Thomas Carlyle ........................................................................................................................................1

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 Sulphurmatches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or

doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise

that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has

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

watertransport 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 brokenwinged 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, deepthinking 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 watchtower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to

hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, 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 goldmines of finance and that

political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goosehunting into

regions of bilberries and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peatbogs. Of that unwise

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 rockbound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in

any case, would Criticism erect not only fingerposts 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 muchcensured wanderer light on some outlying, 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 thirtytwo points of the compass, whithersoever and

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

"_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J.

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

closemeditated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo.

Issuing from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with every external

furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set Neglect at defiance.... A work," concludes the wellnigh

enthusiastic Reviewer, "interesting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a

masterpiece of boldness, lynxeyed 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

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does

not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentationcopy 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

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 pearldiver may dive to his

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

newgot 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 partydivisions

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

WaterlooCrackers, 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

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

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

*With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a

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 doorlintels _No cheating

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 selfcontained 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 DidacticoReligious, 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

tobaccopipe, he stood up in full Coffeehouse (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, soulstirring 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 tobaccosmoke; triumphant,

cloudcapt without and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. _Bleibt doch ein echter

Spass_ _und Galgenvogel_, 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

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 roofwise 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 spinningtop? Thy little figure, there as, in loose illbrushed 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, deepseated

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

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 bestinformed 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 eyewitness 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

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

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

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 tobaccopipe, 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 Coffeehouse 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 mouthtube 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

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

watchtower of Teufelsdrockh; wherefrom, sitting at ease he might see the whole lifecirculation of that

considerable City; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (_Thun und Treiben_), were

"I look down into all that waspnest or beehive," we have heard him say, "and witness their waxlaying and

honeymaking, and poisonbrewing, 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 doorsill the aged

widow, knitting for a thin livelihood sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except Schlosskirche

weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow

bagged up in pouches of leather: there, topladen, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and

his household; here, on timberleg, 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 Clothesscreen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather

in its crown, is but of Today, without a Yesterday or a Tomorrow; and had not rather its Ancestor alive

when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of History,

which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more."

"_Ach, mein Lieber_!" said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffeehouse in rather

earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and

thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he

leads his HuntingDogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when

Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariotwheels 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 Fermentingvat 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 bucklebeds, or shivers hungerstricken into its lair of straw: in

obscure cellars, _RougeetNoir_ languidly emits its voiceofdestiny to haggard hungry Villains; while

Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high chessgame, 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 supperrooms and dancingrooms, are full of light

and music and highswelling 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 twolegged 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 smokecounterpane!But I, _mein Werther_,

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Nightthoughts, no feeling might

be traced there; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallowlight, and far enough from

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; inkbottles alternated with breadcrusts, coffeepots,

tobaccoboxes, Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his

bedmaker and stovelighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errandmaid, and general lion'sprovider, 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 halfforcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily

saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jaildelivery 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 rightarm, 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,

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 pursemouthed, cranenecked, cleanbrushed, 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 ninetyandnine Public Men can for most part be but mute

trainbearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalkinghorses 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 SchicksalsGunst; ist gegenwartig

aber halbzerruttet, halberstarrt_, "He has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit mode of

utterance, or favor of Fortune; and so is now halfcracked, halfcongealed."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 halfrational 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 coughlaugh (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 DalaiLama, of which, except perhaps in his

selfseclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief

Talapoin, to whom no doughpill 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 watchtower, 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 broadbrimmed steeplehat, 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.

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,

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 selfactivity, 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 mineshaft, 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

mineshafts 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 Drawingroom a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung: "a whole immensity of

Brussels carpets, and pierglasses, and ormolu," as he himself expresses it, "cannot hide from me that such

Drawingroom is simply a section of Infinite Space, where so many Godcreated 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

_hookingtogether_; 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, overshootings,

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

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

fullformed 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

ninetenths 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 brokenbacked 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

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 halfvisible 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 streetsweepings, 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 castiron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors; but

rather the gravity as of some silent, highencircled mountainpool, 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

Certainly a most involved, selfsecluded, 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 WorldMahlstrom of Humor, with its heavenkissing coruscations,

which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The largebodied 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 "ExtraHarangues;" and, as it chanced, On the

Proposal for a _Castmetal King_: gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming,

mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant everyoung 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, longcontinuing, 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 cipherkey, 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 HistoricalDescriptive, and a PhilosophicalSpeculative: 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, oystersauce, lettuces, Rhinewine and

French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To

"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 bellgirdles; 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 AngloDandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in

Color! From the soberest drab to the highflaming 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 everactive

Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible.

"For such superior Intelligences a CauseandEffect Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a

comfortable winterevening 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 CauseandEffect 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

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh, has nevertheless contrived to take in a wellnigh

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 jointstock vehicle of publication,

"at present the glory of British Literature"? If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Figleaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of

a mythological, metaphorical, cabalisticosartorial 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 _AdamKadmon_, 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

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, trunkhose, 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 pellmell, is true concentrated and purified

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 wildfruits; 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 heaveninspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene Highness; nay thy own amberlocked,

snowandrosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a

divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,has descended, like thyself, from that same

hairmantled, flinthurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong

cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all

that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and selfperfecting vitality. Cast forth thy

Act, thy Word, into the everliving, everworking Universe: it is a seedgrain that cannot die; unnoticed

today (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyangrove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlockforest!) after

"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 oldworld 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 outmiracled:

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 groveencircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions,

social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothesscreens of us.

