Chapter X

Pure Reason


It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is
a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging,
for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilised Life,
which we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags,
turkey-poles, and 'bladders with dried peas.' To linger among such
speculations, longer than mere Science requires, a discerning public
can have no wish. For our purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked
World_ is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will
be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about 'Kings wrestling naked
on the green with Carmen,' and the Kings being thrown: 'dissect them
with scalpels,' says Teufelsdröckh; 'the same viscera, tissues,
livers, lights, and other life-tackle are there: examine their
spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed, and little
Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, who understands
draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of
unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon-science,
and has actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the
more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so unspeakable
difference? From Clothes.' Much also we shall omit about confusion of
Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere 'Hail
fellow well met,' and Chaos were come again: all which to any one that
has once fairly pictured-out the grand mother-idea, _Society in a
state of nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some
sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without
Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist,
let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless
Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over
which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole
nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief
riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:

'Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how,
without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and
true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?'

Nevertheless, it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdröckh; at
worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in
looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even
sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly
on the reverse; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and
manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic
patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation
of most readers,--there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes
him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand
unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdröckh is, that with all this
Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative;
whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except
those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the
visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods.

'To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, 'what is man? An omnivorous
Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A
Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there
lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses),
contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like,
and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for
himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of
Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and
Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably
over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not
thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He
feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not the
spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here,
though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with
his lips of gold, "the true SHEKINAH is Man": where else is the
GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as
in our fellow-man?'

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of
our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature,
bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapour
and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and
environment, we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and
Love;--though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again,
and hide it from view.

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; and
indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing
that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings:
thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as
well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose,
Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a
reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit,
the manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be
more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way
conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the
higher, celestial Invisible, 'unimaginable, formless, dark with excess
of bright'? Under which point of view the following passage, so
strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:

'The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even
with armed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. "The
Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, "must station himself in
the middle": how true! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has
descended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly
brother of all.

'Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven in
Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in
our imagination? Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot
love; since all was created by God?

'Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and
fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man
himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate,
a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an
inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with
eyes!'

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in
the feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of
universal Wonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for
the denizen of so singular a Planet as ours. 'Wonder,' says he, 'is
the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible
in Man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short
season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_.' That progress of Science,
which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration
and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdröckh, much as he
otherwise venerates these two latter processes.

'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small
chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic
alone; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is
the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and
Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what
is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off,
and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it
alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of
the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head
(having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought
without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like
cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing,
in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and
plenteous increase to all Time.'

In such wise does Teufelsdröckh deal hits, harder or softer, according
to ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with
charitable intent. Above all, that class of 'Logic-choppers, and
treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these
days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics'
Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and
goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often,
as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full
day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and
guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the street
populous with mere justice-loving men': that whole class is
inexpressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he
perorates:

'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and
worship) were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried
the whole _Mécanique Céleste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the
epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in
his single head,--is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no
Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.

'Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world
by the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp
of what I call Attorney-Logic; and "explain" all, "account" for all,
or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso
recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is
everywhere under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is
an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattlestall,--he shall
be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt
protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when
he kicks his foot through it?--_Armer Teufel!_ Doth not thy cow calve,
doth not thy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou
not die? "Explain" me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into
private places with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it
up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world
all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a
Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.'

Chapter XI

Prospective


The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it
would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a
cloudclapt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings
in the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the
highly questionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more
and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian
brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian
lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or
the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired,
gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights
he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are
his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an
Aggregate but a Whole:

'Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there." Thou
thyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a
Prosaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of
the world where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest
from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou
findest it swept away; already on the wings of the Northwind, it is
nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie
motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force,
and utterly dead?

'As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire
which grows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor,
where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace
thy lost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off from
the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool,
that smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air
that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar;
therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force
of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force
brought about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the
great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious
Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose
iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All; whose dingy
Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the
mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little
textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force,
commanding, and one day to be all-commanding.

'Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing
hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a
withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the
bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual
metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are
Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how
could it _rot_? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the
litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest
object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the
philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.'

