Sartor Resartus

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Title: Sartor Resartus
The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Posting Date: August 5, 2008 [EBook #1051]
Release Date: September, 1997
Language: English
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Produced by Ron Burkey
SARTOR RESARTUS:
The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh
By Thomas Carlyle.
1831
BOOK I.
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 Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled
thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest
cranny or dog-hole 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
labors 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, Bichats.
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 cow-horn, emit his _Horet 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 tumult 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 endeavor, 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 abtruse 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
Teufelsdrockh 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. Teufelsdrockh, J. U. D. etc. Stillschweigen und
Cognie. 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 well-nigh
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 Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy,
in our German Temple of Honor."
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: _Mochte 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of both which
novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the
significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytizing 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 Teufelsdrockh 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
Teufelsdrockh "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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is
introduced, crystallization 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
Teufelsdrockh," 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: [*] it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of
Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath ears, let
him hear.
* 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 connection of
ours with Teufelsdrockh, 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_; Teufelsdrockh 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 favor 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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, was 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 contributions 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_, [*] and for a moment
lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full Coffee-house (it was _Zur
Grunen 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
Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these
pages beheld him no more.
* 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
Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 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 Teufelsdrockh, "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 (_Zeitbedurfniss_); 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 Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances at the _Grune
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, Teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more than to the
most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and
scrutinize him with due power of vision! We enjoyed, what not three
men 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_, showing
nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of
Teufelsdrockh; 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," we have 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
Schlosskirche weather-cock, 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,
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 To-day, without a
Yesterday or a To-morrow; 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
thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night,
what thinks Bootes 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 coverlet of vapors, 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 buckle-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
position; 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 Blucher 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 Teufelsdrockh; only some once in the month she half-forcibly
made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily
saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery
of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her _Erdbeben_
(earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence;
nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would
he have been to sit here philosophizing 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 Teufelsdrockh,
and Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few
in these cases, was probably the best: _Er hat Gemuth und Geist,
hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst; ist
gegenwartig aber halb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt_, "He has heart and
talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of utterance, or
favor 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 Teufelsdrockh,
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 Teufelsdrockh 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
Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which,
except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 color 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 such
like 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 specially may it now be declared that
Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research,
philosophic and even poetic vigor, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 ormolu," 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 stithy 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
shortcomings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise:
if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his
Transcendental Philosophies, and humor 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 Teufelsdrockh 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; sheers 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
fables_, and Laplace's _Mecanique Celeste_, 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 vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step
forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing
amid flame and splendor 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
Teufelsdrockh, 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 Humor, 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 humor, 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 Teufelsdrockh! 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 Humor, 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, Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 unnamable; 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 endeavor.
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 endeavors, 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 Color! From the soberest
drab to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold
themselves in choice of Color: if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent,
so does the Color 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, Teufelsdrockh, 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 Nurnbergers 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 hilibegs (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
civilized countries.
"Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness;
nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide
sylph-like 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, re-genesis 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 labor 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? Teufelsdrockh
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 Orinoco 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 file-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 Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes,
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-colored,
iron-fastened Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding
itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy
(_Teufels-schmiede_) 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.--Teufelsdrockh 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
(_vermochte night aufzutreiben_)."
Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does
Teufelsdrockh, 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 every way 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
Armor_? Take, by way of example, the following sketch; as authority
for which Paulinus's _Zeitkurzende 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 untranslatable 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 Gesass_): 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
head-gear 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 (_Kragenmantel_).
"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 have humor 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, counted 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 gallooned, 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
galloons 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 Despreaux (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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 Colombian 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, Teufelsdrockh,
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: all 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! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to
expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he
undertakes to make manifest, in its thousand-fold 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 limbos, 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 favor 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 Teufelsdrockh, "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 stonewalls, 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, visualized 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 colors 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-colored 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-colors 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 ether 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 thousand-fold 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 boot-maker, 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 color,
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 Rat-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 tailorizes and
demoralizes 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 neighbor after neighbor 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 broadbrims, and overalls and
mudboots, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 tailorize and demoralize 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, Teufelsdrockh, 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
anatomized;' 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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
Civilized 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 reimpart) incurably
infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the
maddest?
"It will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh,
"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 civilized 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
Teufelsdrockh; "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 Teufelsdrockh; 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
Teufelsdrockh 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 Colors 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 vapor 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 Gypsy-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 honorable, 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 favor with Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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
daylight, 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 _Mecanique Celeste_ 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 recognizes
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 Cattle-stall,--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
sand-blind 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
cloud-capt, 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 North-wind, 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 glows 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 Dog-star; 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, recognized as such,
or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and
colorless? 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-Mantel_), 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 honorable 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 knew 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 (_Gemuth_), 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 Endeavor lies
before you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, "do I dilate
on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh'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
Autobiography; 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
Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 favor 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 sympathizing 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
Teufelsdrockh'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 connection, without
recognizable 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 wash-bills, 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 volatilize 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 Teufelsdrockh 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, endeavoring to evolve
printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as
he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing 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 II.
CHAPTER I. GENESIS.
In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether
from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized 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 neighbors 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 Konig_, 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 valor 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 Busching'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
house-mother 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 honor they hung,
looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in
fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising
many-colored 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 farther parley unfolding,
he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with
green Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben Leute, hier bringe ein
unschatzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller Acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt
es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, wird's einst
zuruckgefordert_. '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 parlor-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-colored 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 neighboring 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-colored 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 endeavor: 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 TEUFELSDROCKH, 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 moralizing, and
embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,
Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. 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 clew. 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 (_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other
Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name
Teufelsdrockh, 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 humor? 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 seered 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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, endeavoring
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 grandnephew; 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 Nursling 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
Teufelsdrockh'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 under-currents of roguish
whim, for the present stands pledged in honor, 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 Teufelsdrockh: "Kind Nature, that
art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut with
auroral radiance; and for thy Nursling 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 frost-nipt, 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-colored 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 outpost 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 laborers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the
young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. "Glorious summer
twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror
and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his gold-purple
emblazonry, and all his fireclad bodyguard (of Prismatic Colors); 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 Co-operation, 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 humor 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 discolored-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
favorable influences accompany him through life, especially through
childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded 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 vigor 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 Teufelsdrockh,
"I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn might, by
favorable or unfavorable 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 gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect,
could not but appear another Ulysses and 'much-enduring Man.' Eagerly I
hung upon his tales, when listening neighbors 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 neighborly
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
hurry-burly. Nut-brown maids and nut-brown 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 ox-goads; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate
barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their
crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg Pedlers, 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 particolored 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 colors 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 overshadowed 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 bourn 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 favorable 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 unfavorably 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, every
way 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 puzzle 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 every way 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 behoove the Editor of
these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor.
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, Teufelsdrockh 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 down-bent,
broken-hearted, 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 mid-day when Caesar, 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 agonized 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 school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," he
says, "mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which
bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to
death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strong
tyrannize 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 (_Ungestum_) 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 Nurnberg 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 Hod-man is
discharged, or reduced to hod-bearing; 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 Field-marshals for killing, there
should be world-honored 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 honor, 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 labored 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, Teufelsdrockh 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 Humor
of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals
itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of
colors, some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of
what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh 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_, Teufelsdrockh 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 realized 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 favorite,
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 re-painting 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, fill 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,
endeavor 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 alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms
the new Spring has been vouchsafed."
That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth,
Teufelsdrockh 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 favorite 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,
recognized 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.
Teufelsdrockh 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
nightmare, 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, new-born 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 vapor
than of clear flame?
From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is to
be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, 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 humor, 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 Zahdarm, 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 humor 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 Zahdarm 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 Miseducation, 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
warm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed 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 realized Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes
Teufelsdrockh: 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 Day-moth has
capabilities in this kind; and ever organizes 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 Brass-smith'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 (_Zeitfurst_), 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 wire-drawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh 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_),
preappointed 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
realize 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 war 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, Teufelsdrockh 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 connections, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 patronize 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf
Donnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN THEE schonstens 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 _AEsthetic Tea_! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips
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 Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_, she can be no
other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual
tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, 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 Zahdarms," 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 _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was
due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing
was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh
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
honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the
world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable
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 Teufelsdrockh 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 (_Madchen_)
are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young
gentlemen (_Bubchen_) 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,
vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's
endeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet
unendeavoring, 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
Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 characterizes 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 ardor
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 Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed,
and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), my
Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted,
as my favorite 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 (_balkenhock_), 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 connection he had ever succeeded in forming, his connection
with the Zahdarm Family, seems to have been paralyzed, 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 TUMULT DEVOLVENS,
IN STERCUS
PALAM CONVERTIT.
NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM
OPERA SEQUUNTUR.
SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS,
FIMETUM ADSPICE.
PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].
CHAPTER V. ROMANCE.
"For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, "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. Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh! 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 Northwest 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 (_Personlichkeit_) 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 Teufelsdrockh 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-colored angel-plumage; or hovering mute and inaccessible on
the outskirts of _AEsthetic 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 wheresoever 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 carbonized tinder, of Irritability;
with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the
whole lying in such hot neighborhood, 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 _AEsthetic Tea_," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance,
kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework,
and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor,
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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh
in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans himself; with what
specialties of successive configuration, splendor and color, 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; high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent and
insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of moneyed
relatives. But how came "the Wanderer" into her circle? Was it by the
humid vehicle of _AEsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere Business?
Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as
an 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 Garden-house, where sit the choicest party of dames
and cavaliers: if not engaged in AEsthetic 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
Garden-house inferior in respectability to the noble Mansion itself.
"Embowered amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors
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 SUIT
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 Humor 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
colorings of Rumor, 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 favor for him? Was the attraction,
the agitation mutual, then; pole and pole trembling towards contact,
when once brought into neighborhood? 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 (_Damon_) 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
"Philisitine;" who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly
pouring forth Philistinism (_Philistriositaten_.); 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. Gayly 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 vapor; 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 aerial
on the mountaintops, 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 Teufelsdrockh! 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 (_Zeitbuhne_), 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 enrolled 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 AEolian 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. Teufelsdrockh 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 splendor 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 organized? 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 Teufelsdrockh 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 TEUFELSDROCKH.
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 demeanor.
To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the
so passionate Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 vial: 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 toy-box, 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 Lifebreath: 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 Teufelsdrockh 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
only 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 favorable 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 strait 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 thee 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 splendor, 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 postilions wore wedding
favors: 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 unrecognizing salutation they
passed me; plunged down amid the neighboring 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
connections, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink
out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatsirender_), living by the grace
of God in some European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the
neighborhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious,
quick-changing; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and highways,
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 spiritualized, vaporized. 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 endeavor.
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.
Teufelsdrockh 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 favorable. "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 Phantasms 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 civilization, 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
Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh! 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 Teufelsdrockh_; 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 justness than originality: "Men 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 Phantasm, made up of Desire and Fear, of
emanations from the Gallows and from Doctor 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 Wordmonger 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 _Siecle 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 rain-proof, 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 the 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. Oh, 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 Teufelsdrockh
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 Drug-shop 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 after-shine (_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 dew-drop, 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 Death-song,
that wild _Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet_ (Happy whom _he_
finds in Battle's splendor), 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 humor, 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 art
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-baptized 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 mean while, become only the more tumultuous, and difficult
to keep secret.
Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps
discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. Not
wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdrockh now storm through the world;
at worst as a spectra-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 Tubal-cain 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 Schonbrunn, 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
fervor, 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?
Konig 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, hedge-rows, and pleasant dwellings,
blown away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate,
hideous Place of Skulls.--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. Straightaway 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 Smollett, 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-colored 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,
favorable 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Pine-chasms 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 wagon-load 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 carriere 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 Teufelsdrockh'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 zuruck, 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
Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh! 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 Teufelsdrockh, "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
Well-doing_, 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-splendor;
but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in
darkness, under earthly vapors!--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 (_tuchtigen Manner_) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush
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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh,
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 endeavor 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-todtung_), 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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
Way-farings, 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
vapor 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 vapor
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-splendors, 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 fellowman: with an
infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou
not tried, 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 Endeavors, 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 Endeavoring, 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 joint-stock 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 said, 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 honored, 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-inspiredd Doctrine art thou
also honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful
Afflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! Oh, 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 splendor; 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 apostrophizes 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 such like: 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 shalt 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
To-day; 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh
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 honor enough therein to spend and be spent?
"By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a
handicraft," adds Teufelsdrockh, "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 seedfield 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 Teufelsdrockh,
here glance at that "SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY
(_Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft_)," of which so many ambiguous
notices glide spectra-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
Teufelsdrockh 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 Lycurgrus's Constitutions, Justinian's
Pandects, the Code Napoleon, 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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;
paralyzing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his
thorny Biographical task a labor 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 Teufelsdrockh, in
whom underground humors 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 noticed, 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 bead-rolls 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 Teufelsdrockh 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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, Teufelsdrockh, 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-vapor, 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 loophole, we have
had glimpses into the internal world of Teufelsdrockh; 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 Teufelsdrockh'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-Grottos through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh,
he must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a
steady Polar Star.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY.
As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdrockh, 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;
recognizing 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 Teufelsdrockh'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
Teufelsdrockh, "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 honorable 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 Splendors 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 neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters
of that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected 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 AEtna, 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 Teufelsdrockh, "is one of the Arts
I never practiced; 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, as
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: Teufelsdrockh, 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 Teufelsdrockh
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
Teufelsdrockh'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 realized.
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?
CHAPTER II. CHURCH-CLOTHES.
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!
CHAPTER III. SYMBOLS.
Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure
utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculations
on _Symbols_. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our
compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of
"Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;" and how "Man thereby, though
based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend
down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible,
indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth." Let us, omitting these
high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from
the Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and
practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as
it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious
remarks:--
"The benignant efficacies of Concealment," cries our Professor, "who
shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised
to them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves
together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into
the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William
the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most
undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they
were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do
thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how much
clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those
mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut
out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of
concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought,
so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the
greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern,
Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I
might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.
"Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in
Silence: neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even to
thy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' Is not Shame (_Schaam_)
the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like other
plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the
eye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privily
thyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends,
when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example,
the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues
of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them
up by the roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us
the dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing Press with
its Newspapers: _du Himmel_! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's
Goose?
"Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and connected
with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _Symbols_. In
a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here therefore, by
Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance. And
if both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, how
expressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple
Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite
new emphasis.
"For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the
small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In the
Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less
distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite;
the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible,
and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided
and commanded, made happy, made wretched: He everywhere finds himself
encompassed with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: the
Universe is but one vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, what
is man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical;
a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a
'Gospel of Freedom,' which he, the 'Messias of Nature,' preaches, as he
can, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment
of a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, in
the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real."
"Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast with
these high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on the
verge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too,
of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we
consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights.
Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himself
to be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but to fancy
himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was
reserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe one huge
Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other;
and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed to
haunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priest-ridden,
befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism
smothers him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh choked
out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In
Earth and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear for
nothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind him
to pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly
compute these, and mechanize them to grind the other way?
"Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had but
to bid him open his eyes and look. In which country, in which time, was
it hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on by
calculated or calculable 'Motives'? What make ye of your Christianities,
and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillaise Hymns, and Reigns of
Terror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been in _Love_?
Did he never stand so much as a contested Election? Leave him to Time,
and the medicating virtue of Nature."
"Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not our Logical,
Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might
say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to
lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense
but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the
dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness
(thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams in
from the circumambient Eternity, and colors with its own hues our little
islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou
canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving
retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred living
soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which
they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross,
would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian
Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser
Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously
observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a
horse-shoe? It is in and through _Symbols_ that man, consciously or
unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover,
are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth,
and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes
for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?
"Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have both an extrinsic
and intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. What, for instance, was
in that clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign
in their _Bauernkrieg_ (Peasants' War)? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round
which the Netherland _Gueux_, glorying in that nickname of Beggars,
heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip himself?
Intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidental
Standards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; in
which union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and
borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood,
the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; and
generally all national or other sectarian Costumes and Customs: they
have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth; but have
acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there glimmers
something of a Divine Idea; as through military Banners themselves, the
Divine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring; in some instances of Freedom, of
Right. Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the
Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.
"Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has intrinsic meaning,
and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. Let but the
Godlike manifest itself to Sense, let but Eternity look, more or less
visibly, through the Time-Figure (_Zeitbild_)! Then is it fit that men
unite there; and worship together before such Symbol; and so from day to
day, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness.
"Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art: in them (if thou know a
Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking
through Time; the Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic
value gradually superadd itself: thus certain _Iliads_, and the like,
have, in three thousand years, attained quite new significance. But
nobler than all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men;
for what other Work of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the Death of
the Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not discern
symbolic meaning? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory,
resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (if
thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, and some
gleam of the latter peering through.
"Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or Poet has risen
into Prophet, and all men can recognize a present God, and worship the
Same: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religious
Symbols, what we call _Religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture
or the other, and could worse or better body forth the Godlike: some
Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic.
If thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, look
on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his
Biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought
not yet reached: this is Christianity and Christendom; a Symbol of quite
perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be
anew inquired into, and anew made manifest.
"But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness of Symbols, so
likewise in his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates them;
and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has
not ceased to be true; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the
distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like
a receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be
reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as
know that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic
Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African
Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even
Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise,
their culmination, their decline.
"Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is but
a piece of gilt wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and
truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, 'of little price.' A right Conjurer
might I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the
divine virtue they once held.
"Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity,
then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and
Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow
superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding,
what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World
will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can
shape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such
too will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as
the average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can
so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it.
"When, as the last English Coronation [*] I was preparing," concludes this
wonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion of
England,' he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King,
had brought it so far that he could now 'mount his horse with little
assistance,' I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh
superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters
and rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World)
dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if
you shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce
suffocation?"
* That of George IV.--ED.
CHAPTER IV. HELOTAGE.
At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting,
to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for the
Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn
leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag
_Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire
little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand,
which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right
place here.
Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and
machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as
glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of
Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally
eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath;
something like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms
of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there
light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; open mouths opening wider
and wider; a world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by
its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating
one another. To make air for himself in which strangulation, choking
enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found,
this _Institute_ of his, as the best he can do. It is only with our
Professor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves.
First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative Radical,
has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zahdarm palaces and
courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the
blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly
engrossed:--
"Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that
with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes
her man's. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein
notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of
the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face
of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness,
and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated
Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and
fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and
fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created
Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the
thick adhesions and defacements of Labor: and thy body, like thy soul,
was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty,
be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for
daily bread.
"A second man I honor, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling
for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of
Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward Harmony;
revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors,
be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward
endeavor are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman
only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers
Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not
the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have
Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These two, in all their degrees, I
honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it
listeth.
"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united;
and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also
toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing
than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one
will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of
Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light
shining in great darkness."
And again: "It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor:
we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is
worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry
and athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden
and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest;
in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him; and fitful
glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that
the lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of
earthly knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness,
like two spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while
the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed,
stupefied, almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of God;
bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there
should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call
a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by
some computations it does. The miserable fraction of Science which our
united Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is
not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?"
Quite in an opposite strain is the following: "The old Spartans had a
wiser method; and went out and hunted down their Helots, and speared and
spitted them, when they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions
of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and
standing armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most
thickly peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot
all the able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let
Governments think of this. The expense were trifling: nay the very
carcasses would pay it. Have them salted and barrelled; could not you
victual therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers,
in workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of
them, might see good to keep alive?"
"And yet," writes he farther on, "there must be something wrong. A
full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high
as two hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. A
full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world
could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang
himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly devised
article, even as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing
on his two Legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones,
and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty
to a hundred Horses!"
"True, thou Gold-Hofrath," cries the Professor elsewhere: "too crowded
indeed! Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe
have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? How thick
stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round
ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the
Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey,
Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year, as I have
understood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others.
Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing,
still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will
enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses
of indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe
and war-chariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? Where are
they?--Preserving their Game!"
CHAPTER V. 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 Teufelsdrockh 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, galvanize 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 neighbor, turned against his neighbor, 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 Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly,
of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length,
without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor,
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 STATE 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? Teufelsdrockh 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 dog-leech
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 Teufelsdrockh, "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 paeans, 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 Mechanizers 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 Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour
in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of
Mechanizers" 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
watch-coat for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is but
Job's-news to the humane reader.
"Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there
that can clutch into the wheelspokes 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 Teufelsdrockh, 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;"--Teufelsdrockh 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'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le
passe, 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 to 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 Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be
deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); 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.
CHAPTER VI. OLD CLOTHES.
As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is in
practice probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are
penetrated and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural
Courtesy shines through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight,
making a rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds;
nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from the
crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he
expresses himself on this head:--
"Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In
Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as
it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully
insists on its own rights, I discern no special connection with wealth
or birth: but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due
from all men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his
post, and worth anything when there, this, with so much else, would be
reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neighbor's schoolmaster; till
at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with,
than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not
that the clod he broke was created in Heaven.
"For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou ALIVE;
is not this thy brother ALIVE? 'There is but one temple in the world,'
says Novalis, 'and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier
than this high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this
Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a
human Body.'
"On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and
whereas the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with
a shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no
hat whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation and
Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing
serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity;
and too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. It would go to
the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in
these times); therefore must we withhold it.
"The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells
and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer
lodges, but only the pure emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty,
or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do
reverence: to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddling
animal with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who
ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden
skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade
of hypocrisy, a practical deception: for how often does the Body
appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only! Whoso would avoid
falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good
to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act without
obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free
course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda
is not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth
Garment with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more,
for I now fear no deception, of myself or of others.
"Did not King _Toomtabard_, or, in other words, John Baliol, reign long
over Scotland; the man John Baliol being quite gone, and only the 'Toom
Tabard' (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells in a suit
of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its honors! No haughty looks,
no scornful gesture: silent and serene, it fronts the world; neither
demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries
the physiognomy of its Head: but the vanity and the stupidity, and
goose-speech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is
stretched out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity,
depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the Waistcoat
hides no evil passion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now dwells
not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of sense, from the
carking cares and foul vices of the World; and rides there, on its
Clothes-horse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified
Apparition, visiting our low Earth.
"Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilized
Life, the Capital of England; and meditated, and questioned Destiny,
under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan
broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;--often have I
turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart
I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a
Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their
silence: the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions,
Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'the
Prison men call Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom
Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that bearded
Jewish High-priest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom,
summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has
three Hats,--a real triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude of
wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as
he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as
if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 'Ghosts of Life, come to
Judgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his
Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall
reappear. Oh, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go
out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and
repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say
whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with
its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear,
where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty
and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast
out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil,--then is
Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole
Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and
jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes,
farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,--the Bedlam of Creation!"
To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem overcharged.
We too have walked through Monmouth Street; but with little feeling of
"Devotion:" probably in part because the contemplative process is so
fatally broken in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in
that Church, and importune the worshipper with merely secular proposals.
Whereas Teufelsdrockh, might be in that happy middle state, which leaves
to the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be
allowed to linger there without molestation.--Something we would have
given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple-hat and
loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in
austerest thought" that foolish Street; which to him was a true Delphic
avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life"
rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh,
that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum
hearest the grass grow!
At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag Documents
destined for an English work, there exists nothing like an authentic
diary of this his sojourn in London; and of his Meditations among
the Clothes-shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in
conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with his
Travels), have we heard him more than allude to the subject.
For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we here find how
early the significance of Clothes had dawned on the now so distinguished
Clothes-Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth
Street, at the bottom of our own English "ink-sea," that this remarkable
Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in his
soul,--as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a
Universe!
CHAPTER VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS.
For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is burning herself,
and burning so slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a
handsome bargain would she engage to have done "within two centuries,"
there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however,
does the Professor figure it. "In the living subject," says he, "change
is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the
new is already formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning of a
World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a
dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by miracle,
and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and
Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown
about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves: and
amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind element come tones of
a melodious Death-song, which end not but in tones of a more melodious
Birth-song. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and
thou wilt see." Let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who
cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments,
mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the
spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general:--
"In vain thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art my Brother. Thy
very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in
thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I
a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not
thou! I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well.
"Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the
soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of Necessity, as we like
to choose it. More than once have I said to myself, of some perhaps
whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts:
'Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest
imaginable Glass bell,--what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but
for the world! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds,
impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from
within comes there question or response into any Post-bag; thy Thoughts
fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing
hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, that,
taking and giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time: there
has a Hole fallen out in the immeasurable, universal World-tissue, which
must be darned up again!'
"Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Messages,
paper and other Packages, going out from him and coming in, are
a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous
circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely
influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses
whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing:
all this you cannot see, but only imagine. I say, there is not a red
Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the
whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is
a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters
the centre of gravity of the Universe.
"If now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less
indissolubly does generation with generation. Hast thou ever meditated
on that word, Tradition: how we inherit not Life only, but all the
garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and
feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning,
have given it us?--Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending
Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Stillschweigen and
Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others
whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there
had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton! It was
Tubal-cain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit
of thine.
"Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more
is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Nature, without which
Nature were not. As palpable lifestreams in that wondrous Individual
Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those
main currents of what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institutions,
Polities, Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand
and know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator
thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou
wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart,
the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the
latest; that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually
embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living,
literal _Communion of Saints_, wide as the World itself, and as the
History of the World.
"Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same
Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Generations. Generations
are as the Days of toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and
the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for
new advancement. What the Father has made, the Son can make and enjoy;
but has also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things wax, and
roll onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but
ever completing. Newton has learned to see what Kepler saw; but there
is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton; he must mount to still
higher points of vision. So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time,
followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction,
as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like
sequence and perseverance: for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand
by that burning of the Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm himself at
the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I
note, the English Whig has, in the second generation, become an English
Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an
English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in
living movement, in progress faster or slower: the Phoenix soars aloft,
hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with her music; or, as
now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame,
that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer."
Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this
to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. We subjoin
another passage, concerning Titles:--
"Remark, not without surprise," says Teufelsdrockh, "how all high Titles
of Honor come hitherto from Fighting. Your _Herzog_ (Duke, _Dux_) is
Leader of Armies; your Earl (_Jarl_) is Strong Man; your Marshal cavalry
Horse-shoer. A Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of
old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable,
may it not be apprehended that such Fighting titles will cease to be
palatable, and new and higher need to be devised?
"The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity is that of
King. _Konig_ (King), anciently _Konning_, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or
which is the same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be
fitly entitled King."
"Well, also," says he elsewhere, "was it written by Theologians: a King
rules by divine right. He carries in him an authority from God, or man
will never give it him. Can I choose my own King? I can choose my own
King Popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy I may with him: but he who
is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen
for me in Heaven. Neither except in such Obedience to the Heaven-chosen
is Freedom so much as conceivable."
The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of
Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such
astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, with
our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and that generous conflict
of Parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle
for the Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable
Constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves
in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the Dead and of the
Unborn, where the Present seems little other than an inconsiderable Film
dividing the Past and the Future? In those dim long-drawn expanses, all
is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and
straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. And then with
such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the
inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant
by centuries or only by days), does he sit;--and live, you would say,
rather in any other age than in his own! It is our painful duty to
announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep,
silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us with
shuddering admiration.
Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the Elective
Franchise; at least so we interpret the following: "Satisfy yourselves,"
he says, "by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing
or will do, whether FREEDOM, heaven-born and leading heavenward, and
so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically
hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot-Box of yours; or
at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or
Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of
manufacture witnessed hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the
British constitution, even slightly?--He says, under another figure:
"But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, To
rebuild your old House from the top downwards (since you must live in
it the while), what better, what other, than the Representative Machine
will serve your turn? Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name
of Free, 'when you have but knit up my chains into ornamental
festoons.'"--Or what will any member of the Peace Society make of such
an assertion as this: "The lower people everywhere desire War. Not so
unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people--to be shot!"
Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths
of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking
round, as was our hest, for "organic filaments," we ask, may not this,
touching "Hero-worship," be of the number? It seems of a cheerful
character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how
little, may lie under it. Our readers shall look with their own eyes:--
"True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not
obey. True likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less
bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of
nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that man has
lost his faculty of Reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone
dead. Painful for man is that same rebellious Independence, when it has
become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he
feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the Higher does he feel
himself exalted.
"Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay even in this: that
man had forever cast away Fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen
into perennial Reverence, which is the higher and highest?
"Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that
whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest
revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all,
when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there
a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all
ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox
_Hero-worship_. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed,
and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou discern
the corner-stone of living rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest
time may stand secure."
Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what
Teufelsdrockh, is looking at? He exclaims, "Or hast thou forgotten Paris
and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker,
and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best,
could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a
smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair
beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though
their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish.
"But if such things," continues he, "were done in the dry tree, what
will be done in the green? If, in the most parched season of Man's
History, in the most parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was
at best but a scientific _Hortus Siccus_, bedizened with some Italian
Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for
when Life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall
have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? Know that there is in man a
quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even
plausibly counterfeits such holding. Show the dullest clodpoll, show
the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually
here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship."
Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning
themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage:--
"There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of Prophecy has gone dumb?
This is even what I dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still
Preaching enough? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every village;
and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches
what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and dost
not thou listen, and believe? Look well, thou seest everywhere a
new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some barefooted, some almost
bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously
enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These break in pieces
the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as
idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches,
where the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and
minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed
itself beneath it?"
Perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit up this
ravelled sleeve:--
"But there is no Religion?" reiterates the Professor. "Fool! I tell
thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all that lies in this
immeasurable froth-ocean we name LITERATURE? Fragments of a genuine
Church-_Homiletic_ lie scattered there, which Time will assort: nay
fractions even of a _Liturgy_ could I point out. And knowest thou no
Prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? None
to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest
forms of the Common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in
whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days,
Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Knowest
thou none such? I know him, and name him--Goethe.
"But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalm-worship;
feelest well that, where there is no ministering Priest, the people
perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake we
not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and
brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings
rise up melodiously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of all
times, as a sacred _Miserere_; their heroic Actions also, as a boundless
everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol
of the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is not
Immensity a Temple; is not Man's History, and Men's History, a perpetual
Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the
Morning Stars sing together."
CHAPTER VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM.
It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, that
the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as
we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory
Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms
enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of
Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he
courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious,
world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round
him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely
grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has
looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly
hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision,
the interior celestial Holy-of-Holies lies disclosed.
Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains
to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us
safe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may be
considered as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, with
better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Section
we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible;
but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating.
Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect
is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment,
shall study to do ours:--
"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly
begins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile,
the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that
Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried
with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a
miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific,
do not I work a miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time I
please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, or
shut Turnpike?
"'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?'
ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of
Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violation
of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first
penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been,
brought to bear on us with its Material Force.
"Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground
shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore
he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such
declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the
First Century, was full of meaning.
"'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' cries
an illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move
by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, must
believe that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'without
variableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; that
Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be
prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable
rules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those same
unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may
possibly be?
"They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulated
records of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at the
Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific
individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and
gauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that
they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say,
This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise!
These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are;
have seen some hand breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is
infinite, without bottom as without shore.
"Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets,
with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in
a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have
succeeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is this
what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;'
this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen
thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons,
and inert Balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in the
Zodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their
How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane?
"System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature
remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; and
all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and
measured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little
fraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows what
deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes)
our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble,
and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become
familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic
Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all
which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time
to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such a
minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable
All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of
Providence through AEons of AEons.
"We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whose
Author and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much as
well know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand
descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar
Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume
written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which
even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line.
As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely;
and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic
writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar
Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic
Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than some
boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible
Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one
day evolve itself, the fewest dream.
"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all.
Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers;
and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby
indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our
houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most,
forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from
the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that
our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest
simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what
is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an
ever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and so
become Transcendental?
"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of
all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the
Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is
by this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and herein
is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she
is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when,
in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I
to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen
it twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason in
Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine,
for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial
gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might be
spun, and money and money's worth realized.