"But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Professor, "Man is a Toolusing Animal (_Handthierendes

Thier_). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattestsoled, of some

halfsquare 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

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the

Toolusing Animal appears to us, of all that Animalsort, 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 whaleblubber, 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

crownests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipeclay, 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 Flintball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or can

"Man is a Toolusing 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 Steamcarriages, 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 fileandthirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six

hundred and fiftyeight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this nation toil for us, bleed for

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 wiredrawing 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 highestbred

housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Workboxes and Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thicktanned

hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those

jingling sheetiron Aprons, wherein your otherwise halfnaked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their

smeltfurnace,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 scarletcolored, ironfastened Apron,

wherein Society works (uneasily enough); guarding itself from some soil and stithysparks, in this

Devil'ssmithy (_Teufelsschmiede_) of a world? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has

been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer (_Episcopus_)

of Souls, I notice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work were done: what does he shadow forth

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, hotpressed, printed on, and sold,returned thither; filling

so many hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, especially with its Rags or Clothesrubbish, the

grand Electric Battery, and Fountainofmotion, from which and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous

and resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, stormtost

chaos of Life, which they keep alive!"Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with

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

Broadsheet 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

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

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,

"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

"Of the military classes in those old times, whose buffbelts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge

churnboots, and other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole has

acquired somewhat of a signpost character,I shall here say nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less

"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 Gothicarch 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

elllong 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

"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 traingowns four or five ells in length; which trains

there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their silkcloth 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 weltgowns are buttoned. The

maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames (_Flammen_),

that is, sparkling hairdrops: but of their mother's headgear who shall speak? Neither in love of grace is

comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles,

with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient handbroad welts; all ending atop in a thick

wellstarched Ruff, some twenty inches broad: these are their Ruffmantles (_Kragenmantel_).

"As yet among the womankind hooppetticoats 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

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 bellgirdles, bushelbreeches, 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 redpainted on the nose, and whitepainted on the cheeks, as

her tirewomen, 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

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

wheatdust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby

"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

bedtester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this illstarred

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,

"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 mothernaked 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

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and OldRoman contempt of the

If in the DescriptiveHistorical 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

SpeculativePhilosophical portion, which treats of their _Wirken_, or Influences. It is here that thc 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 thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly

interests "are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes." He says in so many words, "Society

is founded upon Cloth;" and again, "Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or

rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle,

would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane 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 wideenough 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 paperhangings, and stonewalls, and thickplied 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

"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 thousandfigured, thousandvoiced, harmonious Nature: but where

is the cunning eye and ear to whom that Godwritten Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in

a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dreamgrotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not

even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and manycolored visions flit round our sense; but Him, the

Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare halfwaking 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

dreamtheorem; 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 hatefilled 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

"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 Aircastles are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also in good Logicmortar; 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 mastercolors of our Dreamgrotto; say rather, the

Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and Lifevisions 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 arewe know not what;lightsparkles floating in the ether of Deity!

"So that this so solidseeming World, after all, were but an airimage, our ME the only reality: and Nature,

with its thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the 'phantasy of

our Dream;' or what the EarthSpirit 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

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this thunderspeech of the _Erdgeist_, are there yet twenty

"It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone with these high speculations, that I first came upon

the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and Tailored.

The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened

round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own bootmaker,

jeweller, and manmilliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rainproof courtsuit 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 Igood 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

Ragscreen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnelhouse 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

dustmaking, patent Ratgrinder, get new material to grind down. O subterbrutish! vile! most vile! For have

not I too a compact allenclosing 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 humankind 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 useandwont 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 goldmantled Prince or russetjerkined 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

"For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothesthatch, 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

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 newcomer 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

puddingcheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the first galaday 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 doublemilled 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

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

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

"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 LordLieutenants 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 Improveddrop perform

"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 hangingindividual a horsehair wig, squirrelskins, and a plushgown; 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

Drawingrooms, 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, theshall 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,

"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

hidingplace; their high State Tragedy (_Haupt und StaatsAction_) becomes a PickleherringFarce 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

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 nofashion; 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

"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

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 Clothrags, turkeypoles, 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 lifetackle, are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed,

and little Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, who understands draughtcattle, the rimming of wheels,

something of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagonscience, 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 motheridea, _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 masterorgan, 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 wrongside, 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

"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 woolrags, 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. Deephidden is he under that strange

Garment; amid Sounds and Colors and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably overshrouded: yet it

is skywoven, 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'SPRESENCE manifested not to

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

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 CharlemagneMantle, as well as in the poorest Oxgoad and

GypsyBlanket, 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

"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

"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;

"Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bankpaper and

Statepaper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a

more or less incompetent Digestiveapparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest

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

"Shall your Science," exclaims he, "proceed in the small chinklighted, or even oillighted, 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 widerspreading harvests,

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 "Logicchoppers, and treblepipe

Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as nightconstables

about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true OldRoman 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 justiceloving men:" that whole class is inexpressibly

"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 handlamp of what I call AttorneyLogic; and 'explain' all, 'account' for all, or believe

nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizes the unfathomable, allpervading domain of

Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and

Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattlestall,he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing

charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy handlamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through

it?_Armer Teufel_! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born,

wilt thou not die? 'Explain' me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into private places with thy foolish

cackle; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all

disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant."

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new

boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, 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

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, allcomprehending, allconfounding are his views

"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 tomorrow thou findest it swept

away; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate,

and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?

"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which glows starlike across the

darkgrowing (_nachtende_) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace

thy lost horseshoe,is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly

joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithyfire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that

circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force,

and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; it is

a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious

Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite

through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of

Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of

"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 SmithyAltar, what vacant, highsailing airships are these, and

"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, thoughtwoven or handwoven: 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 allpowerful; the rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool

"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 lightparticle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also

"Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the FleshGarment,

the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this FleshGarment; 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 solidgrown and

colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the FleshGarment, 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 _Stretchingto_? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust,

wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hungerbitten and deadlooking; while

others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous selfgrowth, sometimes (as in my own case) not

without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same

Thought'sBody (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false

stuffings, superfluous showcloaks (_PutzMantel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical?

"Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which

indeed they are: the Timevesture 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

Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, closebordering 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 halflight, uncertain whether dawn of

day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these socalled 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 Customhouse 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 longwinded 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 LifePhilosophy (_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 philosophicopoetically written, and

philosophicopoetically 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 humanoanecdotical (_menschlichanekdotisch_). Biography is by nature

the most universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished

"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 wellnigh unaccountable, "by

this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of ClothesPhilosophy; 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 drivelbibs, and live on spoonmeat? Did

he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long burialaisle 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 stairsteps, in short, and subterranean

passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful prophetic Hebron (a

"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 travelsoiled; has parted with

roadcompanions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites;

nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole

particulars of his Route, his Weatherobservations, the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly

jotted down (in indelible sympatheticink 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,

"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 findSix considerable PAPERBAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in

gilt Chinaink, 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 _cursivschrift_; 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 Metaphysicotheological

Disquisition, "Detached Thoughts on the Steamengine," 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'sHat," lie washbills, marked _bezahlt_

(settled). His Travels are indicated by the StreetAdvertisements of the various cities he has visited; of which

StreetAdvertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant.

