less

disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at

once, and in this important element of school-history, the

war-element, had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent

'Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdröckh's childhood, is here visibly

enough again getting nourishment. 'He wept often; indeed to such a

degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the Tearful), which

epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite

unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst-forth into

fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestüm_) under which the

boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of

Mankin.' In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and

cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and

ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only,

and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to

its _breadth_?

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 'mechanically'

taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called

History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at

all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself

'went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops,

there learning many things'; and farther lighted on some small store

of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he

lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts

the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment.

Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag _Scorpio_, where we now are,

and often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on

the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might

presume to be anger.

'My Teachers,' says he, 'were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of

man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and

quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language,

for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called

it fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical

Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be

manufactured at Nürnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of

anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by

having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a

spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at

the fire of living Thought? How shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own

inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead

grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough;

and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory,

and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by appliance of

birch-rods.

'Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hodman is

discharged, or reduced to hodbearing, and an Architect is hired, and

on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals

discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a

generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies

to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for

killing, there should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it

possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though

the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool,

nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of

his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on

thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would there not, among the

idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited?'

In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to

have died: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for

the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite

inexpressible melancholy. 'The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under

our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their

innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the

inexorable word, NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept,

and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of

tears, pent-up in silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is

strong; Life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death:

these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination,

rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with

not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine,

through long years of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do;

for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now

my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon

the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life

placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still

smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of

Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who

wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing

the flinty ground with your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall

all meet THERE, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and

Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna

Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth

harm us any more!'

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured Character

of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts

in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into

the genealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as Henry

the Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment.

It only concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen

revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred, or

indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the

way already known to us. 'Thus was I doubly orphaned,' says he;

'bereft not only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and

Wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit.

Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole

nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my

whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and

night-dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a

corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no

other_; in which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener

to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of

Tendencies, which in my Life have become remarkable enough? As in

birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are

perhaps not numerous.'

* * * * *

In the Bag _Sagittarius_, as we at length discover, Teufelsdröckh has

become a University man; though, how, when, or of what quality, will

nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in

the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise

our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel

in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found,

and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In

_Sagittarius_, however, Teufelsdröckh begins to show himself even more

than usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts; scraps of regular

Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums,

Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast;

all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the

sane Historian. To combine any picture of these University, and the

subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative

primordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem

as the reader may imagine.

So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering

thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily

through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood,

now at length perfect in 'dead vocables,' and set down, as he hopes,

by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From

such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom

with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate;

discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or

supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for

'the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested

relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing

but too feeble hand.' Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and

manifold Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character is in

him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in

weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which are

prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of what Time brings, has the

stripling Diogenes Teufelsdröckh waxed into manly stature; and into so

questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, How he

specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit

answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially significant

fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo

of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation.

As if, in the Bag _Scorpio_, Teufelsdröckh had not already

expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name

_Sagittarius_, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we

here again fall-in with such matter as this: 'The University where I

was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know

its name well; which name, however, I, from tenderness to existing

interests and persons, shall in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty

to say that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all

hitherto discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right

Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of

wrongness there is no limit: nay, I can conceive a worse system than

that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than

absolute hunger.

'It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into

the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be

safer, if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in

Crim Tartary; walled-in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small,

ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred

Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to

seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being

stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and

exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical

structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our

High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was

quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily,

we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of

smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far

costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration

aloud, you could not be sure of gulling.

'Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled,

with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics

of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange

indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor

Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand

all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of

Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and

mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all!

Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature

and Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet

Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying,

in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements,

incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But

to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely-complected departments

of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial,

intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true

Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To

what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and

countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here

truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which

hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in

our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so

high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a

Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far

from the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be

anticipated, as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the

manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and

clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length

becomes all but wholly unnecessary!

'This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the

present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education,

Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so

little can as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative,

anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose

your sinews of war quite broken; I mean your military chest insolvent,

forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny,

disband, and cut your and each other's throat,--then were it not well

could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed

them on coagulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till

the real supply came up, they might be kept together and quiet? Such

perhaps was the aim of Nature, who does nothing without aim, in

furnishing her favourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather

omnipatient Talent of being Gulled.

'How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes

mechanism for itself! These Professors in the Nameless lived with

ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times,

and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons.

Which Reputation, like a strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk

into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual

repainting on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord

assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers!

They themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what

they called Educating, now when I look back on it, filled me with a

certain mute admiration.

'Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in the

highest degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind

furnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages,

Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out

into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had

soon to end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode

(_crepiren_) in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents

become dead.--But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is

the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not a better

coming, nay come? As in long-drawn Systole and long-drawn Diastole,

must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial; must the

vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual

Representations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow, the

autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his

whole earthly being, endeavour and destiny shaped for him by Time:

only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we

stand on made manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it

is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been

born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if,

like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University, or

Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of

Indolence, they can slumber-through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken

when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all done their work, and to our

prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed.'

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth,

Teufelsdröckh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. 'The

hungry young,' he says, 'looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, for

food, were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversial

Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely named

Science, was current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the

most. Among eleven-hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting

some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth,

a certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I

took less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading,

which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that

Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books perhaps than had been

known to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life

was hereby laid : I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in

almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences;

farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my

favourite employment to read character in speculation, and from the

Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Nature

and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I

look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as

yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, the

truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional

experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.'

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the

destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for

himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help.

Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage

monsters. Teufelsdröckh gives us long details of his 'fever-paroxysms

of Doubt'; his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of

religious Faith; and how 'in the silent night-watches, still darker in

his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the

All-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for

deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and

unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into

spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this

hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant

Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,'

continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter

of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the

living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to

arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings.'

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal

measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of

sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid

season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires,

yet here so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit

oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of

genius struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with

more of bitter vapour than of clear flame?

From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is

to be inferred that Teufelsdröckh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was,

had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware

of his existence; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, have at

least their eyes on him. He appears, though in dreary enough humour,

to be addressing himself to the Profession of Law;--whereof, indeed,

the world has since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these

broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, let us present

rather the following small thread of Moral relation; and therewith,

the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our

dim arras-picture of these University years.

'Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as

it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality

(_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected,

by blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zähdarm, in this quarter

of Germany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with

all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably

ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of character: and, bating his

total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little

Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent

fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I

owe my first practical knowledge of the English and their ways;

perhaps also something of the partiality with which I have ever since

regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could

he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the

Zähdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of

perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of

infancy, hither to a University where so much as the notion of

perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! Often

we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how,

after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the world, with

beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood;

no existing thing that we were trained to Act on, nothing that we

could so much as Believe. "How has our head on the outside a polished

Hat," would Towgood exclaim, "and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of

Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small cost men are educated to make

leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am I educated to make?

By Heaven, Brother! what I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus

far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables."--"Man,

indeed," I would answer, "has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept

working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis-education,

make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on

thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _Frisch zu, Bruder!_

Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole Earth

and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: _Frisch zu!_"

'Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire.

We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once

harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not

unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For

myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young

warmhearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near

experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish

Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could

have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother

once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and

its wants. If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and

Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true

meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of

Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away

chimeras.'

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little

incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood,

or Toughgut? He has dived-under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and

swims we see not where. Does any reader 'in the interior parts of

England' know of such a man?

CHAPTER IV

GETTING UNDER WAY

'Thus, nevertheless,' writes our autobiographer, apparently as

quitting College, 'was there realised Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes

Teufelsdröckh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some

cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and

spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in

more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man.

Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree,

against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and

Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so

leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very

Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something

(into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and

of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by

humming.