"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of
Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding
Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology,
we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting
that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are
Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific,
altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through
this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name
the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it
were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest
Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire;
out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built
together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a
habitable flowery Earth rind.
"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many
other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances,
SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth
itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind
it,--lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof,
whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint
themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip
them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look
through.
"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself
Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed
over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but
all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of
Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world
we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side
of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his
fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating!
Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of
this latter. To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were
Anywhere, straightway to be _There_! Next to clap on your other felt,
and, simply by wishing that you were _Anywhen_, straightway to be
_Then_! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the
Fire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically
present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and
Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to
face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth
of that late Time!
"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past
annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only
future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already
answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded
summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet
darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down,
the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both
_are_. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe
what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all
Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space
are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal
HERE, so is it an everlasting Now.
"And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is the
white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left
behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully
receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have
journeyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend
still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with
God!--know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are
perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and
whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily
seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years,
or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou
canst not.
"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we are
sent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole
Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings,
seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should,
furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind
us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit
Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if thou
wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then,
with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest
God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my
hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand
and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither.
Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of
distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that the
true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch
forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith?
Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding
stupefactions, which Space practices on us.
"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician,
and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but the
Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves
in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and
feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and
man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself without
one.
"Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the
walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who built
these walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to
dance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with
frightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric and
Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it not
the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the
divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheus
walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing
in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and,
being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now
with thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our
hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which
happens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening in
two million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but
without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no
work that man glories in ever done.
"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from
the near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that came
transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a
stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh,
could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from
the Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy
heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou
that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in
very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through
every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a
present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God,
and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.
"Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic
Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could
not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and
tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye
as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human
Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The
good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish;
well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his
side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the
threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we?
Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and
that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it
is a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of Nothingness, take
figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is
Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not
tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song
of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our
discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide
bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel in
our mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons us
to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now
is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce
battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all
vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and
his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the
veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made
Night hideous, flitted away?--Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million
walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished
from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.
"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only
carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!
These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with
its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered
round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence
is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse,
fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but
warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more.
Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the
Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink
beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow
them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are
not, their very ashes are not.
"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation
after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing
from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and
Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one
hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly
dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--and
then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away,
and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some
wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this
mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding
grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created,
fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully
across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's
mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the
Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality
and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped
in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But
whence?--O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that
it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.
'We _are such stuff_
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life
Is rounded with a sleep!'"
CHAPTER IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE.
Here, then, arises the so momentous question: Have many British Readers
actually arrived with us at the new promised country; is the Philosophy
of Clothes now at last opening around them? Long and adventurous has the
journey been: from those outmost vulgar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man;
through his wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures;
inwards to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space
themselves! And now does the spiritual, eternal Essence of Man, and of
Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any measure to reveal itself?
Can many readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering
outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable
divided from what is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech in
_Faust_,--
"'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by; "
or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the Magician,
Shakespeare,--
"And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces,
The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself,
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind;"
begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at length stand
safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, where that
Phoenix Death-Birth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears
possible, is seen to be inevitable?
Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which the Editor,
by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude if not
complete, it cannot be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope,
that many have travelled without accident. No firm arch, overspanning
the Impassable with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only,
as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon.
Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck
character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was against us!
Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, provided with a
discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the passage,
in spite of all? Happy few! little band of Friends! be welcome, be of
courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new Whereabout;
the hand can stretch itself forth to work there: it is in this grand and
indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labor, each according
to ability. New laborers will arrive; new Bridges will be built;
nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and
repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable
even for the halt?
Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with us, joyous
and full of hope, where now is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no
longer by our side? The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar
off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: not a few, pressing
forward with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short; and now
swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards this shore, some towards
that. To these also a helping hand should be held out; at least some
word of encouragement be said.
Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utterance
Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us,--can it be hidden from
the Editor that many a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered in
head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present Work?
Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, as now, demanding with
something like a snarl: Whereto does all this lead; or what use is in
it?
In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding thy digestive
faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no use in
it; but rather the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless,
if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means
of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and through the
Clothes-Screen, as through a magical _Pierre-Pertuis_, thou lookest,
even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and
feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder,
and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,--then art thou profited
beyond money's worth; and hast a thankfulness towards our Professor;
nay, perhaps in many a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and
audibly express that same.
Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made aware that all
Symbols are properly Clothes; that all Forms whereby Spirit manifests
itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes;
and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh
cutting into measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness
of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worth-ships) are properly
a Vesture and Raiment; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves are
articles of wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea)? In which case,
must it not also be admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high one,
and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit:
that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Political
Economy, and the Theory of the British Constitution; nay rather,
from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as on so many
weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the Vestures which _it_ has
to fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often by haggard
hungry operatives who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven
and spun?
But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural
Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the Ulterior or
Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears never so remotely on
that promised Volume of the _Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesellschaft_
(Newbirth of Society),--we humbly suggest that no province of
Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is without its direct value,
but that innumerable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn
therefrom. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, ethical,
political, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher from the
very threshold of his Science; nothing even of those "architectural
ideas," which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all Modes,
and will one day, better unfolding themselves, lead to important
revolutions,--let us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light
of Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of our
fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were to be looked on,
the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers,
that puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and
die that we may live,--let us but turn the reader's attention upon
two small divisions of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as
Cloth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in Cloth:
we mean, Dandies and Tailors.
In regard to both which small divisions it may be asserted without
scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, is at
fault; and even that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will
perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two following Chapters.
CHAPTER X. THE DANDIACAL BODY.
First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific
strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing
Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing
of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is
heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes
wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress.
The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor, of unequalled
learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has
sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an
instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What
Teufelsdrockh would call a "Divine Idea of Cloth" is born with him; and
this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his
heart asunder with unutterable throes.
But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his Idea
an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks forth, a
witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We called him
a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes,
with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say,
rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_, to the whole world, in
Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what
seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle in
him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there not in this
life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal
to the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that blending
and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen,
constitutes the Prophetic character?
And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy,
what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you
would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or
even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays
of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has
already secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of your eyes.
Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret
it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame
on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will
waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and
over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with
hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist
classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we
see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums; any specimen
of him preserved in spirits! Lord Herringbone may dress himself in a
snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the
undiscerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless
on the other side.
The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly
speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the
Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and
the other! Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, the
essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance that
lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and lamentable
hallucination. The following long Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh
may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards
such. It is to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere,
the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a
certain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse,
ineffectual, ironic tendency; our readers shall judge which:--
"In these distracted times," writes he, "when the Religious Principle,
driven out of most Churches, either lies unseen in the hearts of good
men, looking and longing and silently working there towards some new
Revelation; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied
soul seeking its terrestrial organization,--into how many strange
shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and
errantly cast itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the
while without Exponent; yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly
active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after
Sect, and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into
new metamorphosis.
"Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the wealthiest and
worst-instructed of European nations, offers precisely the elements
(of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such moon-calves and
monstrosities are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that country,
one of the most notable, and closely connected with our present subject,
is that of the _Dandies_; concerning which, what little information I
have been able to procure may fitly stand here.
"It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men generally without
sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment for its manifestations,
speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps
rather a Secular Sect, and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the
psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial character
plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of
Fetish-worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what other
class, may in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided
(_schweben_). A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic
shape, is discernible enough; also (for human Error walks in a cycle,
and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to that
Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment,
and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came
to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled.
To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new
modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition,
_Self-worship_; which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mahomet, and others,
strove rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; and which
only in the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected.
Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new
figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, no objection.
"For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a new Sect,
display courage and perseverance, and what force there is in man's
nature, though never so enslaved. They affect great purity and
separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some
notices were given in the earlier part of this Volume); likewise, so
far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken
_Lingua-franca_, or English-French); and, on the whole, strive to
maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from
the world.
"They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did,
stands in their metropolis; and is named _Almack's_, a word of
uncertain etymology. They worship principally by night; and have their
High-priests and High-priestesses, who, however, do not continue for
life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps
with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret.
Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these they call _Fashionable
Novels_: however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and
others not.
"Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured myself some
samples; and in hope of true insight, and with the zeal which beseems an
Inquirer into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But wholly to
no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not
refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught.
In vain that I summoned my whole energies (_mich weidlich anstrengte_),
and did my very utmost; at the end of some short space, I was uniformly
seized with not so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind
of infinite, unsufferable, Jew's-harping and scrannel-piping there; to
which the frightfullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And
if I strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, there
came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of _Delirium Tremens_, and a
melting into total deliquium: till at last, by order of the Doctor,
dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a
general breaking up of the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly
forbore. Was there some miracle at work here; like those Fire-balls,
and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the Jewish
Mysteries, have also more than once scared back the Alien? Be this as
it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the
imperfection of this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the completest I
could give of a Sect too singular to be omitted.
"Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall induce me, as a
private individual, to open another _Fashionable Novel_. But luckily,
in this dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds; whereby if not victory,
deliverance is held out to me. Round one of those Book-packages, which
the _Stillschweigen'sche Buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing
from England, come, as is usual, various waste printed-sheets
(_Maculatur-blatter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the
Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mahometan reverence even for
waste-paper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not
to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his astonishment when on such
a defaced stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some English
Periodical, such as they name _Magazine_, appears something like a
Dissertation on this very subject of _Fashionable Novels_! It sets out,
indeed, chiefly from a Secular point of view; directing itself, not
without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named _Pelham_,
who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the
Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a
fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the Religious physiognomy
and physiology of the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there.
Nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby
I have endeavored to profit. Nay, in one passage selected from the
Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style
seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find what appears to be a
Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, according to the tenets of
that Sect. Which Confession or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding
from a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct
Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the German world;
therewith taking leave of this matter. Observe also, that to avoid
possibility of error, I, as far as may be, quote literally from the
Original:--
ARTICLES OF FAITH.
'1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same
time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided.
'2. The collar is a very important point: it should be low behind, and
slightly rolled.
'3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the
posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot.
'4. There is safety in a swallow-tail.
'5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than
in his rings.
'6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear
white waistcoats.
'7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips.'
"All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly
but peremptorily and irrevocably denying.
"In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands another British
Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, where its chief seat
still is; but known also in the main Island, and indeed everywhere
rapidly spreading. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books,
it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which
has published Books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate
to read. The members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity
of names, according to their various places of establishment: in England
they are generally called the _Drudge_ Sect; also, unphilosophically
enough, the _White Negroes_; and, chiefly in scorn by those of other
communions, the _Ragged-Beggar_ Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them
entitled _Hallanshakers_, or the _Stook of Duds_ Sect; any individual
communicant is named _Stook of Duds_ (that is, Shock of Rags), in
allusion, doubtless, to their professional Costume. While in Ireland,
which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing
multiplicity of designations, such as _Bogtrotters, Redshanks,
Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites,
Poor-Slaves_: which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic
name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species,
or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent
stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were
here loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to understand, what seems
indubitable, that the original Sect is that of the _Poor-Slaves_;
whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and
animate the whole Body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified.
"The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood: how the Universe,
and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves to the mind of an Irish
Poor-Slave; with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the
Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were extremely
difficult to specify. Something Monastic there appears to be in their
Constitution: we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty
and Obedience; which vows, especially the former, it is said, they
observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are
pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably
consecrated thereto, even _before_ birth. That the third Monastic
Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to
conjecture.
"Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand
principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave
Costume no description will indeed be found in the present Volume; for
this reason, that by the imperfect organ of Language it did not seem
describable. Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets
and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colors; through the
labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some
unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of
buttons, thrums and skewers; to which frequently is added a girdle of
leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw
rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals.
In head-dress they affect a certain freedom: hats with partial brim,
without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown; in the
former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost,
like a university-cap, with what view is unknown.
"The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, Polish, or Russian
origin: not so, however, the interior essence and spirit of their
Superstition, which rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical character.
One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig
and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut up in
private Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from
her; seldom looking up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with
comparative indifference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live
in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass windows, where they
find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or other
opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. Again, like all
followers of Nature-Worship, they are liable to out-breakings of an
enthusiasm rising to ferocity; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet
in sod cottages.
"In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All Poor-Slaves
are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters); a few are Ichthyophagous, and use
Salted Herrings: other animal food they abstain from; except indeed,
with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling,
such animals as die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the
root named Potato, cooked by fire alone; and generally without condiment
or relish of any kind, save an unknown condiment named _Point_, into
the meaning of which I have vainly inquired; the victual
_Potatoes-and-Point_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy
of description, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they
use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which
is the mildest of liquors, and _Potheen_, which is the fiercest. This
latter I have tasted, as well as the English _Blue-Ruin_, and the Scotch
_Whiskey_, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries:
it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of
concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole,
the most pungent substance known to me,--indeed, a perfect liquid
fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an
indispensable requisite, and largely consumed.
"An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself
under the to me unmeaning title of _The late John Bernard_, offers
the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof,
though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith.
Thereby shall my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it
were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in the
so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I have found some
corresponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, painted by that same
Dandiacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist: this also, by way of counterpart
and contrast, the world shall look into.
"First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise to have been
a species of Innkeeper. I quote from the original:
POOR-SLAVE HOUSEHOLD.
"'The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large iron Pot, two
oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was
a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and
the space below was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments; the one for
their cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On entering the
house we discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner: the father
sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on each side,
of a large oaken Board, which was scooped out in the middle, like a
trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. Little holes
were cut at equal distances to contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk stood on
the table: all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes
were dispensed with.' The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he
says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, and mouth
from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman; and
his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their
Philosophical or Religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint.
"But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household; in which, truly, that
often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired Penman himself has his abode:--
DANDIACAL HOUSEHOLD.
"'A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-colored curtains, chairs
and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on
each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several
Bottles of Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a
smaller table of mother-of-pearl: opposite to these are placed the
appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe
of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open, discover
a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small size monopolize
the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight
glimpse of a Bath-room. Folding-doors in the background.--Enter the
Author,' our Theogonist in person, 'obsequiously preceded by a French
Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron.'
"Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled
portion of the British People; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To
the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with
the elements of discord and hostility, is far from consoling. These two
principles of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish
or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may be, do
as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and nowise considerable
shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifications,
they extend through the entire structure of Society, and work
unweariedly in the secret depths of English national Existence; striving
to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating
masses.
"In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves or Drudges,
it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature
no proselytizing Sect; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and
is strong by union; whereas the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet
no rallying-point; or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret
affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a _Communion of Drudges_,
as there is already a Communion of Saints, what strangest effects would
follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet affects to look down on Drudgism: but
perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which ought
to look down, and which up, is not so distant.
"To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day part England
between them; each recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, till
there be none left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans,
with the host of Dandyizing Christians, will form one body: the Drudges,
gathering round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel
Pagan; sweeping up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals,
refractory Pot-wallopers, and so forth, into their general mass, will
form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless
boiling Whirlpools that had broken out on opposite quarters of the firm
land: as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells,
which man's art might cover in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily
widening: they are hollow Cones that boil up from the infinite Deep,
over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! Thus daily is
the intermediate land crumbling in, daily the empire of the two
Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere
film of Land between them; this too is washed away: and then--we have
the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is out-deluged!
"Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed unexampled
Electric Machines (turned by the 'Machinery of Society'), with batteries
of opposite quality; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive; one
attracts hourly towards it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity
of the nation (namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy
with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally potent.
Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait
a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state: till your
whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two
isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger);
and stands there bottled up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a
child's finger brings the two together; and then--What then? The Earth
is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's thunder-peal; the
Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no
eclipses of the Moon.--Or better still, I might liken"--
Oh, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which,
truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdrockh or ourselves sin the
more.
We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing and over-refining;
from of old we have been familiar with his tendency to Mysticism and
Religiosity, whereby in everything he was still scenting out Religion:
but never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort
his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the _Dandiacal Body_!
Or was there something of intended satire; is the Professor and Seer
not quite the blinkard he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal we should
have decisively answered in the affirmative; but with a Teufelsdrockh
there ever hovers some shade of doubt. In the mean while, if satire were
actually intended, the case is little better. There are not wanting men
who will answer: Does your Professor take us for simpletons? His irony
has overshot itself; we see through it, and perhaps through him.