So that if the ClothesVolume 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 PaperBags 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

unheardof efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up

between them. Only as a gaseouschaotic Appendix to that aqueouschaotic 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 _cursivschrift_; 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 Bridgebuilders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hellgate 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

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 nervoussystem 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 newcoming Eras, the first dim rudiments

and alreadybudding 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;

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 ClothesPhilosopher, 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 pruninghook, cultivated a little Orchard,

on the produce of which he, Cincinnatuslike, 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 campsentinel demanded the password, '_Schweig Hund_

(Peace, hound)!' before any of his staffadjutants 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 housemother can: assiduously she cooked and sewed and

scoured for him; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadiercap, but the whole habitation and

environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay: a roomy painted Cottage,

embowered in fruittrees and foresttrees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising manycolored from amid

shaven grassplots, flowers struggling in through the very windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing

but gardentools 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 longdisused gardening talent, had made it what you saw.

"Into this umbrageous Man'snest, 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 closemuffled 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, belllike, 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 Orchardgate 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 greensilk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic Spirits

are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlortable. 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 redcolored 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

"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 coachandfour, 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 redcolored 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 spoonmeat, 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 paradeground; 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

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, heartdeluded, have I

taken for thee this and the other noblelooking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with infinite regard;

"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 papfed thee there, whom thou namest

Father and Mother; these were, like mine, but thy nursingfather and nursingmother: 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 SubscriberLists (_Pranumeranten_), MilitiaRolls, and other Namecatalogues; 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

Basketbearer intend, by such designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign

humor? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou illstarred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy

illstarred offspring to be hatched into selfsupport by the mere skyinfluences 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 lifebattle, thou wert shot at, and

slung at, wounded, handfettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the TimeSpirit (_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

"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 earthvisiting 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 firsttimes, 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 exoticvegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry

movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, Godattributes, 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, halfawakened 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 ofSpeech! 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

"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

spoonmeat, 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

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous Papermasses, 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

undercurrents 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 basketbearing 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

"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 fasthurrying 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 downrushing of the

universal Worldfabric, from the granite mountain to the man or daymoth, is yet unknown; and in a

motionless Universe, we taste, what afterwards in this quickwhirling 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

Lifegarden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which

budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly,

In such rosecolored 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 beechrows, 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 flutemusic. "Glorious summer twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror

and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with his goldpurple 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

Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the HarvestHome, Christmas, and so forth; with a

whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children'sgames, 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

pengun, 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 Cooperation, for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is that relates it: "My first shortclothes

were of yellow serge; or rather, I should say, my first shortcloth, 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

More graceful is the following little picture: "On fine evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper

(breadcrumb boiled in milk), and eat it outofdoors. On the coping of the Orchardwall, which I could

reach by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set up the pruningladder, 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

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 Villagehead, 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 thickskinned 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 discoloredtin 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 closefolded and continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole

difference between an inspired Prophet and a doublebarrelled Gamepreserver: 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

"Nevertheless," continues he, "I too acknowledge the allbut omnipotence of early culture and nurture:

hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a hightowering, wideshadowing 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 everstreaming currents of Sights, Hearings, Feelings for

Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to

"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

battlereminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses and

'muchenduring 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

Lindentree: 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,

"In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stagecoach), which, slowrolling 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,

snuglodged 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 masoncraft; 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,

longdrawn chirpings, and activity almost superhirundine, 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 Cattlefair. Here,

assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurryburly. Nutbrown maids and

nutbrown men, all clearwashed, loudlaughing, 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 skullcaps, and long

oxgoads; shouting in halfarticulate 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. Balladsingers brayed, Auctioneers

grew hoarse; cheap New Wine (_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and

high over all, vaulted, in groundandlofty tumbling, a particolored MerryAndrew, like the genius of the

"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 skatingmatches and

shootingmatches, its snowstorms and Christmascarols,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

"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 afteryears 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

"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 wellmeant, 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 paradeduty, 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 twoandthirty quarters on the familycoach?"

To which last question we must answer: Beware, O Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride!

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

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 wellfostered 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

shallowsighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Activity of any kind, a Noman; for the

deepsighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, closehidden, 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

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his

Classbooks. 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 downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for

me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned

professions; and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile, what

printed thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper pocketmoney I laid out on stallliterature;

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

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 Orchardwall,

and other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year,

on such reflections as the following? "It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and

watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of

weather and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua

forded Jordan; even as at the midday when 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 Worldcirculation 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 wellnigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of TIME, and its relation to

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 steepleclock (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, loudjingling, 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

"Alas, the kind beechrows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I was among strangers, harshly, at best

indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone." His

schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," he says, "mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the

impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the duckflock put to death any

brokenwinged 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 schoolhistory, the warelement, 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 fireeyed 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

flowertree and cinnamontree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reedgrass and ignoble shrubs;

and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only, and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and

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

"My Teachers," says he, "were hidebound Pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's; or of

aught save their lexicons and quarterly accountbooks. 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 Gerundgrinder, 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 birchrods.

"Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing; and

an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not

without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing

their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for killing, there should be

worldhonored Dignitaries, and were it possible, true Godordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though

the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butcheringtool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the

Schoolmaster make show of his instructingtool: 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 cypressforest, 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 Cypresstree; 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 widescattered

still toil lonely in the monsterbearing 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 firewhip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit evervexed Time, cannot thenceforth

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 fosterson 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 daydreams

and nightdreams 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, CollegeExercises, 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

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

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

"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 simplysit still? Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary,

walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small, illchosen 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 admissionfees,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

allovertopping 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 fictitiouspersuasive 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 GamePreserver, 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

"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 fairymoney, 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,

"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 briskgoing

undershot wheel, sunk into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, to

hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers!

They themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what they called Educating, now when I

"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 (_erepiren_) in finished

Selfconceit, 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 longdrawn systole

and longdrawn 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 TimeSymbol is the evermotionless

Eternity we stand on made manifest. And yet, in such winterseasons of Denial, it is for the noblerminded

perhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if,

like hibernating animals, safelodged 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

loudroaring hailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring has

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 eastwind. 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

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 Selfhelp. Nevertheless a desert this

was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his "feverparoxysms

of Doubt;" his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith; and how "in the silent

nightwatches, still darker in his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the Allseeing, 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 spellbound sleep, under the

nightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hagridden 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 charnelhouse, is to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing

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 fuelwood 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

"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

illcultivated; 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 AttorneyLogic! 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

"Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire. We looked out on Life, with its strange

scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not unterrific

was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours.

Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near

experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under

certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and

always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants. If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the

Finnish Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual

Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinnerguests; and here as elsewhere have

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?

"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 Daymoth 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,

"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 Steamengines clanking around him? Has he not seen the Scottish Brasssmith's IDEA (and

this but a mechanical one) travelling on firewings 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

"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 TimePrince (_Zeitfurst_), or Devil, and all his Dominions, your coronationceremony costs such

By which last wiredrawn 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

_facsimile_ 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 evernew expectation, evernew disappointment, shift from

enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescoreandten,

"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 readymoulded 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 Breadstudies (_Brodzwecke_), preappointed us? Here, circling like

the ginhorse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Breadartist 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 cornmill or hempmill of Economic Society. For me too had such a

leadingstring been provided; only that it proved a neckhalter, 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

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 neckhalter," and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger,

into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in. Richest cloverfields 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 stonewalls, 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 "neckhalter" 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

LawExamination 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 deephidden, only the

deeperseated? 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

How our winged skymessenger, 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

breadandwater 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 truehearted,

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 Hearthholder, if not Householder, 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

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

handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and Literary dilettanti of

both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in

expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the

chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_,

she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and goodwill

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

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 Sphinxriddle, 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 toounfurnished 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

"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 twentyfive. 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 selfindulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous,

vainglorious; 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

RuleofThree: 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

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 threescoreandten 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 Timeimpulse; 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 TimeSpirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us,

and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim TimeElement, 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

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 ClothesPhilosophy 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

halfstrangers hated, for my socalled 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 ceilinghigh (_balkenhock_), and thence

fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and

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:

CONCILIO, VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI EQUES. QUI DUM SUB

"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

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 herringbusses 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

Spicecountry 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 CalypsoIsland detains him at the very outset; and as it

"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 LikeUnlike! 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 firedevelopment of the

universal Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first emphatically

"In every wellconditioned 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 aircities of Hope have not shrunk into the mean clayhamlets of Reality; and man, by

"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 manycolored angelplumage; 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'sladder, 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

"Thus was the young man, if allsceptical of Demons and Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in,

nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true Skyborn, 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

Airmaiden, 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,

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 Lifeelement, 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

rocketwise, 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

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 grandclimacteric itself, and _St. Martin's Summer_ of incipient Dotage, would crown

with no new myrtlegarland. 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 Preestablished 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

We seem to gather that she was young, hazeleyed, beautiful, and some one's Cousin; highborn, and of high

spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of 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

"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 darkbrown 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

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has handed in his _Relatio ex Actis_; been

invited to a glass of Rhinewine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Townhome,

is ushered into the Gardenhouse, 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 Gardenhouse inferior in respectability

to the noble Mansion itself. "Embowered amid rich foliage, roseclusters, and the hues and odors of thousand

flowers, here sat that brave company; in front, from the wideopened 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 bosomvesture 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,

"Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially by name toBlumine! 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

"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 Earthangel, much

more enchanting than your mere white Heavenangels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little

naphthafire. 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 Rosegoddess 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

"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 newfound 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 selfsecluded 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, manytinted, 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,

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 artmagic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spellbound

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

Archimedeslever, whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true Heavengate

and Hellgate of man: his sensuous life is but the small temporary stage (_Zeitbuhne_), whereon

thickstreaming 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 solarsystems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drinking no better

red wine than he had before." Alas! witness also your Diogenes, flameclad, scaling the upper Heaven, and

verging towards Insanity, for prize of a "highsouled Brunette," as if the Earth held but one and not several of

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 nightspectres 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'sMessenger! 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

"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 manytinted, radiant Aurora, and by this

fairest of Orient Lightbringers 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 Lightray incarnate! Was

there so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed a

Morningstar; 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

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 hungerbitten 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 brassbound Gig, or even a simple ironspring 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

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Lovemania, 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 airnavigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sandbags, 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 fireheart, and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance

"One morning, he found his Morningstar all dimmed and duskyred; the fair creature was silent, absent, she

seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morningstar, but a troublous skyey Portent, announcing

that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to meet no more." The

thunderstruck Airsailor 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 dewdrops, 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."

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

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;

breastbeating, browbeating (against walls), lionbellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings,

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly lifts his _Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrimstaff), "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 Flowergoddess, 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

heartrending 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 Deathshadows 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 Paradisegroves in the waste Oceanwaters: 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 teardew 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

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

Paperbags 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 hillrange in his

desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all

diminished to a toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving

their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starwardpointing 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 Dwellingplace 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

Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature; as if in her motherbosom he would seek

healing. So at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former by some

"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, treeshaded, 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

"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, spectrebearing. 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

"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 waterworn 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

mountainranges 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

"The spell was broken by a sound of carriagewheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon

into the hidden Southward, came a gay Baroucheandfour: 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 andBlumine! 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 _ClothesVolume_, where it stands with quite other intent: "Some time before Smallpox was

extirpated," says the Professor, "there came a new malady of the spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the

epidemic, now endemical, of Viewhunting. 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

Basiliskglance of the Baroucheandfour 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 worldpilgrimage 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,

quickchanging; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and highways, had transported himself by some

wishingcarpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as

that collection of StreetAdvertisements); with only some touch of direct historical notice sparingly

interspersed: little lightislets 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 madfoaming 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,

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 ClothesPhilosopher, will eschew this province for the present; a new time may bring new

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 worldpilgrimage,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 feverthirst 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 wellknown; 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

"How I lived?" writes he once: "Friend, hast thou considered the 'rugged allnourishing Earth,' as Sophocles

well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, 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 horsetail. 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

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 alltoo stupendous style; with

music of cannonvolleys, and murdershrieks of a world; his stagelights 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 ClothesPhilosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible Earth, with his

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

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 poisondrop, of the TowgoodandBlumine business, it