'How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned,

or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic

I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and

henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these

days, witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and

how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but

cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not

seen the Scottish Brassmith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one)

travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and

stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly

fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth, but rapidly

enough overturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism

and Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure

methods, Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a

Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every

time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder

through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, with new

tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him.

'With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, been

called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest

Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace

and War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfürst_), or Devil, and all his

Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre

is so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!'

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdröckh mean no more

than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'getting under

way'? 'Not what I Have,' continues he, 'but what I Do is my Kingdom.

To each is given a certain inward Talent, a certain outward

Environment of Fortune; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a

certain maximum of Capability. But the hardest problem were ever this

first: To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on,

what your combined inward and outward Capability specially is. For,

alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and we see not

yet which is the main and true one. Always too the new man is in a new

time, under new conditions; his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no

prior one, but is by its nature original. And then how seldom will the

outward Capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough,

we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than

all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go

stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the

wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be

spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of

distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole

term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from

enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as

exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their

last enterprise, that of getting buried.

'Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general

fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this

ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt

choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and

Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the

vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a

specific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little

waste of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that

of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too

is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive

sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well

that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies

(_Brodzwecke_), pre-appointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse,

for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can

travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward

and forward; and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an

additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of

Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided;

only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I

broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world

generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to

open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased (_fast wär ich

umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut.'

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was

to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as

it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim

disastrous details, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow.

A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young

mettled colt, 'breaks-off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his

peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all

rigorously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him

they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation,

he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping

against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only

lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and

endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into

luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness

where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though waited on by

Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdröckh having

thrown-up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of

outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or

inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on;

Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions

without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and

agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, _No Object and no

Rest_; must front its successive destinies, work through to its

catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his 'neck-halter' sat

nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off.

If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless

capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern

well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has

come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the _Examen

Rigorosum_ need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby 'an

_Auscultator_ of respectability,' what avails it? There is next to no

employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions, is the

process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his

disposition much cheered from without. 'My fellow Auscultators,' he

says, 'were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked

articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small

speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither

for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save

only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which words,

indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdröckh, may

there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity?

Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his

strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to

despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be:

already has the young Teufelsdröckh left the other young geese; and

swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or

gosling.

Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best

unpleasantly. 'Great practical method and expertness' he may brag of;

but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only

the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure

to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with

his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much?

'Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not

also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been

appointed to struggle.' Be this as it may, his progress from the

passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently

of the slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially

inclined to patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and

give him up as 'a man of genius': against which procedure he, in these

Papers, loudly protests. 'As if,' says he, 'the higher did not

presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also

walk post if he resolved on it! But the world is an old woman, and

mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often

cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.'

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner,

contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward

without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old

Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the

Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for

him; so that 'the prompt nature of Hunger being well known,' we are

not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many

languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use

his own words, 'does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself

any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his

wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,' continues he, 'that I

subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.' Which fact,

however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old

Proverb, that 'there is always life for a living one,' we must profess

ourselves unable to explain.

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the

mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like

an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here

also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which

perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or

writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 'The

(_Inkblot_), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by best

wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdröckh's views on the Assessorship in

question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing,

for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in

opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs

are yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a

sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and

beneficently worked. We give it in the original: '_Herr Teufelsdröckh

wird von der Frau Gräfinn, auf Donnerstag, zum_ ÆSTHETISCHEN THEE

_schönstens eingeladen._'

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most

urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash

of quite fluid _Æsthetic Tea!_ How Teufelsdröckh, now at actual

handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these

Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion

invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in

expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such

case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on

the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Gräfinn dates from the

_Zähdarm House_, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of

the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to

Teufelsdröckh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own

footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed,

continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps

feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express

evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough

for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world,

from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded.

'The Zähdarms,' says he, 'lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of

Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and attached from

without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the

_Gnädigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due:

assiduously she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, what fringing was

to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was Teufelsdröckh

also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? 'With his

_Excellenz_ (the Count),' continues he, 'I have more than once had the

honour to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the

world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no

unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of

Journalism (_die auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate

therein. On some points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I

found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being

that of Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, as

superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.'

That to Teufelsdröckh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless,

and many things besides 'the Outrooting of Journalism' might have

seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a

barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and

wishes from within, his position was no easy one. 'The Universe,' he

says, 'was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet

must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet

also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished

Thought, unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as

yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can

spring only from discords set in harmony; that but for Evil there were

no Good, as victory is only possible by battle.'

'I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he elsewhere, 'by

not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human

happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered

under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to

follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder

and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least

as considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say

that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as

young ladies (_Mädchen_) are, to mankind, precisely the most

delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (_Bübchen_) do then

attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (_Gecken_) are they;

and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for

self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all

senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour or attainment

will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining

young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it

worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most manageable matter, simple

as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply your second and third

term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will

be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The

booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will,

there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no

net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.'

In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that

Teufelsdröckh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an

inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary,

youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the

former side alone, his case was hard enough. 'It continues ever true,'

says he, 'that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all

his Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you

(for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours

at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time

stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole

terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a

Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of

it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the

right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual

movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a

continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward

Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have

done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do

anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and

sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid

moments can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to

us! Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was

Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might,

there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were

the feet.' That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this

lower world, that Teufelsdröckh's whole duty and necessity was, like

other men's, 'to work,--in the right direction,' and that no work was

to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. As was natural: with

haggard Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a

soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir

Hudibras's sword by rust,

To eat into itself for lack

Of something else to hew and hack!

But on the whole, that same 'excellent Passivity,' as it has all along

done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may

we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterises our

Professor; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the

Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards

the World is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold

attitude of attack. 'So far hitherto,' he says, 'as I had mingled with

mankind, I was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of

manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill

express the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with

an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed,

is ever divine to him that has a sense for the God-like. Often,

notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my

so-called Hardness (_Härte_), my Indifferentism towards men; and the

seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in

conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case,

wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person

might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer

exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the

language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as

renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke

into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly

stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man,

from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society.

Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with

gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an

insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhoch_), and thence

fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without

indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!'

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for

himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdröckh too admits,

is 'to unite yourself with some one and with somewhat (_sich

anzuschliessen_)'? Division, not union, is written on most part of his

procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only

important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion

with the Zähdarm Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all

practical uses, by the death of the 'not uncholeric' old Count. This

fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on

Epitaphs_, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which

Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of

than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of

what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. 'By request

of that worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says he, 'I undertook to compose

his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following;

which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet

fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven';--wherein, we may

predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English

reader:

HIC JACET

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS,

ZAEHDARMI COMES,

EX IMPERII CONCILIO,

VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI

EQUES.

QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES

PLUMBO CONFECIT:

VARII CIBI

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,

PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE

HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS,

IN STERCUS

PALAM CONVERTIT.

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM

OPERA SEQUUNTUR.

SI MONUMENTUM QUÆRIS,

FIMETUM ADSPICE.

PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].

CHAPTER V

ROMANCE

'For long years,' writes Teufelsdröckh, 'had the poor Hebrew, in this

Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without

stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force:

For what?--_Beym Himmel!_ For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth

nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it

what might, I resolved to try.'

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though

perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdröckh is now a man without

Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers,

where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he

desperately steers-off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass

of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdröckh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic,

nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in

prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination,

wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings,

each could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown

seas; and for thyself find that shorter North-west Passage to thy fair

Spice-country of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with

such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith

discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and

as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning.