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant,
high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

'All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its
own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only
spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. Hence
Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant.
Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic not of want
only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand,
all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or
hand-woven: must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies,
wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason
are, like Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful;--the
rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes
or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye?

'Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with
Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is
Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing
or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a
light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed
with a Body.

'Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather
be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of thought. I said that
Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are
her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive
elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised
as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now
solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the
osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors
its muscles and tissues and living integuments. An unmetaphorical
style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _Attention_ a
_Stretching-to_? The difference lies here: some styles are lean,
adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite
pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the
flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own
case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham
Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked),
and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its
false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Mäntel_), and tawdry
woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole
hampers,--and burn them.'

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a
more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief
grievance; the Professor continues:

'Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth
shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the
Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever
represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of
Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one
pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that
men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe
and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies
in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.'

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-bordering on the
impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual
difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling.
Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the
expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts
now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light,
uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last
week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the
kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the
whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but whose honourable
courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere
literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo
Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and
miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and
free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was
broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas,
with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown
down, and again taken up.

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments,
Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral
trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we know well already: that
however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science
originating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy
(_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which
originates equally in the Character (_Gemüth_), and equally speaks
thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is
known and seen; 'till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_),
and how he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in
short till a Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically
written, and philosophico-poetically read.' 'Nay,' adds he, 'were the
speculative scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring
age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not,
till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped-out an answer; and either
in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a
complete picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual
Endeavour lies before you. But why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say
we, 'do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdröckh's Biography? The
great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that "Man is
properly the _only_ object that interests man": thus I too have noted,
that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else
but Biography or Auto-Biography; ever humano-anecdotical
(_menschlich-anekdotisch_). Biography is by nature the most
universally profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially
Biography of distinguished individuals.

'By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed),' continues he,
with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from
Teufelsdröckh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh
unaccountable, 'by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in
that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all
readers do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as
you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken
a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps
unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and
emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdröckh also a father and
mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat?
Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his;
looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where
only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he
fought duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love?
By what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and
sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this
wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now
dwells?

'To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet
silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and
Traveller from a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled;
has parted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned
by bad cookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless at every stage
(for they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the
whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the
picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in
indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these
nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty
Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished,
unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds?

'No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by the
unexampled favour you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography
only, but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such;
wherefrom, if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest
insight: and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will
stand clear to the wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through
America, through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally
conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of this terrestrial Planet!'

And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling when, in
place of this same Autobiography with 'fullest insight,' we find--Six
considerable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in
gilt China-ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs,
beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie
miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written
in Professor Teufelsdröckh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and
treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but
of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the
most enigmatic manner.

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here,
speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the Wanderer,' is not once
named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological
Disquisition, 'Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, 'The
continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite
private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand
Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are
omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly
loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also
are long purely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connexion,
without recognisable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously
minute, they almost remind us of 'P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus
does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order,
appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same
imbroglio; only perhaps in the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the
confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration,
'On receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie washbills, marked _bezahlt_
(settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of
the various cities he has visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in
most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant.

So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now
instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo
which by intermixture will farther volatilise and discompose it! As we
shall perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six
Paper-Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all
vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of
Teufelsdröckh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at
most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of
efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of
Editor and of Reader; rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic
Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six
Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our
delineation of it.

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles)
deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed
_cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable
Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of
high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by
union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for
British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin
and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did
any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor.
For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwards
than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished-up from
the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass,
there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil
beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply
the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor,
endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and
written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering,
clutching, piercing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole
Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up.

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the
Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health
declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving
him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What
is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work therewith?
And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the
barren domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought of your own,
which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this
Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to
reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding
germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth
some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it towards
failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us; the
former also is not all our own.

Book Second
Chapter I

Genesis


In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether
from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight
is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning
remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great
man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole
circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner
of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered
manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this
First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite
obscure extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any: so
that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or
transit out of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary
portion is nowhere forthcoming.