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 ProfitandLoss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that

Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, "that, for man's

wellbeing, 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 longcontinued Destitution, the stab of

false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its

lifewarmth 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

CelestialBed? 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 Motivegrinder, who in thy

Logicmill 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 fryingpan, 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

Sibylcave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this oncefair world of

his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hatefilled 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 rainproof, crumble down; and men ask now:

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 Motivegrinders, and

Mechanical ProfitandLoss 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 heavenwritten 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

Selfconsciousness 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

"But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the netresult of my Workings amounted as yet simply

toNothing. 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 socalled Friends, in whose

withered, vain and toohungry 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 Downpulling 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 Steamengine, 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 brokenheart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; every window of your Feeling, even of your

Intellect, as it were, begrimed and mudbespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in

Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in

our Professor's still vein, significance enough? "From Suicide a certain aftershine (_Nachschein_) of

Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was not that a remedy I had at

any time within reach? Often, however, was there a question present to me: Should some one now, at the

turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the other World, or other Noworld, by

pistolshot,how were it? On which ground, too, I have often, in seastorms and sieged cities and other

deathscenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, for courage."

"So had it lasted," concludes the Wanderer, "so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Deathagony, through

long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous,

slowconsuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only when I, murmuring

halfaudibly, recited Faust's Deathsong, 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 ArchDevil 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 SaintThomas 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 sumtotal 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 fireeyed 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 Godcreated 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

"It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual Newbirth, or Baphometic Firebaptism; perhaps I

Though, after this "Baphometic Firebaptism" 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 firebaptized soul, long so scathed and

thunderriven, 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 SaintThomas 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 howlchantings, Ernulphuscursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the mean while,

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 spectrafighting Man, nay who will one day be a Spectrequeller. 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 NOTME for wholesomer food.

"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 JudgmentHalls and

Churchyards), and its bellowsengines (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

Clothhabits and of Soulhabits; 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, spiritlike, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you

demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have

been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards: but where does your accumulated Agricultural,

Metallurgic, and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on

the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like

manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In vain wilt thou go to

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 Cloudimage, or Armida's

"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 thirdlyBooks. 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 Citybuilder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name

Conqueror or Cityburner! 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 wonderbringing 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

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on some Battlefield; which, we soon gather,

must be that of Wagram; so that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of date. Omitting

"Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shellsplinters, cannonshot, 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 Eggshells!Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down his

mouldcargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest

level,intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a cornbearing 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 Ammunitionwagons, then? Were thy Wagrams

and Stillfrieds but so many readybuilt 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 aswoon 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 fruittrees, hedgerows, 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

PowderDevilkins 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

"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 ablebodied 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 Tobaccopipe, filled

with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such

predicted PeaceEra, what bloodfilled 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 manycolored

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

"I have read in most Public Libraries," says he, "including those of Constantinople and Samarcand: in most

Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying. Unknown

Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics,

Geographics, Topographics came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how he

seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the great

Hadrian, I meted out much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself only.

"Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting, and even composing (_dichtete_), by

the Pinechasms of Vaucluse; and in that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palmtrees

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 secondrate masonry.Great Events,

also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated down (_ausgemergelt_) into BerlinandMilan

CustomhouseOfficers; 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 birthpangs of Democracy,

wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me.

"For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have

wholly escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF

REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named HISTORY; to

which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or

worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of toostupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For

my study, the inspired Texts themselves! Thus did not I, in very early days, having disguised me as

tavernwaiter, stand behind the fieldchairs, 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

Waterroses" (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

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 "lightblue Spanish cloak"

hanging round him, as his "most commodious, principal, indeed sole uppergarment;" and stands there, on

the Worldpromontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now

"Silence as of death," writes he; "for Midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the

granite cliffs ruddytinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slowheaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost

North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloudcouch wrought of

crimson and clothofgold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous firepillar,

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

"Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling from among the rockhollows;

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 trainoil 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 Horsepistol, 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

"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

"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 offhand become Air, and Nonextant! 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,

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

"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 _caputmortuum_! 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

Shadowhunter, or Shadowhunted; 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

Dogcage 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

Tooheavyladen Teufelsdrockh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far

"This," says our Professor, "was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now reached; through which

"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 hardfought battle. For the Godgiven mandate, _Work thou in Welldoing_, lies

mysteriously written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day,

till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as

the claygiven 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 Godgiven 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 Halfmen, in whom that divine handwriting

has never blazed forth, allsubduing, in true sunsplendor; 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, demonpeopled, doleful of

sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit

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 fallowcrop, 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,

oftenrepeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial! If I have had a secondcrop, 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 shadowhunting and

shadowhunted 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 turningpoint 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 Paperbags, for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow,

fitfully wavering, propheticosatiric; no clear logical Picture. "How paint to the sensual eye," asks he once,

"what passes in the HolyofHolies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even

afaroff 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 eyebewildering _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

longdeafened 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 wayweary and

lifeweary; 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 (_Selbsttodtung_), had been happily

Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his Locality, during this same "healing

sleep;" that his Pilgrimstaff lies cast aside here, on "the high tableland;" 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 guitarmusic, will be going on in the forecourt, while by fits from within comes the faint

"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the high tableland, in front of

the Mountains; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azureflowing

curtains,namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottomfringes also I have seen gilding. And then to

fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows; with their green flowerlawns, and

white dames and damosels, lovely enough: or better still, the strawroofed Cottages, wherein stood many a

Mother baking bread, with her children round her:all hidden and protectingly folded up in the

valleyfolds; 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 mountainseat, which, in still weather, were wont to speak to me (by their

steeplebells) with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated

Smokeclouds; 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 lovemakings and scandalmongeries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature,

and could cover it all with your hat.If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the business of

the World in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing

"Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the Distance: round some Schreckhorn,

as yet grimblue, 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

grimwhite, for the vapor had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermentingvat

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

"Foreshadows, call them rather foresplendors, 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

tooexasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnelhouse with

"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 heavyladen; 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 manyvoiced 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

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 _ChurchCatechism_ of

our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt to

elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an

Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance

Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in jointstock company, to make

one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack also has a Soul

quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and

saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe altogether to himself_,

therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of

Ophiuchus: speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled,

than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an

Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most

maltreated of men.Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the _Shadow of

"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 Selfconceit 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

"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

"I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting

and selftormenting, 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, softbedded, 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 Godinspiredd 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 feverparoxysms is Life rooting out the deepseated 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

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

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 BaalPriests,

in our own day:" with more of the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago.