'If in youth,' writes he once, 'the Universe is majestically

unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to

the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself

as in the Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of

ours, it has been so appointed. On the whole, as I have often said, a

Person (_Persönlichkeit_) is ever holy to us: a certain orthodox

Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all _Thees_ in bonds of Love:

but it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such

heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns-out

into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indifferent

to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to

unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing

all these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case of

the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of

such a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium

of Fantasy, flames-forth that _fire_-development of the universal

Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we

first emphatically denominate LOVE.

'In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already

blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve;

nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden,

is a Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof,

wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a

Flaming Sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the

imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season

of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial

barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not shrunk into the

mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite

and free!

'As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teufelsdröckh, evidently meaning

himself, 'in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy,

the more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating

furnace, his feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed

is, altogether unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our

young Friend all women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw

them flitting past, in their many-coloured angel-plumage; or hovering

mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of _Æsthetic Tea_: all of air

they were, all Soul and Form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses,

in whose hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might

mount into very Heaven. That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for

himself one of these Gracefuls (_Holden_)--_Ach Gott!_ how could he

hope it; should he not have died under it? There was a certain

delirious vertigo in the thought.

'Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as

the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts

of true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him whereso he

went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as

yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them.

But now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden,

incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric

glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, "Thou too mayest love and be

loved"; and so kindle him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic,

earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably kindled!'

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, with

explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes;

as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative

style, we might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of

Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous

Humour enough; the whole lying in such hot neighbourhood, close by 'a

reverberating furnace of Fantasy': have we not here the components of

driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to

blaze-up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere

wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round,

would one day, leaving 'the outskirts of _Æsthetic Tea_,' flit nigher;

and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework.

Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed-off rocketwise, in

successive beautiful bursts of splendour, each growing naturally from

the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love; till

the whole were safely burnt-out; and the young soul relieved with

little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and

mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps

bursting the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, bursting

the thin walls of your 'reverberating furnace,' so that it rage

thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which

were Madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our

Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the 'crater of an extinct

volcano!'

From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the

adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our

philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and

even frantically in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether

his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved once; not

wisely but too well. And once only: for as your Congreve needs a new

case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can

properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the 'First Love which is

infinite' can be followed by no second like unto it. In more recent

years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard

Teufelsdröckh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would

never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's

Summer_ of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland.

To the Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial

Art, indeed; which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries,

but has lost thought of purchasing.

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how

Teufelsdröckh, in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans

himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendour

and colour, his Firework blazes-off. Small, as usual, is the

satisfaction that such can meet with here. From amid these confused

masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean

ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter,

not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without

doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she is here designated, and which

means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real name

Flora, then? But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what

station in Life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect?

Specially, by what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did the

Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a world; how did they

behave in such meeting? To all which questions, not unessential in a

Biographic work, mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. 'It

was appointed,' says our Philosopher, 'that the high celestial orbit

of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that

he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of

Light was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; and finding

himself mistaken, make noise enough.'

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some

one's Cousin; highborn, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent

and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not-too-gracious bounty of

monied relatives. But how came 'the Wanderer' into her circle? Was it

by the humid vehicle of _Æsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere

Business? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnädige Frau,

who, as ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation,

especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was

chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature.

'Thou fair Waldschloss,' writes our Autobiographer, 'what stranger

ever saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially

bearing in his pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write,

but must have paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in

deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene

solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western

sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal.

Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills;

of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of

crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To

the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the

Libyan Waste; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay

written. Well might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were

prophecy and nameless forebodings.'

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has

handed-in his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of

Rhine-wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his

dusty Town-home, is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where sit the

choicest party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in Æsthetic Tea,

yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for

we hear of 'harps and pure voices making the stillness live.'

Scarcely, it would seem, is the Gardenhouse inferior in respectability

to the noble Mansion itself. 'Embowered amid rich foliage,

rose-clusters, and the hues and odours of thousand flowers, here sat

that brave company; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook

over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching,

undulating onwards to the remote Mountain peaks: so bright, so mild,

and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: it was all as

if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the bosom-vesture of

Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer advanced thither with

such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his gay host?

Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be

shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; to mock

him, and see whether there were Humour in him?

'Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially

by name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced

Blumine, there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights.

Noblest maiden! whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely

dared look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest

embarrassment.

'Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one

heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which

vague colourings of Rumour, from the censures no less than from the

praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen

of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than

your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins

circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public

places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a

face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this

he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost

without reality. Her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever

think of him; O Heaven! how should they so much as once meet together?

And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light

of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! Nay,

who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but

Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps,

from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder,

gathered favour for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual,

then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into

neighbourhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of

Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the

Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at

the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its

deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful

there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future,

are heaving in unquiet eddies within him.

'Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk

forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and flutterings, of

what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming

Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of

his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into

fearlessness and clearness? It was his guiding Genius (_Dämon_) that

inspired him; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now,

whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your

anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able

to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne

on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so

rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a

certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent,

but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which

thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say

that he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain

inspiration was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in

our late era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in

free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar

home of Truth and Intellect; wherein also Fantasy bodies-forth form

after form, radiant with all prismatic hues.'

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one

'Philistine'; who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly

pouring-forth Philistinism (_Philistriositäten_); little witting what

hero was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of

Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way,

whereby the monster, 'persuaded into silence,' seems soon after to

have withdrawn for the night. 'Of which dialectic marauder,' writes

our hero, 'the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but

what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to

become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? He

ventured to address her, she answered with attention: nay what if

there were a slight tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow

of evening were hiding a transient blush!

'The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth

another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with

full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gaily in

light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that

circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of

Ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as

into vapour; and the poor claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted

by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all

harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign

and owner of which were Love only. Such music springs from kind

hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. And yet as the light

grew more aërial on the mountain-tops, and the shadows fell longer

over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through

the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every one

that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise

must the Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness; and

with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises sink in the

still Eternity.

'To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the

words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty

grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper: It is good

for us to be here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the

balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of

meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those

small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not

angrily withdrawn.'

Poor Teufelsdröckh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the

Queen of Hearts would see a 'man of genius' also sigh for her; and

there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and

spell-bound thee. 'Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says he elsewhere;

'yet has it many points in common therewith. I call it rather a

discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which

discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or

demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in

common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the

so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby to

move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true

Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small

temporary stage (_Zeitbühne_), whereon thick-streaming influences from

both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and

melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for

some eighteenpence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems

will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet

drinking no better red wine than he had before.' Alas! witness also

your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging

towards Insanity, for prize of a 'high-souled Brunette,' as if the

earth held but one and not several of these!

He says that, in Town, they met again: 'day after day, like his

heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah! a little while

ago, and he was yet in all darkness; him what Graceful (_Holde_) would

ever love? Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned

to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own

fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he

saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the

fairest hopes of existence. And now, O now! "She looks on thee," cried

he: "she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou

art not despised? The Heaven's-Messenger! All Heaven's blessings be

hers!" Thus did soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an

infinite gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that

for him also unutterable joys had been provided.

'In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter,

tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of Music: such

was the element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant

Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend

be blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature unrolled to him.

Fairest Blumine! And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a

very Light-ray incarnate! Was there so much as a fault, a "caprice,"

he could have dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed a

Morning-Star; did not her presence bring with it airs from Heaven? As

from Æolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue

struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around him,

and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the

distance; Life bloomed-up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was

all a haggard dream; he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and

could not discern it! But lo now! the black walls of his prison melt

away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his Disenchantress?

_Ach Gott!_ His whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had

he named it Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a

Thought.'