'In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag _Libra_, on
various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, 'dwelt Andreas
Futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful
though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier
Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great;
but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and
pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he,
Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the
apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which
Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as
beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that
would listen about the Victory of Rossbach; and how Fritz the Only
(_der Einzige_) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had
been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the
pass-word, "_Schweig Hund_ (Peace, hound)!" before any of his
staff-adjutants could answer. "_Das nenn' ich mir einen König_, There
is what I call a King," would Andreas exclaim: "but the smoke of
Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes."

'Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than
the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military
subordination; for, as Andreas said, "the womankind will not drill
(_wer kann die Weiberchen dressiren_)": nevertheless she at heart
loved him both for valour and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier
Sergeant and Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero
and Cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite.
Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage,
downrightness (_Geradheit_); that understood Büsching's _Geography_,
had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade
of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over
him and hovered round him as only a true housemother can: assiduously
she cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his old
regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and
environment, where on pegs of honour they hung, looked ever trim and
gay: a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and
forest-trees, evergreens and honeysuckles; rising many-coloured from
amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling-in through the very
windows; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in
methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially
on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call
it his. Such a _Bauergut_ (Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran;
whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what
you saw.

'Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk,
when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did
nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial Balance
(_Libra_), it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered; and,
with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished
housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle; which without
further parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some
Basket, overhung with green Persian silk; saying only: _Ihr lieben
Leute, hier bringe ein unschätzbares Verleihen; nehmt es in aller
Acht, sorgfältigst benützt es: mit hohem Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren
Zinsen, wird's einst zurückgefordert._ "Good Christian people, here
lies for you an invaluable Loan; take all heed thereof, in all
carefulness employ it: with high recompense, or else with heavy
penalty, will it one day be required back." Uttering which singular
words, in a clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger
gracefully withdrew; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in
expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was
clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard;
he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood
quietly closed: the Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had
the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so
gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it all a
trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only
that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic
Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their
little parlour-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with lit
candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see
what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white
wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest
sleep, a little red-coloured Infant! Beside it, lay a roll of gold
Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known; also a
_Taufschein_ (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing
but the Name was decipherable; other document or indication none
whatever.

'To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth.
Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire
of any such figure as the Stranger; nor could the Traveller, who had
passed through the neighbouring Town in coach-and-four, be connected
with this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise.
Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was:
What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured Infant? Amid
amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external
satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent
people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into
whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their
endeavour: thus has that same mysterious Individual ever since had a
status for himself in this visible Universe, some modicum of victual
and lodging and parade-ground; and now expanded in bulk, faculty and
knowledge of good and evil, he, as HERR DIOGENES TEUFELSDRÖCKH,
professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without
effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of
Things in General.'

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well
might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen
Futteral, in his twelfth year, 'produced on the boyish heart and fancy
a quite indelible impression. Who this Reverend Personage,' he says,
'that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and
then, as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An
inexpressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since
struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses and my
loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing (_sehnsuchtsvoll_), to
that unknown Father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way
invisible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie
screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut
out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to
and fro among the crowd of the living? Or art thou hidden by those far
thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of the
Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye and outstretched arms
need not strive to reach? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to
know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee this and
the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached him wistfully, with
infinite regard; but he too had to repel me; he too was not thou.

'And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Autobiographer, with one of
his sudden whirls, 'wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst thou, any more
than I, a Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the
Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and
pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were,
like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: thy true
Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye thou shalt
never behold, but only with the spiritual.'

'The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and
embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,
Diogenes Teufelsdröckh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece
of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name
I have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay
there any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate
to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's
Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of
Subscriber-Lists (_Pränumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other
Name-catalogues; extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name
Teufelsdröckh, except as appended to my own person, nowhere occurs.
Again, what may the unchristian rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean?
Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such designation, to
shadow-forth my future destiny, or his own present malign humour?
Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an
Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into
self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage
have been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been;
or indeed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have
I fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung
at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by
the Time-Spirit (_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good
soul first given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst
nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future,
and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same Spirit not
of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and
Protest, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air.