"Cease, my muchrespected 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 sixandthirty quartos, and the sixandthirty 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, andthyself 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

"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'sHand

writing it: thereof all other Bibles are but Leaves,say, in PictureWriting 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

"To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecine warfare with the Timespirit, 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 tooravenous 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

"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

"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of Creation isLight. Till the eye have

vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempesttost Soul, as once over the

wildweltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not

miraculous and Godannouncing; 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 rockfoundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries above: instead

"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

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 newattained 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

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh commences: we are henceforth to see him "work

in welldoing," 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 illfurnished 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 spinningjenny, and warpingmill, and powerloom

within its head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin'sDigester, with stoneandlime 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 wonderworking Tool: greater than all recorded

miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so solidseeming 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

"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,

"Nay how knowest thou," cries he, "but this and the other pregnant Device, now grown to be a

worldrenowned farworking Institution; like a grain of right mustardseed 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 (_Eigenthumsconservirende Gesellschaft_)," of which so

many ambiguous notices glide spectralike through these inexpressible Paperbags? "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 officebearers 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 _Eigenthumsconservirende_ ("Owndomconserving") _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 Altarfire and Gallowsropes) 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 Liferent_, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noosegins and

baited falltraps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such Universal

Association, can protect us against whole meatdevouring and mandevouring hosts of Boaconstrictors. If,

therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not

illwritten _Program_ in the Public Journals, with its high _PrizeQuestions_ and so liberal _Prizes_, could

have proceeded,let him now cease such wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the

We ask: Has this same "perhaps not illwritten _Program_," or any other authentic Transaction of that

Propertyconserving Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal foreign or domestic?

If so, what are those _PrizeQuestions_; what are the terms of Competition, and when and where? No printed

Newspaperleaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met with in these Paperbags! Or is the whole business

one other of those whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much

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 humoristicosatirical 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 socalled Fact

were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no direct Cameraobscura 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 NoseofWax, 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 coveredways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his halfdevilish way, how the

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 beadrolls of what thou namest Facts? The Man is the spirit he worked in; not what he

did, but what he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how

your Blockhead (_Dummkopf_) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what

he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (_Pfuscher_): such I have seen reading some

Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the illcut SerpentofEternity for a common

poisonous reptile." Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself,

might mistake the Teufelsdrockh SerpentofEternity 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 halfsophisms,

halftruisms, 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

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these

Paperbags 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 Lifeelement, 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'sLeap, we saw churned utterly into sprayvapor, 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 quarryrubbish, in those Papercatacombs, we may have occasion to glance

back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein

If now, before reopening the great _ClothesVolume_, we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten

Chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the _ClothesPhilosophy_, let not our discouragement

become total. To speak in that old figure of the Hellgate 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 aweaving in the "Loom of Time; " is not here, indeed, the

outline of a whole _ClothesPhilosophy_; 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 mountainsummits, on whose rockstrata 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 ClothesPhilosophy? 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 DreamGrottos through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he must

wander, will there be wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar Star.

As a wonderloving and wonderseeking man, Teufelsdrockh, from an early part of this ClothesVolume,

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

Greekfire 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

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 Goldcountry, 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

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

groundscheme 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 lightspots, the following, floating in much wild matter about _Perfectibility_,

"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, Godpossessed; or even Gods, as in

some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, pastehorns, rosin,

swinebristles, 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

"The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened

with unaffected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink beer,

and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what

were their shovelhats scooped out, and their surplices and cassockaprons girt on; and such a

churchrepairing, 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 Leatherparings 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

prisonmountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and

emerged into the light of Heaven! That Leicester shoeshop, had men known it, was a holier place than any

Vatican or Lorettoshrine.'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 shoewages 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

"Historical Oilpainting," 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 cuttingboard for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them

together into one continuous allincluding 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 Worldworship, and the

Mammongod. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmerstrokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the

Prisonditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the

"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 halfsavage 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

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

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

"Mammongod," 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 closefitting cases

of Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its

frills and traingowns, for a second skin of tanned hide? By which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and

Coventry and Paisley, and the FancyBazaar, 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 highborn 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

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which

Not less questionable is his Chapter on _ChurchClothes_, which has the farther distinction of being the

"By ChurchClothes, 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!

ChurchClothes 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

"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 deadlygrappling Hate); and then say what miraculous

virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, through all the thickplied 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

"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

Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him," says

"But with regard to your Church proper, and the ChurchClothes specially recognized as ChurchClothes, 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 CraftGuilds, 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 fastrotting 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 allimportant, allsustaining, are the

"Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same ChurchClothes have gone sorrowfully outatelbows; 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 generationandhalf 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 Shampriest (_Scheinpriester_) 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

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his

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 Paperbags 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 altarbuilding time) for universal worship.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge,

fullformed 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

"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 Marriagebower,

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

"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

Sealemblem, 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 godgiven 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 highsoaring 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

MotiveMillwrights. 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 IronBalance 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 longeared enough. Alas, poor devil!

spectres are appointed to haunt him: one age he is hagridden, bewitched; the next, priestridden, 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

"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 Motivegrinder himself been in

_Love_? Did he never stand so much as a contested Election? Leave him to Time, and the medicating virtue

"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 colorgiving 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 marketcross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole

Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moonstirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron

Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a

horseshoe? 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

"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 Walletandstaff 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 Coatsofarms;

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 TimeFigure (_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 godinspired 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

"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

"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 MumboJumbo and

Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric

"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 Selflove 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, Prometheuslike, 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

"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 wellnigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and rags of

superannuated wornout 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

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

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

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

"Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that with earthmade 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 weathertanned, 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!

Hardlyentreated 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 godcreated 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 heavenmade 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

"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

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 heavyladen 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 cloudskirted 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 firearms, 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 ablebodied 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

"And yet," writes he farther on, "there must be something wrong. A fullformed 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 fullformed

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 fivefingered

Hands at his shacklebones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a

"True, thou GoldHofrath," 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 stillglowing,

stillexpanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Firepillars, guide

onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now with the battleaxe and

warchariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? Where are they?Preserving their Game!"