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must be shaped;

for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere 'Children of Time,'

can abide by Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, 'how

in her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest

of Necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears

surprised at the 'Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose

meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was,

from the first, faintly approved of.' We, even at such distance, can

explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one

question: What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdröckh likely

to make in polished society? Could she have driven so much as a

brass-bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish

'absolved Auscultator,' before whom lies no prospect of capital, will

any yet known 'religion of young hearts' keep the human kitchen warm?

Pshaw! thy divine Blumine when she 'resigned herself to wed some

richer,' shows more philosophy, though but 'a woman of genius,' than

thou, a pretended man.

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, and with

what royal splendour it waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold

the glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost

instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, henceforth

madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living

delineation be organised? Besides, of what profit were it? We view,

with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the

ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle

to a luminous star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by

natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless

air-navigator, plunging amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused

wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that

Teufelsdröckh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a

natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular

one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough

to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he,

for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such

agonies and frenzies, what must Teufelsdröckh's have been, with a

fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance merely at the final

scene:

'One morning, he found his Morning-Star all dimmed and dusky-red; the

fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping.

Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent,

announcing that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous

voice, They were to meet no more.' The thunder-struck Air-sailor is

not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? We omit

the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was

vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the

catastrophe. '"Farewell, then, Madam!" said he, not without sternness,

for his stung pride helped him. She put her hand in his, she looked in

his face, tears started to her eyes: in wild audacity he clasped her

to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two

dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time, and for the last!'

Thus was Teufelsdröckh made immortal by a kiss. And then? Why,

then--'thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the

immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered

Universe was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss.'

CHAPTER VI

SORROWS OF TEUFELSDRÖCKH

We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters must

often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex,

intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and

emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on

no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the

woe-storm, could you predict his demeanour.

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that

the so passionate Teufelsdröckh, precipitated through 'a shivered

Universe' in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things

which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing

Satanic Poetry; or blow-out his brains. In the progress towards any of

which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance

enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings

of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of

furniture, if not arson itself?

Nowise so does Teufelsdröckh deport him. He quietly lifts his

_Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrim-staff), 'old business being soon wound-up'; and

begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe!

Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such

intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of

Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his,

that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement,

in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday

and Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared

to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is

compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic

appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things

rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their

glass phial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than

the strange casket of a heart springs-to again; and perhaps there is

now no key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdröckh, as we

remarked, will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner

has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects

to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be

said. 'One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel,

had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a

gleam of Tophet passed-over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in

whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,'

adds he, 'whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste

Ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it.'

But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what

ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdröckh's soul was the scene of,

he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence.

We know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen

collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together;

he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and the Journals: only by

a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of

those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce

fire,--might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within; that a whole

Satanic School were spouting, though inaudibly, there. To consume your

own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole

Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative

yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times.

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange

measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity;

whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in

_Capricornus_ and _Aquarius_ is no bad emblem. His so unlimited

Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps

assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders,

wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he

were 'made like unto a wheel.' Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of

these Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of

preparation, for example, we come upon the following slip: 'A peculiar

feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some

hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed

among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a

toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet

unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is

then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems

like a sort of Life-breath: for always, of its own unity, the soul

gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little

Dwelling place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts,

become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other

thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena

of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were

rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if

our Buried ones there slumber!' Does Teufelsdröckh, as the wounded

eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military

deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in

the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity,

towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits

him, take but one wistful look from the distance, and then wend

elsewhither?

Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature;

as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we

incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former

by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy:

'Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such

combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called

Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in

masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is

here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of

environment: in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff,

itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or

verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the

everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with

Grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along straight passes,

traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding

amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging

into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a

Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if

Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength.

'To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son of Time

not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and

the future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably

might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this

world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that

is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the

original Greek if that suit better: "Whoso can look on Death will

start at no shadows."

'From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outwards;

for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain

mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished

on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the

evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some

moments there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in

complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent

towards every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your

feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and

there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their

solitude. No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who

fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem,

scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But

sunwards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the

diadem and centre of the mountain region! A hundred and a hundred

savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and

amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their

silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge

first dried! Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our

Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost

with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, that

she was One, that she was his Mother, and divine. And as the ruddy

glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now

departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life,

stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as

if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its

throne in that splendour, and his own spirit were therewith holding

communion.

'The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the

hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay

Barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postillions wore

wedding-favours: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was

their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near: _Du Himmel!_ It

was Herr Towgood and--Blumine! With slight unrecognising salutation

they passed me; plunged down amid the neighbouring thickets, onwards,

to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, _I

remained alone, behind them, with the Night_.'

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to

insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _Clothes-Volume_,

where it stands with quite other intent: 'Some time before Small-pox

was extirpated,' says the Professor, 'there came a new malady of the

spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of

View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with Senses, had

also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup

which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or

with slight incidental commentary: never, as I compute, till after the

_Sorrows of Werter_, was there man found who would say: Come let us

make a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the

glass! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek.' Too

true!

We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings,

so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear

insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not.

That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have

withered-up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in

him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long

years, our Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at

random, and naturally with more haste than progress.

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in

this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of

which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the

obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country to

country, from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no

man can calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he

wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. If in any

scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time,

and forms connexions, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let

him sink out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatisirender_), living

by the grace of God in some European capital, you may next find him as

Hadjee in the neighbourhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable

Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our Traveller,

instead of limbs and high-ways, had transported himself by some

wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted

emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of

Street-Advertisements); with only some touch of direct historical

notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the world of

haze! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an enigma

than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed

a spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised Fact unparalleled in Biography:

The river of his History, which we have traced from its tiniest

fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into

the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as

a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray!

Low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at

a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general

stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and

trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit of

our endeavour.

For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, where they

can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of this sort too there

occurs much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to

emit. Teufelsdröckh, vibrating everywhere between the highest and the

lowest levels, comes into contact with public History itself. For

example, those conversations and relations with illustrious Persons,

as Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as

yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? The Editor,

appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting

the possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this

province for the present; a new time may bring new insight and a

different duty.

If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for there was none,

yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of mind,

the Professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the

answer is more distinct than favourable. 'A nameless Unrest,' says he,

'urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary

lying solace. Whither should I go? My Loadstars were blotted out; in

that canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I; the ground

burnt under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. I was

alone, alone! Ever too the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for

itself: towards these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly wander.

A feeling I had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be

somewhere a healing Fountain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the

Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to great

Cities, to great Events: but found there no healing. In strange

countries, as in the well-known; in savage deserts, as in the press of

corrupt civilisation, it was ever the same: how could your Wanderer

escape from--_his own Shadow_? Nevertheless still Forward! I felt as

if in great haste; to do I saw not what. From the depths of my own

heart, it called to me, Forwards! The winds and the streams, and all

Nature sounded to me, Forwards! _Ach Gott_, I was even, once for all,

a Son of Time.'

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School was still

active enough? He says elsewhere: 'The _Enchiridion of Epictetus_ I

had ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to

mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.' Thou foolish

Teufelsdröckh! How could it else? Hadst thou not Greek enough to

understand thus much: _The end of Man is an Action, and not a

Thought_, though it were the noblest?

'How I lived?' writes he once: 'Friend, hast thou considered the

"rugged all-nourishing Earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she

feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? While

thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. My

breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the

Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted

wild-eggs in the sand of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris _Estrapades_

and Vienna _Malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental

liquid. That I had my Living to seek saved me from Dying,--by suicide.

In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect,

in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational,

commercial departments? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes?

Living! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how,

as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body

(of a Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other

than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.'

