Not less questionable is his Chapter on _Church-Clothes_, which has
the farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here
translate it entire:--
"By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean infinitely more
than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher
Sunday Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes
are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the _Vestures_, under which men have
at various periods embodied and represented for themselves the Religious
Principle; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World with a
sensible and practically active Body, so that it might dwell among them
as a living and life-giving WORD.
"These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures and
garnitures of Human Existence. They are first spun and woven, I may say,
by that wonder of wonders, SOCIETY; for it is still only when 'two or
three are gathered together,' that Religion, spiritually existent,
and indeed indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly
manifests itself (as with 'cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be
embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. Mystical, more than
magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward:
here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking
heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward,
does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible.
How true is that of Novalis: 'It is certain, my Belief gains quite
_infinitely_ the moment I can convince another mind thereof'! Gaze thou
in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays the lambent fire
of Kindness, or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger;
feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with
the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all
one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grappling
Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But
if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much
more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost ME is, as it
were, brought into contact with inmost ME!
"Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are first spun and woven
by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, Society becomes
possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and
present, may well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or
other of these three predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying
Church, which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach
and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and third and
worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium
prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant
Chapter-houses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere
speech and chanting, let him," says the oracular Professor, "read on,
light of heart (_getrosten Muthes_).
"But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church-Clothes specially
recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without
such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will not
exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body
Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it; and all your
Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the
Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues (lying _under_ such
SKIN), whereby Society stands and works;--then is Religion the
inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm
Circulation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones
and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic
vitality; the SKIN would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting
rawhide; and Society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men
were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not
continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred,
savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say,
the very dust and dead body of Society would have evaporated and
become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the
Church-Clothes to civilized or even to rational men.
"Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church-Clothes have gone
sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become
mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit
any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid
accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you
with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life,--some
generation-and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and
in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith
to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or
Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is
a Sham-priest (_Schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it
doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be
torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to
burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes.
"All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second
Volume, _On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society_; which volume,
as treating practically of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture
of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the
Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my work on _Clothes_, and is
already in a state of forwardness."
And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added,
does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular
chapter on Church-Clothes!