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 unlookedfor

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 Lifeessence 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,

"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 overcrowded Lodginghouse? 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 cutpurse and cutthroat 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 platelicking: 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

"Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: The Poor

perishing, like neglected, foundered DraughtCattle, 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 mouthhonor, as from tavernwaiters who expect to put it in the bill.

Oncesacred 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

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 halfcentury, it has been the thing you

name 'Independence.' Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dogleech is anxious to

disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were

even your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it,

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

"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 fagend, 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 cooperative 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 Dogmadness; till the whole Worldkennel 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 striptoff Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder

Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watchcoat for the defence of the Body

"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

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 diabolicoangelical 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 hardcrashing 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

noserings, halters, footshackles, 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,

Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new

Vestures;"Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the loomtreadles? 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

"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 higheddying 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 Phoenixcremation 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 DeathBirth 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 firecreation 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

Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel

than spicewood); in the faith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heavenborn 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 scotandlot in a Christian

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, rainbowdyed Aurora out

of mere aqueous clouds; nay brightening Londonsmoke 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 Goodbreeding, which differs, if at all,

from Highbreeding, 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 rudevisaged, 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 sledgehammer, 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

"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 shovelhat, 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

"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 mylorded 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

"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 goosespeech which was the sign of these two, are gone. The

Coatarm 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 Clotheshorse; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition,

"Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of Civilized Life, the Capital of England; and

meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that inksea of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan

broth; and was one lone soul amid those grinding millions;often have I turned into their OldClothes

Market to worship. With awestruck 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 Highpriest, 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, newcreated 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, churchbells and gallowsropes, farcetragedy,

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 moneychangers 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 Clothesbroker 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 steeplehat 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 Whisperinggallery, where the "Ghosts of Life"

rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble,

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paperbag 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

Clothesshops 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 ClothesProfessor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in

Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English "inksea," 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

For us, who happen to live while the WorldPhoenix 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 WorldPhoenix, 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 Firewhirlwind, 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 Deathsong, which end not but in tones

of a more melodious Birthsong. Nay, look into the Firewhirlwind 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

"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

Steamengine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded,

"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 Postbag; thy Thoughts fall into no

friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating

venousarterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through all Space and all Time: there has a Hole

fallen out in the immeasurable, universal Worldtissue, which must be darned up again!'

"Such venousarterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Messages, paper and other Packages, going out from him

and coming in, are a bloodcirculation, 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

"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 Tubalcain that made thy very

"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 lifestreams 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

"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 heavenderived 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 swansong immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and

Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little

"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 Horseshoer. 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 Kenning (Cunning), or which is the same thing, Canning. Ever must the Sovereign of

"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

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 longdrawn expanses, all is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very

radiances and straggling lightbeams 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,

slowburning, 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, heavenborn and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot

peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to light in that same BallotBox of yours; or at worst, in

some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or Steammechanism. 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.

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soulconfusing labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into

somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking round, as was our hest, for "organic filaments," we ask, may not

this, touching "Heroworship," 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

"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 fellowman. 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 _Heroworship_. In

which fact, that Heroworship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among Mankind, mayest

thou discern the cornerstone of living rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest time may stand secure."

Do our readers discern any such cornerstone, 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 Courtpoet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his

chariotwheels, 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 Heroworship; though their Divinity, moreover, was

"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 HeroDivinity 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

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in

"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 barebacked, 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 idolbreakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new Churches,

where the true Godordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not, Before the old

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 frothocean 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 raggathering and ragburning

days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Knowest thou none such? I know him, and

"But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in no Psalmworship; 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 brotherlike 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

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

ClothesPhilosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with;

"Clothwebs and Cobwebs," of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he

courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, worldembracing 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

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 allilluminating. 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

"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 airpump, 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

"'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,

"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 StatuteBook 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 groundplan 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

"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 beenlooked at, nicknamed, and

marked in the Zodiacal Waybill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their Why, their

"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

squaremiles. 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 Tradewinds, 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

"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 Sacredwriting; 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 thickcrowded, 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, wellnigh inexhaustible DomesticCookery Book, of which the whole

"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is

the greatest of Weavers; and weaves airraiment 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 Freethinking 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 everrenewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemaintricks 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 WorkMachine, for whom the divine gift of Thought

were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steamengine; a power whereby cotton might be

"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency of Names; which indeed are but one kind

of such customwoven, wonderhiding Garments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectrework, 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

mysteriousterrific, altogether _infernal_ boilingup of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fairpainted

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 DemonEmpire; 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

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand

fundamental worldenveloping 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 allembracing, 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

"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 fellowcraftsman made Spaceannihilating Hats, make

Timeannihilating! 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 FireCreation of the World to its FireConsummation; here

historically present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in

the Thirtyfirst, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the

"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future

nonextant, or only future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer: already

through those mystic avenues, thou the Earthblinded 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

Tomorrow roll up; but Yesterday and Tomorrow both _are_. Pierce through the Timeelement, 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

"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 Timeshadows 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

"That the Thoughtforms, 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 Godeffulgences! 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 Godrevealing 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 wonderhiding

"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand antimagician, and universal wonderhider, is this same

lying Time. Had we but the Timeannihilating 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

"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 greenmantled 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 spheremelody,

flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth spheremelody,

still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold 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

"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near movingcause 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 Timeannihilating Hat) transport

thee direct from the Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in

the Lightsea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province

thereof, is in very deed the stardomed City of God; that through every star, through every grassblade, and

most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the

"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 churchvaults, 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; wellnigh 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 harpstrings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our

discordant, screechowlish 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 battleshouts 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 Spectrehunt; 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 halfhundred have vanished from it, some halfhundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks

"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 lifeblood with its

burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadowsystem 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

warhorse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and warhorse 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 warhorse 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

"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 hunterlike 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

Heavensent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow.

Thus, like some wildflaming, wildthundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND

thunder and flame, in longdrawn, quicksucceeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a

Godcreated, firebreathing Spirithost, 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,

'We _are such stuff_ As Dreams are made of, and our little Life Is rounded with a sleep!'"