Poor Teufelsdröckh! Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a

whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is

comparatively a friend's! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain,

or of the modern Wandering Jew,--save only that he feels himself not

guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with

aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by

footprints), write his _Sorrows of Teufelsdröckh_; even as the great

Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _Sorrows of Werter_,

before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly

is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape 'from his own Shadow'!

Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first

descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours,

richer than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades

grown obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of

Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle

and despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the

publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect,

becomes almost a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation

with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron

publishes his _Sorrows of Lord George_, in verse and in prose, and

copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his _Sorrows of

Napoleon_ Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of

cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are

the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of

embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.--Happier is he who,

like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be

written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also

survive the writing thereof!

CHAPTER VII

THE EVERLASTING NO

Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Professor has now

shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless

progressive, and growing: for how can the 'Son of Time,' in any case,

stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of

crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into

aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation;

wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve

itself?

Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults

is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash-off the old

one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual

acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of

anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as,

indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him disappointed,

bemocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart

might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst

instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an 'excellent

Passivity'; but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the

former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this

wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity,

though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness, which had

been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 'ruddy morning' in

the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that

poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and

even hisses over in a deluge of foam.

He himself says once, with more justice than originality: 'Man is,

properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other possession but

Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope.' What,

then, was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present,

quite shut-out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but

vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with

earthquake and tornado.

Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! For,

as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all

tidings of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of

religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not

that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 'Doubt had darkened

into Unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your

soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.' To such

readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's

life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-loss

Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is _not_ synonymous

with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, 'that,

for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how,

with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and

the cross; and without it, worldlings puke-up their sick existence, by

suicide, in the midst of luxury': to such it will be clear that, for a

pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of

everything. Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued

Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all

wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its

life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way:

'Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle,

ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and

_see_ing it go? Has the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no

divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made-up of

Desire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and from Dr. Graham's

Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul of

Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that _he_ was

"the chief of sinners"; and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit

(_wohlgemuth_), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish

Word-monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly

mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue

from the husks of Pleasure,--I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate

Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of

his wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself

the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the

heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion; some bubble of the

blood, bubbling in the direction others _profit_ by? I know not: only

this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are

we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much.

But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of

Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on

Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our

frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and

live at ease on the fat things _he_ has provided for his Elect!'

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done,

shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and

receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair

world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild-beasts, or the

shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day,

and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such

length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. 'But what boots it (_was

thut's_)?' cries he: 'it is but the common lot in this era. Not having

come to spiritual majority prior to the _Siècle de Louis Quinze_, and

not being born purely a Loghead (_Dummkopf_), thou hadst no other

outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old

Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof,

crumble down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; our eyes never

saw him?'

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our

Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no

era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the

Servant of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. 'One

circumstance I note,' says he: 'after all the nameless woe that

Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of

Truth, had wrought me, I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would

bate no jot of my allegiance to her. "Truth"! I cried, "though the

Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! though a whole

celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy." In conduct it was

the same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous

Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me _This thou

shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as I often thought, would I

have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal Fire. Thus, in

spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss

Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had

brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present to me:

living without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly

bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing,

could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and

His heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there.'

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual

destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured!

'The painfullest feeling,' writes he, 'is that of your own Feebleness

(_Unkraft_); ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true

misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling,

save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between

vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a

difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in

us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively

discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees

its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible

Precept, _Know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially

possible one, _Know what thou canst work-at_.

'But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of

my Workings amounted as yet simply to--Nothing. How then could I

believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in?

Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous

question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a

certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the

completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful Unbelief

is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first,

last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open,

and I dared to love, been all-too cruelly belied? The speculative

Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the

practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been

everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast-out. A feeble

unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have

nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness.

Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from

all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press

trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon

my lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety of

so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls

Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such cases, your

resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the

Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then

lived in. The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but

Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they

were not merely automatic. In midst of their crowded streets and

assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart,

not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his

jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have

fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I

imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful:

but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been

pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the

Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of

Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling

on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast,

gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living

banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil;

nay, unless the Devil is your God'?

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the

worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a

Teufelsdröckh threaten to fail? We conjecture that he has known

sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of

the chronic sort. Hear this, for example: 'How beautiful to die of

broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; every window

of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and

mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in

your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of

Disgust!'

Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not

find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein,

significance enough? 'From Suicide a certain aftershine (_Nachschein_)

of Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of

character; for, was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach?

Often, however, was there a question present to me: Should some one

now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space,

into the other World, or other No-World, by pistol-shot,--how were it?

On which ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities

and other death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed,

falsely enough, for courage.'

'So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, 'so had it lasted, as in

bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The heart within

me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous,

slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear;

or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's

Deathsong, that wild _Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet_ (Happy

whom _he_ finds in Battle's splendour), and thought that of this last

Friend even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me

not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it

of Man or of Devil: nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing,

could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to

me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely

enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous,

pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all

things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if

the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring

monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured.

'Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole

French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much

perambulation, toiling along the dirty little _Rue Saint-Thomas de

l'Enfer_, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over

pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless my

spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a Thought

in me, and I asked myself: "What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like

a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and

trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that

lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too,

and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast

thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a

Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy

feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and

defy it!" And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over

my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was

strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that

time, the temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow

was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.

'Thus had the EVERLASTING NO (_das ewige Nein_) pealed authoritatively

through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME; and then was it that

my whole ME stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis

recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction

in Life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological

point of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: "Behold,

thou are fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's)";

to which my whole Me now made answer: "_I_ am not thine, but Free, and

forever hate thee!"

'It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth,

or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a

Man.'

CHAPTER VIII

CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE

Though, after this 'Baphometic Fire-baptism' of his, our Wanderer

signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, 'Indignation

and Defiance,' especially against things in general, are not the most

peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no

longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a

fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptised soul, long so

scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling

is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has

thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from

which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will

doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another

figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the _Rue

Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, the old inward Satanic School was not yet

thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to

quit;--whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings,

and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become

only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret.

Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps

discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness.

Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdröckh now storm through the

world; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a

Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many 'Saints' Wells,'

and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little

secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is

ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to

'eat his own heart'; and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME

for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a

much more natural state?

'Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not to look

upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, as through a long

vista, into the remote Time; to have, as it were, an actual section of

almost the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set before

your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire

put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or

less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt,

and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah!

and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put

down there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke

and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and its

bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; and its flame,

looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still

warms thee or scorches thee.

'Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are aeriform,

mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of

Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions

both of Cloth-habits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective

stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of

manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless

as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must

flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you

demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible

Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain

downwards: but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic,

and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on

the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it

is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like

manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In

vain wilt thou go to Schönbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais

Bourbon: thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and

some bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that same

cunningly-devised almighty GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on?

Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing

aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So

spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily Life: all that we do springs

out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force; only like a little

Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body

itself forth from the great mystic Deep.

'Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon-up to the

extent of three: Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled

Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads with their

Bridges may belong; and thirdly----Books. In which third truly, the

last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others.

Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of

stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled

field, but then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me

rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have

Books that already number some hundred-and-fifty human ages); and

yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions,

Philosophical, Political Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets,

Journalistic Essays), every one of which is talismanic and

thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. O thou who art able to write a

Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted

to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly

pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a

Conqueror and Victor: but of the true sort, namely over the Devil:

thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a

wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic

Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.--Fool! why

journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on

the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand

there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert,

foolishly enough, for the last three-thousand years: but canst thou

not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version thereof?'