'For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay
almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round
the earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more
tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty
centuries) than the very skin. And now from without, what mystic
influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in
those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft,
and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree!
Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most
important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not
only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if
thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was giving
names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of
the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic,
stars or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions,
virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the
Proverb says, _Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost
similar sense may we not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes
Teufelsdröckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes?_'

       *       *       *       *       *

'Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his
Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light;
sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling;
in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of
Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened
Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of
this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what
it might. Infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he
could perform the miracle of--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not
like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is formless,
powerless; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot through
the watery albumen; and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, grows
Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries
and Religions!

'Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such diminutive had
they in their fondness named him, travelled forward to those high
consummations, by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain
talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out
that he was a grand-nephew; the orphan of some sister's daughter,
suddenly deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland; of whom,
as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at
Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took to his
spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted as a still infant, that
kept his mind much to himself; above all, that seldom or never cried.
He already felt that time was precious; that he had other work cut-out
for him than whimpering.'

       *       *       *       *       *

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these
miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr
Teufelsdröckh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem
to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and
more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep undercurrents of
roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not
doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen
Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been
deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the
Entepfuhl Circulating Library, some cultivated native of that district
might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like
invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo
itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find out
even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of extreme
senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose
himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride?

Chapter II

Idyllic


'Happy season of Childhood!' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: 'Kind Nature,
that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man's hut
with auroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided, a soft
swathing of Love, and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers,
danced-round (_umgaukelt_) by sweetest Dreams! If the paternal Cottage
still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; with a Father we have as
yet a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes us free.
The young spirit has awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what we
mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful
sunlit ocean; years to the child are as ages: ah! the secret of
Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and ceaseless
down-rushing of the universal World-fabric, from the granite mountain
to the man or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless Universe,
we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is forever
denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, for thy long
rough journey is at hand! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no
more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; thou too, with old
Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern patience: "Rest? Rest? Shall I not
have all Eternity to rest in?" Celestial Nepenthe! though a Pyrrhus
conquer empires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not;
and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eyelids,
on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are
one: the fair Life-garden rustles infinite around, and everywhere is
dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope; which budding, if in youth,
too frostnipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but
a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find the
kernel.'

In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as Poets are wont,
look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say
nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells
on with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing
'in trustful derangement' among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard
flanking it as extreme out-post from below; the little Kuhbach gushing
kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the
Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe; and how
'the brave old Linden,' stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in
radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered-up from the
central _Agora_ and _Campus Martius_ of the Village, like its Sacred
Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often
greedily listening), and the wearied labourers reclined, and the
unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced
to flute-music. 'Glorious summer twilights,' cries Teufelsdröckh,
'when the Sun, like a proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned
his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad
body-guard (of Prismatic Colours); and the tired brickmakers of this
clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would
not tell of them!'

Then we have long details of the _Weinlesen_ (Vintage), the
Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth; with a whole cycle of the
Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial
shades from those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall
here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our
as yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under that 'brave old
Linden'? Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the
following? 'In all the sports of Children, were it only in their
wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern a creative
instinct (_schaffenden Trieb_): the Mankin feels that he is a born
Man, that his vocation is to work. The choicest present you can make
him is a Tool; be it knife or pen-gun, for construction or for
destruction; either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious
sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to Coöperation,
for war or peace, as governor or governed: the little Maid again,
provident of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls.'

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering who it is
that relates it: 'My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; or
rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one
and indivisible, reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four
limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine the
architectural, how much less the moral significance!'

More graceful is the following little picture: 'On fine evenings I was
wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it
out-of-doors. On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach
by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would set-up the
pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed: there, many a sunset, have I,
looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not without
relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of
World's expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me;
nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an
eye for their gilding.'

With 'the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry' we shall not
much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a 'certain deeper
sympathy with animated Nature': but when, we would ask, saw any man,
in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this:
'Impressive enough (_bedeutungsvoll_) was it to hear, in early
morning, the Swineherd's horn; and know that so many hungry happy
quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for
breakfast on the Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all marching-in
again, with short squeak, almost in military order; and each,
topographically correct, trotting-off in succession to the right or
left, through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the
Village-head, now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the
night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham; yet did
not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence,
perhaps humour of character; at any rate, a touching, trustful
submissiveness to Man,--who, were he but a Swineherd, in darned
gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate or
discoloured-tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this lower world?'

