THE PHOENIX
Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them
numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these
Writings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for
conclusion, that Teufelsdröckh is one of those who consider Society,
properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the
gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture,
hold us from Dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and
personal war! He says expressly: 'For the last three centuries, above
all for the last three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial
Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, where lies the
Life-essence of Society, has been smote-at and perforated, needfully
and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and Society,
long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for
those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will
they endure, galvanise as you may, beyond two days.'
'Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, 'where there is no longer
any Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but
only of a common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated,
regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neighbour, clutches
what he can get, and cries "Mine!" and calls it Peace, because, in the
cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far
cunninger sort, can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has
become an incredible tradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is
a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest
has no tongue but for plate-licking: and your high Guides and
Governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately
proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave us alone of _your_ guidance, such
light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and sleep!
'Thus, too,' continues he, 'does an observant eye discern everywhere
that saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered
Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Over-work; the Rich, still more
wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Over-growth. The Highest in
rank, at length, without honour from the Lowest; scarcely, with a
little mouth-honour, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in
the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof
men grudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word,
the CHURCH fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE
shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!'
We might ask, are there many 'observant eyes,' belonging to practical
men in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is
it only from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ that such
wonders are visible? Teufelsdröckh contends that the aspect of a
'deceased or expiring Society' fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs
may read. 'What, for example,' says he, 'is the universally-arrogated
Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? For
some half century, it has been the thing you name "Independence."
Suspicion of "Servility," of reverence for Superiors, the very dogleech
is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and
you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible
freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion,
why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?'
But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of
Nature? 'The Soul Politic having departed,' says Teufelsdröckh, 'what
can follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid
putrescence! Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching
with its bier, and chanting loud pæans, towards the funeral-pile,
where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the
most, the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that
these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will
ultimately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing
Institutions of Society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased
to be doubtful.
'Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament
come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will
attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious
phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear
of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanisers are
a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has
not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among
ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other,
within the last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps
England, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among
Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not
that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs
no Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the doctrine everywhere
known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in these
times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise
without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it
requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes
enough.--Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding!
It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel
will be rabid: then woe to the Huntsmen, with or without their whips!
They should have given the quadrupeds water,' adds he; 'the water,
namely, of Knowledge and of Life, while it was yet time.'
Thus, if Professor Teufelsdröckh can be relied on, we are at this hour
in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless 'Armament
of Mechanisers' and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! 'The
world,' says he, 'as it needs must, is under a process of devastation
and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open
quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough
annihilate the past Forms of Society; replace them with what it may.
For the present, it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual
Interests are once _divested_, these innumerable stript-off Garments
shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder Rags among them be quilted
together into one huge Irish watchcoat for the defence of the Body
only!'--This, we think, is but Job's-news to the humane reader.
'Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdröckh, 'who can hinder it; who is there
that can clutch into the wheel-spokes of Destiny, and say to the
Spirit of the Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we
yielded to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the
best.'
Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from
what stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdröckh individually had
yielded to this same 'Inevitable and Inexorable' heartily enough; and
now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical
Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that
the World was a 'huge Ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old
Symbols' were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and
suffocate him? What with those 'unhunted Helots' of his; and the
uneven _sic-vos-non-vobis_ pressure and hard-crashing collision he is
pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty
Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from
their glass eyes, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,'--we feel
entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be thrown to
the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe himself in that 'Pinnacle
of Weissnichtwo,' he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the
monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings,
halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope,
should go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces
and Temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down,
that new and better might be built! Remarkable in this point of view
are the following sentences.
'Society,' says he, 'is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead
Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume
a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and
fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity.
Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered together, there is
Society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and
stupendous structures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching
upwards to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or
the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a
Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows.'
Indeed, we already heard him speak of 'Religion, in unnoticed nooks,
weaving for herself new Vestures';--Teufelsdröckh himself being one of
the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange
aphorism of Saint-Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to
be said: _L'âge d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a placé jusqu'ici dans
le passé, est devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition
has hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us.'--But listen again:
'When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be
sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a
Napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and
like moths consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious
beards will get singed.
'For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be
completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the
deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old
house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen
Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle-Pageants, to
the extent of three-hundred years and more after all life and
sacredness had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time
the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen
contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after,
say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid,
the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we too find ourselves
again in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,--were
it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?'
Thus is Teufelsdröckh content that old sick Society should be
deliberately burnt (alas! with quite other fuel than spicewood); in
the faith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one
will rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of
Indicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious
reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in
anger, say or think: From a _Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular
Professor in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services,
Society, bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a
kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to
his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future, which
resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than
of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country.