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on

some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so

that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of

date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows:

'Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters,

cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers

still remaining not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps: ay,

there lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue has

been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed-down out of

sight, like blown Egg-shells!--Did Nature, when she bade the Donau

bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian

Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest

level,--intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon

her children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the

more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad

Highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for

Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many

ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with

artillery, and with artillery be battered? König Ottokar, amid yonder

hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls

a-swoon under Napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the

others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and defiled! The

greensward is torn-up and trampled-down; man's fond care of it, his

fruit-trees, hedgerows, and pleasant dwellings, blown-away with

gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of

Sculls.--Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these

Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that

gore and carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure; and next

year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied

Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy

own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life

for the Living!

'What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and

upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil,

in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five-hundred souls.

From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the French, there are

successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied

men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she

has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and

even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build,

another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone

avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are

selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges,

some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed

there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain,

are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like

manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties

come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty,

each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given:

and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty

brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it

must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as

the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the

entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even,

unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How

then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen-out; and, instead of

shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads

shoot.--Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other

lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must

pay the piper!"--In that fiction of the English Smollet, it is true,

the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth;

where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe,

filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's

faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era,

what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still

divide us!'

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from

his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and pertinently enough

note what is passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter

of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his

life were richer than this. Internally, there is the most momentous

instructive Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going

on; towards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits,

favourable to Meditation, might help him rather than hinder.

Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the

longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough:

in these so boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School

was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our

Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all

knowable things, might not Teufelsdröckh acquire!

'I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, 'including those of

Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese

Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying.

Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural

repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics,

Topographics came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The

ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for

himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the great

Hadrian, I meted-out much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of

Compasses that belonged to myself only.

'Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting,

and even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pinechasms of Vaucluse; and in

that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees

of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of

China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and

covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events,

also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated-down (_ausgemergelt_) into

Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the

World well lost; oftener than once a hundred-thousand individuals shot

(by each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations

dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might

ferment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy,

wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven,

could not escape me.

'For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can

perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great

Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK

OF REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch,

and by some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous

talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or

worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or

orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study the inspired Texts themselves!

Thus did not I, in very early days, having disguised me as

tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at

Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great Schiller and

greater Goethe; and hearing what I have not forgotten. For----'

----But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution,

some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the

sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered

with. Should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the

time come for Publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of

the Illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better

than treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron,

therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the 'White

Water-roses' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here!

Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that

Teufelsdröckh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied

character. At first we find our poor Professor on the point of being

shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on

the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed,

almost thrown out of doors, as an 'Ideologist.' 'He himself,' says the

Professor, 'was among the completest Ideologists, at least

Ideopraxists: in the Idea (_in der Idee_) he lived, moved and fought.

The man was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and

preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La

carrière ouverte aux talens_ (The Tools to him that can handle them),

which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty

lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first

Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy

rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him,

if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated

forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely

forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding,

the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest,

bless.'

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdröckh's appearance

and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North

Cape, on that June Midnight. He has 'a light-blue Spanish cloak'

hanging round him, as his 'most commodious, principal, indeed sole

upper garment'; and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking

over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now

motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes.

'Silence as of death,' writes he; 'for Midnight, even in the Arctic

latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs

ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean,

over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if

he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and

cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters,

like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and

hide itself under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is

invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies

all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before

him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun

is but a porch-lamp?

'Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster,

scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the

Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian speech: most probably,

therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify my

indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong

wish to be private. In vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his

superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps

profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me

with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we

stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily

down below. What argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean,

cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such

extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my

interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say,

"Be so obliging as retire, Friend (_Er ziehe sich zurück, Freund_),

and with promptitude!" This logic even the Hyperborean understands;

fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and,

except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return.

'Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men

alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more

_Mind_, though all but no Body whatever, then canst thou kill me

first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless,

and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive

Spiritualism is all.

'With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in

this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little

visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the

midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very

soon,--make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl

round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one

another into Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant!

Deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--Nay, I think with old

Hugo von Trimberg: "God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing

be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below."'

* * * * *

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality,

which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of

Teufelsdröckh under so much outward shifting? Does Legion still lurk

in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We

can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the

grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdröckh has now been long a

patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong

to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure

will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the

Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next

to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the

while, in a quiet but no comfortable state.

'At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our Autobiographer,

'I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather,

as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in

any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many

things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see

through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane

Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and,

when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy

wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, had they even

been all granted! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not

two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a

whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, when I gazed into these Stars, have they

not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like

Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man!

Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been

swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and

Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in

their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them

in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of

an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still

Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee

the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a

dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!'

Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdröckh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one

day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and

with a second youth.

'This,' says our Professor, 'was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now

reached; through which whoso travels from the Negative Pole to the

Positive must necessarily pass.'

CHAPTER IX

THE EVERLASTING YEA

'Temptations in the Wilderness!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: 'Have we not

all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in

us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with

Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom,

than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning,

especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, _Work

thou in Welldoing_, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic

Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till

it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a

visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, _Eat

thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself

through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a contest, before

the better Influence can become the upper?

'To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such

God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay

must now be vanquished, or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit

into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle

with him; defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name

it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural

Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of

selfishness and baseness,--to such Temptation are we all called.

Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that

divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true

sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders,

in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!--Our Wilderness is

the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years

of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end.

Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of

Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is

left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled,

doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest

wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that

Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!'

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once

for all, natural to him: 'Has not thy Life been that of most

sufficient men (_tüchtigen Männer_) thou hast known in this

generation? An out-flush of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first

fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: this all

parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief,

as Disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to

Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial! If I have had a

second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit under

umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be

the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even exemplars.'

So that, for Teufelsdröckh also, there has been a 'glorious

revolution': these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of

his were but some purifying 'Temptation in the Wilderness,' before his

Apostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now

happily over, and the Devil once more worsted! Was 'that high moment

in the _Rue de l'Enfer_,' then, properly the turning-point of the

battle; when the Fiend said, _Worship me or be torn in shreds_; and

was answered valiantly with an _Apage Satana_?--Singular

Teufelsdröckh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain

words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for

such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow,

fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. 'How

paint to the sensual eye,' asks he once, 'what passes in the

Holy-of-Holies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane

times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable?' We ask in turn: Why

perplex these times, profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by

omission and by commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but

whimsical; and involves himself, now more than ever, in

eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. Successive glimpses, here faithfully

imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavour to combine for their

own behoof.

He says: 'The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went

silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused

in my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it

was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to

renounce utterly, and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will

chase you no more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard

spectres of Fear, I care not for you; ye too are all shadows and a

lie. Let me rest here: for I am way-weary and life-weary; I will rest

here, were it but to die: to die or to live is alike to me; alike

insignificant.'--And again: 'Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE OF

INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into a

healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to

a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral Act,

Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-tödtung_), had been happily

accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands

ungyved.'

Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his

Locality, during this same 'healing sleep'; that his Pilgrim-staff

lies cast aside here, on 'the high table-land'; and indeed that the

repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that

the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we

could have expected! However, in Teufelsdröckh, there is always the

strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on

in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint

whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire:

'Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and

meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over

me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four

azure-flowing curtains,--namely, of the Four azure winds, on whose

bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair

Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their

green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or

better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother

baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and

protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as

sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns

and Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still

weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal

tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by

repeated Smoke-clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might

read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind

housewives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands'

kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or

simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke

could say: Such and such a meal is getting ready here. Not

uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all its

love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as

in miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide

Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in

its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general

propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.

'Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through

the Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the

eddying vapour gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like

a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the

clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the

vapour had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy

great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O

Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not

thou the "Living Garment of God"? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, HE,

then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee,

that lives and loves in me?

'Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and

Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than

Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's

voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown

tumults; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated

heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a

charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!