CHAPTER XI. TAILORS.
Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from the
Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, been sufficiently
drawn; and we come now to the second, concerning Tailors. On this latter
our opinion happily quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh himself,
as expressed in the concluding page of his Volume, to whom, therefore,
we willingly give place. Let him speak his own last words, in his own
way:--
"Upwards of a century," says he, "must elapse, and still the bleeding
fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the van,
and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch
of Iniquity have his victims, and the Michael of Justice his martyrs,
before Tailors can be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood,
and this last wound of suffering Humanity be closed.
"If aught in the history of the world's blindness could surprise us,
here might we indeed pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and
fixed itself down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a
distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a
Man. Call any one a _Schneider_ (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our
dislocated, hoodwinked, and indeed delirious condition of Society,
equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet
_schneidermassig_ (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable
degree of pusillanimity; we introduce a _Tailor's-Melancholy_, more
opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine; and fable I
know not what of his generating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I
speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor),
with his _Schneider mit dem Panier_? Why of Shakspeare, in his _Taming
of the Shrew_, and elsewhere? Does it not stand on record that the
English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors,
addressed them with a 'Good morning, gentlemen both!' Did not the same
virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regiment, whereof neither horse nor
man could be injured; her Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus
everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as an
indisputable fact.
"Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiologist, whether it
is disputable or not? Seems it not at least presumable, that, under his
Clothes, the Tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles than the
sartorius? Which function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured
to perform? Can he not arrest for debt? Is he not in most countries a
taxpaying animal?
"To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which conviction is
mine. Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, and almost preternatural
Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the world will have approximated
towards a higher Truth; and the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen
forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear
light: that the Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator or
Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that 'he snatched the Thunder from
Heaven and the Sceptre from Kings:' but which is greater, I would ask,
he that lends, or he that snatches? For, looking away from individual
cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and
clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic Dominion,--is
not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its royal mantles and
pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we are
organized into Polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating Mankind,
the creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the Tailor
alone?--What too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a species of
Metaphorical Tailors? Touching which high Guild the greatest living
Guild-brother has triumphantly asked us: 'Nay if thou wilt have it,
who but the Poet first made Gods for men; brought them down to us; and
raised us up to them?'
"And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis of his
Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a man!
Look up, thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope,
and prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat
there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some
sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing down
Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of
hope! Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the thick gloom
of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. Mankind will
repay with interest their long-accumulated debt: the Anchorite that was
scoffed at will be worshipped; the Fraction will become not an Integer
only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world will recognize
that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its God.
"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these
Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, which
the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself:
How many other Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this
Arabian Whinstone!
"Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of a lane, in
the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon stood
written that such and such a one was 'Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;'
and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and
between the knees these memorable words, SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Was not
this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet
sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically appealing to a better
day? A day of justice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed to
man, and the Scissors become forever venerable.
"Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been altogether in
vain. It was in this high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, and
shed asunder, is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived
this Work on Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; which has
already, after long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so
large a section of my Life; and of which the Primary and simpler Portion
may here find its conclusion."
CHAPTER XII. FAREWELL.
So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous Plum-pudding, more
like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for
his fellow-mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present them
separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thankless
enterprise; in which, however, something of hope has occasionally
cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands not altogether
without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel
of spiritual nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our
beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the Editor desire?
If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur? Was not this a Task which
Destiny, in any case, had appointed him; which having now done with, he
sees his general Day's-work so much the lighter, so much the shorter?
Of Professor Teufelsdrockh, it seems impossible to take leave without
a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude, and disapproval. Who will
not regret that talents, which might have profited in the higher
walks of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much devoted to a
rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay too often to a scraping in kennels,
where lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests?
Regret is unavoidable; yet censure were loss of time. To cure him of his
mad humors British Criticism would essay in vain: enough for her if she
can, by vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What
a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style of
writing, not to say of thinking, become general among our Literary men!
As it might so easily do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over
Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of his own English purity? Even as
the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along
with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced to become
portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively: which
habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate.
Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is there any
reader that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess, there
is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost
attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of a man
who had said to Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not
be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me: a man who had
manfully defied the "Time-Prince," or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps,
Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare,
and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places,
at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack
Scythe-man, shall be welcome.
Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen
insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to
communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the
absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who should
satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that
perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it
not conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much
bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and misgone,
Literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his
characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever
without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all
colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam? With all
his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh desperation enough
for this.
A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that
Teufelsdrockh, is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a
wish to proselytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain whether
the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and Despair,
or Love and Hope only seared into the figure of these! Remarkable,
moreover, is this saying of his: "How were Friendship possible? In
mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise impossible; except
as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens
ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in
Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail
in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man." And now in conjunction
therewith consider this other: "It is the Night of the World, and still
long till it be Day: we wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and
the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted out for a season;
and two immeasurable Phantoms, HYPOCRISY and ATHEISM, with the Ghoul,
SENSUALITY, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs: well at
ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream."
But what of the awe-struck Wakeful who find it a Reality? Should not
these unite; since even an authentic Spectre is not visible to Two?--In
which case were this Enormous Clothes-Volume properly an enormous
Pitch-pan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watch-tower had
kindled, that it might flame far and wide through the Night, and many
a disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's
bosom!--We say as before, with all his malign Indifference, who knows
what mad Hopes this man may harbor?
Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which harmonizes ill with
such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufelsdrockh made like other
men, might as good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the
Beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it; that
no pilgrim could now ask him: Watchman, what of the Night? Professor
Teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at
Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space! Some time ago,
the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favor us with another copious
Epistle; wherein much is said about the "Population-Institute;" much
repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature
of which our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, lastly,
the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in the
following paragraph:--
"_Ew. Wohlgeboren_ will have seen from the Public Prints, with what
affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the
disappearance of her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail
on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves
by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or
affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the
Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself
can hitherto elicit no answer.
"It had been remarked that while the agitating news of those
Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to month, and dinned every ear
in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the _Gans_ or
elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except once
these three: _Es geht an_ (It is beginning). Shortly after, as _Ew.
Wohlgeboren_ knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in
Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want
Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the
closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this appalling
crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was indescribable: nay, perhaps
through one humble individual, something thereof might pass into the
_Rath_ (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's deliverance.
The Tailors are now entirely pacificated.--
"To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still
comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. For
example, when the _Saint-Simonian Society_ transmitted its Propositions
hither, and the whole _Gans_ was one vast cackle of laughter,
lamentation and astonishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the
third evening said merely: 'Here also are men who have discovered, not
without amazement, that Man is still Man; of which high, long-forgotten
Truth you already see them make a false application.' Since then, as has
been ascertained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at
least one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin
and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be conjectured. On
the fifth night following, he was seen for the last time!
"Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the hostile Sects that
convulse our Era, been spirited away by certain of their emissaries; or
did he go forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them,
and confront them? Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to
believe the Lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere
long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his archives must,
one day, be opened by Authority; where much, perhaps the _Palingenesie_
itself, is thought to be reposited."
Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is his wont, too like an Ignis
Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker.
So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, then, or reduced
to an even, unromantic tenor; nay, perhaps the better part thereof were
only beginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has
melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. May
Time, which solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this
also! Our own private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is
that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, not to lie always still,
Teufelsdrockh, is actually in London!
Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial joy as of
over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he know,
if human testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers
likewise, this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British
readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy
interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so
much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For
which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To
one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and
open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity,
who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and
genialities, with thy all too Irish mirth and madness, and odor of
palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst,
_fare-well_! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some
months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one another; have we not
existed together, though in a state of quarrel?
APPENDIX.
This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written among the mountain
solitudes, in 1831; but, owing to impediments natural and accidental,
could not, for seven years more, appear as a Volume in England;--and had
at last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, bit by
bit, in some courageous _Magazine_ that offered. Whereby now, to
certain idly curious readers, and even to myself till I make study, the
insignificant but at last irritating question, What its real history and
chronology are, is, if not insoluble, considerably involved in haze.