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

FleshGarments, 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

"'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by; "

"And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, The solemn

Temples, the great Globe itself, And all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And like this unsubstantial pageant

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 DeathBirth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears

Along this most insufficient, unheardof 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

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 ropeandraft 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 Chaosflood, 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 Horngate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means of him, have led thee into the true Land of

Dreams; and through the ClothesScreen, as through a magical _PierrePertuis_, 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 Teacircle wilt open

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 (Worthships) are properly a Vesture

and Raiment; and the Thirtynine Articles themselves are articles of wearingapparel (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 weavingshops and spinningmills, where the Vestures which _it_ has to

fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives who see no farther than

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 ClothesPhilosophy, 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 ClothesPhilosopher 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 ClothesPhilosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory

Class of our fellowmen. 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 Clothanimals, creatures that live, move and have their being

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

First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is

a Clotheswearing 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 allimportance 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) parchmentskin 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 Thinkingprinciple in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there not in this

lifedevotedness 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

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

snuffbrown suit, with snuffbrown shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with

The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to

sleep: for here arises the ClothesPhilosophy 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

"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 worstinstructed of European nations,

offers precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in which such mooncalves 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

"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 Fetishworships, or of

Heroworships 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 notinconsiderable 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, _Selfworship_; 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

"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 _Linguafranca_, or

EnglishFrench); and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves

"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

Highpriests and Highpriestesses, 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

"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'sharping and scrannelpiping 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 Fireballs, 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

"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 Bookpackages, which the _Stillschweigen'sche

Buchhandlung_ is in the habit of importing from England, come, as is usual, various waste printedsheets

(_Maculaturblatter_), by way of interior wrappage: into these the ClothesPhilosopher, with a certain

Mahometan reverence even for wastepaper, where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not to

cast his eye. Readers may judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced straysheet, 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

'1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be

'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.

'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.

"All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably

"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 _RaggedBeggar_

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, PeepofDay Boys,

Babes of the Wood, Rockites, PoorSlaves_: 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

_PoorSlaves_; whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental characteristics pervade and animate the whole

"The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood: how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture

themselves to the mind of an Irish PoorSlave; 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

"Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar

Costume. Of which Irish PoorSlave 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 headdress 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

"The name PoorSlaves 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 NatureWorship, they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to

"In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All PoorSlaves are Rhizophagous (or Rooteaters); 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 _PotatoesandPoint_ not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of description,

in any European CookeryBook 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 _BlueRuin_, 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 PoorSlave, as it were with their own eyes; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in the so

precious wastepaper 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

"First, therefore, of the PoorSlave, who appears likewise to have been a species of Innkeeper. I quote from

"'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 PoorSlave himself our Traveller found, as he says,

broadbacked, blackbrowed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a

sunbrowned but wellfeatured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of

"But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household; in which, truly, that oftenmentioned Mystagogue and

"'A Dressingroom splendidly furnished; violetcolored curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two

fulllength 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 motherofpearl: 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

Bathroom. Foldingdoors in the background.Enter the Author,' our Theogonist in person, 'obsequiously

"Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the more unsettled portion of the British People; and

agitate that evervexed 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 Selfworship or

Demonworship, and PoorSlavish or Drudgical Earthworship, 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

"In numbers, and even individual strength, the PoorSlaves 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 rallyingpoint; or at best only

cooperate 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 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 Potwallopers, 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 BuchanBullers extending; till now there is but a footplank, a mere film of Land between them; this too

is washed away: and thenwe have the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is outdeluged!

"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 WorldBatteries! The

stirring of a child's finger brings the two together; and thenWhat then? The Earth is but shivered into

impalpable smoke by that Doom's thunderpeal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth

Oh, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether

We have often blamed him for a habit of wiredrawing and overrefining; 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 amaurosissuffusions 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.

Thus, however, has our first Practical Inference from the ClothesPhilosophy, 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

"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 widespreading 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_ (tailorlike) betokens an otherwise unapproachable

degree of pusillanimity; we introduce a _Tailor'sMelancholy_, 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 LeatherTailor), 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

"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

"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 newcreated 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 cooperating

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 Guildbrother has triumphantly asked us: 'Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made Gods

"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 muchinjured 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

anklejoints 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 longaccumulated 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

"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked upon these FourandTwenty 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 'BreechesMaker 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 prisonspeech 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

"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

So have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous Plumpudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which

Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellowmortals, 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'swork 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 lumberrooms; nay too often

to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and diamondnecklaces 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, hypermetaphorical 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

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, muchsuffering, muchinflicting 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 "TimePrince," or Devil, to his face; nay perhaps, Hanniballike, 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.

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

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

But what of the awestruck 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 ClothesVolume properly an enormous

Pitchpan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watchtower 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

Beaconfire 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 "PopulationInstitute;" much repeated in praise of

the Paperbag 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 Evilwishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that the

closing Chapter of the ClothesVolume 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

"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 _SaintSimonian 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, longforgotten Truth you already see them make a false application.'

Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of the PostDirector, there passed at least one Letter with

its Answer between the Messieurs BazardEnfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be

"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 headquarters 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, safemoored 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 overweariness 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, _farewell_! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled

some months of our Lifejourney in partial sight of one another; have we not existed together, though in a

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,

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 stumblingblocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood.

_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_

_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" (penes nos),

"_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 firebaptism'? 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

firebaptized soul, long so scathed and thunderriven, 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.

... "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 Paperbags, with their Chinaink 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

"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 ClothesPhilosophy 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 Motherland as our brethren of the fastanchored Isle; but thus far we have

no tidings whatever of the 'extensive closeprinted, closemeditated 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_'Knownotwhere'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

_Knownotwhere_ might be called, with at least as much propriety, _Nobodyknowswhere_, and is to be

found in the kingdom of _Nowhere_. Again, the village of _Entepfuhl_'Duckpond'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. Duckponds 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

Duckpond 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, Militiarolls, and other Namecatalogues,' 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 fancywork than a 'fair business transaction.' The same may

be said of _Blumine_'FlowerGoddess'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 Nobodyknowswhere, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor

Grasshopper, a FlowerGoddess 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

Patchedwhich 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 halfserious, halfcomic 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 Nobodyknowswhere. 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 willto use

the mildest termnot 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

"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." _NorthAmerican Review, No. 89, October_, 1835.

"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

"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

"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 Agewe had almost said, of the hourin 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