'With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow man; with an

infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art

thou not tired, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether

thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so

weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my

Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe

away all tears from thy eyes! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life,

which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no

longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate

cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are

prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother,

not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean

Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings

and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in

the porch of that "_Sanctuary of Sorrow_;" by strange, steep ways had

I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open,

and the "_Divine Depth of Sorrow_" lie disclosed to me.'

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been

strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. 'A

vain interminable controversy,' writes he, 'touching what is at

present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every

soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would

pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring, must first be put

an end to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple,

incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few some

Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution

comes-out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era

has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's

nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help

it though he would. The authentic _Church-Catechism_ of our present

century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own

private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man's

Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because

there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot

quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and

Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in

jointstock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot

accomplish it, above an hour or two; for the Shoeblack also has a Soul

quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it,

for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment,

no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe altogether to himself_,

therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose.

Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus: speak not of

them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your

ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better

vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets

to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares

himself the most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in

our sunshine: it is even as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_.

'But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain

valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort

of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and

of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our

deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_

as there may be do we account Happiness; any _deficit_ again is

Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts

ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us,--do

you wonder that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, and

many a Blockhead cry: See there, what a payment; was ever worthy

gentleman so used!--I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy

Vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to be.

Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt

feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be

hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

'So true is it, what I then say, that _the Fraction of Life can be

increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by

lessening your Denominator_. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me,

_Unity_ itself divided by _Zero_ will give _Infinity_. Make thy claim

of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did

the Wisest of our time write: "It is only with Renunciation

(_Entsagen_) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin."

'I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou

hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on

account of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY?

Because the THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured,

nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act

of Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while

ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and

predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other

than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after

somewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is

not given thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_.'

'_Es leuchtet mir ein_, I see a glimpse of it!' cries he elsewhere:

'there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without

Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to

preach-forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the

Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony,

through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how

in the Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired

Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken

with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite,

and learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet

remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be

annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the

deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring

billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure

of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA,

wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it

is well with him.'

And again: 'Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its

injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst

love the Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures

thee; for this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent.

Knowest thou that "_Worship of Sorrow_"? The Temple thereof, founded

some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle,

the habitation of doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in

a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar

still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burning.'

Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor

will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more

questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay

wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on

Religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the 'perennial

continuance of Inspiration;' on Prophecy; that there are 'true

Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:' with more of the

like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago.

'Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus apostrophises the

Professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems

finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition,

considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion

looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas,

were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other

quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and

since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But

what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that

Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our

Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no

faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for

building? Take our thanks, then, and--thyself away.

'Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present,

felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out

of me; or dispute into me? To the "_Worship of Sorrow_" ascribe what

origin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that Worship originated,

and been generated; is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then

say whether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,--for

which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried.'

'Neither,' observes he elsewhere, 'shall ye tear-out one another's

eyes, struggling over "Plenary Inspiration," and suchlike: try rather

to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One

BIBLE I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as

possible; nay with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it:

thereof all other Bibles are but leaves,--say, in Picture-Writing to

assist the weaker faculty.'

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him

take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:

'To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, 'which is an

internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems

questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy brother, I

advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it

to the bottom, it is simply this: "Fellow, see! thou art taking more

than thy share of Happiness in the world, something from _my_ share:

which, by the Heavens, thou shall not; nay I will fight thee

rather."--Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly

matter, truly a "feast of shells," for the substance has been spilled

out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human

species clutching at them!--Can we not, in all such cases, rather say:

"Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional

fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest;

take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!"--If

Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ be, "to a certain extent, Applied

Christianity," surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have

here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive

half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it!

'But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till

it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not

possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless,

formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty

of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion

itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that

"Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action." On which

ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain

light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this

other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service:

"_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_," which thou knowest to be a

Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.

'May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement

is even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been

dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes

revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough,

like the Lothario in _Wilhelm Meister_, that your "America is here or

nowhere"? The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never

yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered,

despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is

thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free.

Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy

Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of:

what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form

thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the

imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a

kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing

thou seekest is already with thee, "here or nowhere," couldst thou

only see!

'But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of

Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in

bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over

the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to

the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and

God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and

least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled

conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep

silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with

its everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we

have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World.

'I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or

even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest

infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis

the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever

thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is

called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.'

CHAPTER X

PAUSE

Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such

circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdröckh through the various

successive states and stages of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and

almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself

seems to consider as Conversion. 'Blame not the word,' says he;

'rejoice rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, has come to

light in our modern Era, though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The

Old World knew nothing of Conversion; instead of an _Ecce Homo_, they

had only some _Choice of Hercules_. It was a new-attained progress in

the Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home to the

bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a hallucination, and

to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs,

your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists.'

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdröckh

commences: we are henceforth to see him 'work in well-doing,' with the

spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal

Workshop he so panted for is even this same Actual ill-furnished

Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself:

'Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now

alive but has tools. The basest of created animalcules, the Spider

itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within

its head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with

stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do

something: this let him _do_.--Tools? Hast thou not a Brain,

furnished, furnishable with some glimmerings of Light; and three

fingers to hold a Pen withal? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of

practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working Tool:

greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by Pens. For

strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in

continual restless flux, it is appointed that _Sound_, to appearance

the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of all things. The

WORD is well said to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine,

can create as by a _Fiat_. Awake, arise! Speak forth what is in thee;

what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher

task than that of Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the

meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour enough therein to

spend and be spent?

'By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a

handicraft,' adds Teufelsdröckh, 'have I thenceforth abidden. Writings

of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am _I_?), have fallen,

perhaps not altogether void, into the mighty seed-field of Opinion;

fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. I

thank the Heavens that I have now found my Calling; wherein, with or

without perceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere.

'Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, 'but this and the other pregnant

Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working Institution; like

a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now

stretching-out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the

air to lodge in,--may have been properly my doing? Some one's doing,

it without doubt was; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did

first of all take beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?' Does

Teufelsdröckh here glance at that 'SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF

PROPERTY (_Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft_),' of which so many

ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these inexpressible

Paper-bags? 'An Institution,' hints he, 'not unsuitable to the wants

of the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can

the Society number, among its office-bearers or corresponding members,

the highest Names, if not the highest Persons, in Germany, England,

France; and contributions, both of money and of meditation, pour-in

from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of

the world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round

this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdröckh mean, then, to give himself out as

the originator of that so notable _Eigenthums-conservirende_

('Owndom-conserving') _Gesellschaft_; and if so, what, in the Devil's

name, is it? He again hints: 'At a time when the divine Commandment,

_Thou shalt not steal_, wherein truly, if well understood, is

comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's

Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoléon, and all Codes,

Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man has hitherto

devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his

social guidance: at a time, I say, when this divine Commandment has

all-but faded away from the general remembrance; and, with little

disguise, a new opposite Commandment, _Thou shalt steal_, is

everywhere promulgated,--it perhaps behooved, in this universal dotage

and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and

rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of

Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are

sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived

to hear it asserted that _we have no Property in our very Bodies, but

only an accidental Possession and Life-rent_, what is the issue to be

looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited

fall-traps, keep-down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except

perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect us against whole

meat-devouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If,

therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy,

from what hand that perhaps not ill-written _Program_ in the Public

Journals, with its high _Prize-Questions_ and so liberal _Prizes_,

could have proceeded,--let him now cease such wonder; and, with

undivided faculty, betake himself to the _Concurrenz_ (Competition).'

We ask: Has this same 'perhaps not ill-written _Program_,' or any

other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving Society,

fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal foreign or

domestic? If so, what are those _Prize-Questions_; what are the terms

of Competition, and when and where? No printed Newspaper-leaf, no

farther light of any sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags! Or is

the whole business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse

inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdröckh, meaning much or

nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and-loose with us?