To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or two American
had now opened the way for, there was slightingly prefixed, under the
title, "_Testimonies of Authors_," some straggle of real documents,
which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and
sequence:--and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and
nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it
stood. (_Author's Note, of_ 1868.)
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS.
I. HIGHEST CLASS, BOOKSELLER'S TASTER.
_Taster to Bookseller_.--"The Author of _Teufelsdrockh_ is a person of
talent; his work displays here and there some felicity of thought and
expression, considerable fancy and knowledge: but whether or not it
would take with the public seems doubtful. For a _jeu d'esprit_ of that
kind it is too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article
than as a volume. The Author has no great tact; his wit is frequently
heavy; and reminds one of the German Baron who took to leaping on
tables and answered that he was learning to be lively. _Is_ the work a
translation?"
_Bookseller to Editor_.--"Allow me to say that such a writer requires
only a little more tact to produce a popular as well as an able work.
Directly on receiving your permission, I sent your MS. to a gentleman in
the highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar:
I now enclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a just
one; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense to" &c. &c.--_Ms.
(penes nos), London, 17th September_, 1831.
II. CRITIC OF THE SUN.
"_Fraser's Magazine_ exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also the" &c.
"_Sartor Resartus_ is what old Dennis used to call 'a heap of clotted
nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, with passages marked by
thought and striking poetic vigor. But what does the writer mean by
'Baphometic fire-baptism'? Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and
write so as to make himself generally intelligible? We quote by way
of curiosity a sentence from the _Sartor Resartus_; which may be read
either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intelligible either
way: indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so working up to the head,
we think the reader will stand the fairest chance of getting at its
meaning: 'The fire-baptized 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 battering, will doubtless by degrees be conquered
and pacificated.' Here is a"...--_Sun Newspaper, 1st April_, 1834.
III. NORTH--AMERICAN REVIEWER.
... "After a careful survey of the whole ground, our belief is that no
such persons as Professors Teufelsdrockh or Counsellor Heuschrecke ever
existed; that the six Paper-bags, with their China-ink inscriptions
and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of the brain; that the
'present Editor' is the only person who has ever written upon the
Philosophy of Clothes; and that the _Sartor Resartus_ is the only
treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject;--in short, that the
whole account of the origin of the work before us, which the supposed
Editor relates with so much gravity, and of which we have given a brief
abstract, is, in plain English, a _hum_.
"Without troubling our readers at any great length with our reasons for
entertaining these suspicions, we may remark, that the absence of all
other information on the subject, except what is contained in the work,
is itself a fact of a most significant character. The whole German
press, as well as the particular one where the work purports to have
been printed, seems to be under the control of _Stillschweigen and Co.
_--Silence and Company. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author are
making so great a sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how
happens it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a
few numbers of a monthly Magazine published at London! How happens it
that no intelligence about the matter has come out directly to this
country? We pique ourselves here in New England upon knowing at least
as much of what is going on in the literary way in the old Dutch
Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; but thus far
we have no tidings whatever of the 'extensive close-printed,
close-meditated volume,' which forms the subject of this pretended
commentary. Again, we would respectfully inquire of the 'present Editor'
upon what part of the map of Germany we are to look for the city of
_Weissnichtwo_--'Know-not-where'--at which place the work is supposed
to have been printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been
our fortune to visit several portions of the German territory, and to
examine pretty carefully, at different times and for various purposes,
maps of the whole; but we have no recollection of any such place. We
suspect that the city of _Know-not-where_ might be called, with at
least as much propriety, _Nobody-knows-where_, and is to be
found in the kingdom of _Nowhere_. Again, the village of
_Entepfuhl_--'Duck-pond'--where the supposed Author of the work is said
to have passed his youth, and that of _Hinterschlag_, where he had his
education, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds enough there
undoubtedly are in almost every village in Germany, as the traveller
in that country knows too well to his cost, but any particular village
denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether _terra incognita_. The names
of the personages are not less singular than those of the places.
Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such a pair of
appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh? The supposed bearer of
this strange title is represented as admitting, in his pretended
autobiography, that 'he had searched to no purpose through all the
Heralds' books in and without the German empire, and through all manner
of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,'
but had nowhere been able to find 'the name Teufelsdrockh, except as
appended to his own person.' We can readily believe this, and we doubt
very much whether any Christian parent would think of condemning a
son to carry through life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of
Counsellor Heuschrecke--'Grasshopper'--though not offensive, looks much
more like a piece of fancy-work than a 'fair business transaction.'
The same may be said of _Blumine_--'Flower-Goddess'--the heroine of the
fable; and so of the rest.
"In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the
whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of
Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor
Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as
much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John
Herschel's discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this kind are, however,
not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much
severity; but we are not sure that we can exercise the same indulgence
in regard to the attempt, which seems to be made to mislead the public
as to the substance of the work before us, and its pretended German
original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of
Clothes, or dress. _Clothes, their Origin and Influence_, is the title
of the supposed German treatise of Professor Teufelsdrockh and the
rather odd name of _Sartor Resartus_--the Tailor Patched--which the
present Editor has affixed to his pretended commentary, seems to look
the same way. But though there is a good deal of remark throughout the
work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to be in
reality a treatise upon the great science of Things in General, which
Teufelsdrockh, is supposed to have professed at the university of
Nobody-knows-where. Now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard
of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to
the public a treatise on Things in General, under the name and in the
form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately
are in the journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is
practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation in saying,
that the real subject of the work is to us more attractive than the
ostensible one. But this is probably not the case with the mass of
readers. To the younger portion of the community, which constitutes
everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is one of
intense and paramount importance. An author who treats it appeals, like
the poet, to the young men end maddens--_virginibus puerisque_--and
calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually operate most
strongly upon their feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their
purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in triumph,
expecting to find in it some particular instruction in regard to the
tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their corsets, and meet with
nothing better than a dissertation on Things in General, they
will--to use the mildest term--not be in very good humor. If the last
improvements in legislation, which we have made in this country, should
have found their way to England, the author, we think, would stand
some chance of being _Lynched_. Whether his object in this piece
of _supercherie_ be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he takes a
malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dandies, we shall not undertake to
say. In the latter part of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to
this class of persons, from the tenor of which we should be disposed
to conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting them of their
property very much in the nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians.
"The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it is what it
purports to be, a commentary on a real German treatise, is the style,
which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of
richness, vigor, and at times a sort of singular felicity of expression,
but very strongly tinged throughout with the peculiar idiom of the
German language. This quality in the style, however, may be a mere
result of a great familiarity with German literature; and we cannot,
therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as outweighing
so much evidence of an opposite character."--_North-American Review, No.
89, October_, 1835.
IV. NEW ENGLAND EDITORS.
"The Editors have been induced, by the expressed desire of many persons,
to collect the following sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets [*] in
which they first appeared, under the conviction that they contain in
themselves the assurance of a longer date.
* _Fraser's_ (London) _Magazine_, 1833-34.
"The Editors have no expectation that this little Work will have a
sudden and general popularity. They will not undertake, as there is no
need, to justify the gay costume in which the Author delights to
dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with which he has sportively
sprinkled his pages. It is his humor to advance the gravest speculations
upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If his
masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree that they will not
hear what he has to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his
wisdom; and what work of imagination can hope to please all! But we will
venture to remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in
some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and that the
foreign dress and aspect of the Work are quite superficial, and cover
a genuine Saxon heart. We believe, no book has been published for many
years, written in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which
discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The
Author makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius,
not only by frequent bursts of pure splendor, but by the wit and sense
which never fail him.
"But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discerning reader is the
manifest design of the work, which is, a Criticism upon the Spirit of
the Age--we had almost said, of the hour--in which we live; exhibiting
in the most just and novel light the present aspects of Religion,
Politics, Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his gayety
the Writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into the
manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among
our popular authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment,
which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every lover
of virtue."--_Preface to Sartor Resartus: Boston_, 1835, 1837.
SUNT, FUERUNT VEL FUERE.
LONDON, 30th June, 1838.
Transcriber's Note: All spelling and punctuation was kept as in the
printed text. Italicized phrases are delimited by _underscores_.
Footnotes (there are only four) have been placed at the ends of the
paragraphs referencing them.
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