* * * * *

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to a painful

suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun to haunt him;

paralysing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his

thorny Biographical task a labour of love. It is a suspicion grounded

perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more

and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdröckh,

in whom underground humours and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel

within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these

Autobiographical Documents are partly a mystification! What if many a

so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no

direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only

some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps

significantly enough, shadowing-forth the same! Our theory begins to

be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but

hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in that case we scruple

not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to

make fools of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so

known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdröckh, would all at once

frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor and a German

Hofrath; and not rather deceptively _in_lock both Editor and Hofrath

in the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said citadel

(having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, how

the fools would look?

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps find himself

short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink being

all-but invisible, we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the

following: 'What are your historical Facts; still more your

biographical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Mankind, by

stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts? The Man is the

spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became. Facts are

engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how

your Blockhead (_Dummkopf_) studies not their Meaning; but simply

whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral!

Still worse is it with your Bungler (_Pfuscher_): such I have seen

reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking

the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was

the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present

boasts himself, might mistake the Teufelsdröckh Serpent-of-Eternity in

like manner? For which reason it was to be altered, not without

underhand satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his

half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a

Figure, he cares not whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; and

indeed, so strange is the Professor, can never say. If our suspicion

be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable ways, not our necessary

circumspectness, bear the blame.

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted

Editor determines here to shut these Paper-bags for the present. Let

it suffice that we know of Teufelsdröckh, so far, if 'not what he did,

yet what he became:' the rather, as his character has now taken its

ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be looked

for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche: and such,

wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what complex

gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere external

Life element, Teufelsdröckh reaches his University Professorship, and

the Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering her now

fixed nature,--would be comparatively an unproductive task, were we

even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and

impossible one. His outward Biography, therefore, which, at the

Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned utterly into spray-vapour, may

hover in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. Enough that

by survey of certain 'pools and plashes,' we have ascertained its

general direction; do we not already know that, by one way and other,

it _has_ long since rained-down again into a stream; and even now, at

Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the _Philosophy of

Clothes_, and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? Over much

invaluable matter, that lies scattered, like jewels among

quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs we may have occasion to

glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place:

meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended.

If now, before reopening the great _Clothes-Volume_, we ask what our

degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has been, towards right

understanding of the _Clothes-Philosophy_, let not our discouragement

become total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over

Chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet

they drift straggling on the Flood; how far they will reach, when once

the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be

matter of conjecture.

So much we already calculate: Through many a little loop-hole, we have

had glimpses into the internal world of Teufelsdröckh; his strange

mystic, almost magic Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradually

drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas

on TIME, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible

with such, may by and by prove significant. Still more may his

somewhat peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to

Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one _Garment_, a 'Living

Garment,' woven and ever a-weaving in the 'Loom of Time;' is not here,

indeed, the outline of a whole _Clothes-Philosophy_; at least the

arena it is to work in? Remark, too, that the Character of the Man,

nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid

so much tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a

certain indomitable Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to

loom-forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the

rest were based and built?

Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdröckh's Biography, allowing

it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as

it were preappointed for Clothes-Philosophy? To look through the Shows

of things into Things themselves he is led and compelled. The

'Passivity' given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his

fortune. Everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in

any Employment, in any public Communion, he has no portion but

Solitude, and a life of Meditation. The whole energy of his existence

is directed, through long years, on one task: that of enduring pain,

if he cannot cure it. Thus everywhere do the Shows of things oppress

him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction: only by

victoriously penetrating into Things themselves can he find peace and

a stronghold. But is not this same looking through the Shows, or

Vestures, into the Things, even the first preliminary to a _Philosophy

of Clothes_? Do we not, in all this, discern some beckonings towards

the true higher purport of such a Philosophy; and what shape it must

assume with such a man, in such an era?

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader is not utterly

without guess whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all the

fantastic Dream-Grottoes through which, as is our lot with

Teufelsdröckh, he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles

some twinkling of a steady Polar Star.

BOOK THIRD

CHAPTER I

INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY

As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdröckh, from an

early part of this Clothes-Volume, has more and more exhibited

himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what

force of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World;

recognising in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went,

only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence

thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old

rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other

everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers,

and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true

Platonic Mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed by thus casting

his Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what such,

more or less complete, rending and burning of Garments throughout the

whole compass of Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to; the

rather as he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like

Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return

to the savage state: all this our readers are now bent to discover;

this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport of Professor

Teufelsdröckh's Philosophy of Clothes.

Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much

evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We are to guide our

British Friends into the new Gold-country, and show them the mines;

nowise to dig-out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all

time inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and

enrich himself.

Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of the

Professor's can our course now more than formerly be straightforward,

step by step, but at best leap by leap. Significant Indications

stand-out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both

widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a

Whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the

other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together,

a passable Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only

method. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild

matter about _Perfectibility_, has seemed worth clutching at:

'Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History,' says

Teufelsdröckh, 'is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of

Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident

passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some

degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a

suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a

Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the

Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across

all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in

unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who

therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods,

as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on

tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a

nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living

Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through

which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its

celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with

some prospect of victuals, and an honourable Mastership in

Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as

the crown of long faithful sewing,--was nowise satisfaction enough to

such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from

that far country, came Splendours and Terrors; for this poor

Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity,

wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery

to him.

'The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained Watchers and

Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with unaffected

tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such

doubts, to "drink beer and dance with the girls." Blind leaders of the

blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were

their shovel-hats scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons

girt-on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing,

and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,--if Man were

but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand

Reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to

his Leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher

than Ætna, had been heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and

would not lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent

agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free: how

its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant

spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of

Heaven! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place

than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine.--"So bandaged, and hampered, and

hemmed in," groaned he, "with thousand requisitions, obligations,

straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move: not my own

am I, but the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is high, and

Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why

not; what binds me here? Want, want!--Ha, of what? Will all the

shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land of Light?

Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the woods:

the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed me; and for

Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather!"

'Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdröckh, 'is one of the

Arts I never practised; therefore shall I not decide whether this

subject were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed

to me as if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more

and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in

its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there

is in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and

understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he

spreads-out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by

unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous

all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou

noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the

heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows

jerk, and in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee

across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and

Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in

broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he!

'Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height;

and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. Surely if, as

D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the

greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by

stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns; and greater

than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of

his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in

half-savage Pride, undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a

place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from his

Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still

Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly,

was that Tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was

scornfully preached abroad: but greater is the Leather Hull, for the

same sermon was preached there, and not in Scorn but in Love.'

* * * * *

George Fox's 'perennial suit,' with all that it held, has been worn

quite into ashes for nigh two centuries: why, in a discussion on the

_Perfectibility of Society_, reproduce it now? Not out of blind

sectarian partisanship: Teufelsdröckh himself is no Quaker; with all

his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene at the North

Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms?

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more meant in this

passage than meets the ear. At the same time, who can avoid smiling at

the earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an

underhand satire in it), with which that 'Incident' is here brought

forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as

he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdröckh

anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of

the community, by way of testifying against the 'Mammon-god,' and

escaping from what he calls 'Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,' where

doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked

sufficiently,--will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of

Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside

its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a

second-skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and

Manchester, and Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were

reduced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For

neither would Teufelsdröckh's mad daydream, here as we presume

covertly intended, of levelling Society (_levelling_ it indeed with a

vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attaining the

political effects of Nudity without its frigorific or other

consequences,--be thereby realised. Would not the rich man purchase a

waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and the high-born Belle step-forth

in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy: the black cowhide being

left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world; and so all the old

Distinctions be re-established?

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his

sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are but a part

thereof?