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius
is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly
favourable influences accompany him through life, especially through
childhood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and continue
dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an
inspired Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner man
of the one has been fostered into generous development; that of the
other, crushed-down perhaps by vigour of animal digestion, and the
like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably
stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. 'With which opinion,' cries
Teufelsdröckh, 'I should as soon agree as with this other, that an
acorn might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil and
climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak.

'Nevertheless,' continues he, 'I too acknowledge the all-but
omnipotence of early culture and nurture: hereby we have either a
doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree; either a
sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it
is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note-down
with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their Education,
what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it: to which
duty, nowadays so pressing for many a German Autobiographer, I also
zealously address myself.'--Thou rogue! Is it by short-clothes of
yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is
educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is
laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times of ours, or
writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he
continues: 'If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings,
Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young
Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify,
perhaps these following were also of the number:

'Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the
young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency
given him by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his
battle-reminiscences, and gay austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect,
could not but appear another Ulysses and "much-enduring Man." Eagerly
I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth;
from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades
itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded itself within me.
Incalculable also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old
Men under the Linden-tree: the whole of Immensity was yet new to me;
and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in
partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years? With amazement I
began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of
a World; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography; to
which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute.

'In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which,
slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, wended through
our Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards
visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year did I reflect that this
Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and
setting by mere Law of Nature, like the heavenly one; that it came on
made highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them like a
monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that,
independently of Schiller's _Wilhelm Tell_, I made this not quite
insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): _Any
road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the
world!_

'Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as I learned,
threading their way over seas and mountains, corporate cities and
belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, with the month of May,
snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for
cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest:
there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and all,
I chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who
taught _you_ the mason-craft; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic
incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill chance, and when
time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighbourly
Helpers appear next day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud,
long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, complete it
again before nightfall?

'But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's-culture, where
as in a funnel its manifold influences were concentrated and
simultaneously poured-down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here,
assembling from all the four winds, came the elements of an
unspeakable hurly-burly. Nutbrown maids and nutbrown men, all
clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for
dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted
Graziers from the North; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also
topbooted, from the South; these with their subalterns in leather
jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads; shouting in
half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing.
Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows;
Nürnberg Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz
bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; detachments of the _Wiener
Schub_ (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously superintending games of
chance. Ballad-singers brayed, Auctioneers grew hoarse; cheap New Wine
(_heuriger_) flowed like water, still worse confounding the confusion;
and high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a
particoloured Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place and of Life
itself.

'Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the deep heavenly
Firmament; waited-on by the four golden Seasons, with their
vicissitudes of contribution, for even grim Winter brought its
skating-matches and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and
Christmas-carols,--did the Child sit and learn. These things were the
Alphabet, whereby in aftertime he was to syllable and partly read the
grand Volume of the World; what matters it whether such Alphabet be in
large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read
it? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking thereon was
a blessedness that gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft
element of Joy; out of which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder after
wonder bodied itself forth, to teach by charming.

'Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even then my
felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into
the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay
even in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a
thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever
waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost
over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final
night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; happy
he for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring of Duty, and
plays round it with beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as
basis and as bourne for our whole being, it is there.

       *       *       *       *       *

'For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, we have
not much work to do; but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down
mostly to look about us over the workshop, and see others work, till
we have understood the tools a little, and can handle this and that.
If good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good Activity
together, were the thing wanted, then was my early position favourable
beyond the most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affectionate
Temper, ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more
could I have wished? On the other side, however, things went not so
well. My Active Power (_Thatkraft_) was unfavourably hemmed-in; of
which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me! In an orderly
house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your
training is too stoical; rather to bear and forbear than to make and
do. I was forbid much: wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce;
everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus
already Freewill often came in painful collision with Necessity; so
that my tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself might taste that
root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is
mingled and tempered.

'In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond measure safer
to err by excess than by defect. Obedience is our universal duty and
destiny; wherein whoso will not bend must break: too early and too
thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, in this world of
ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of
fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly
Discretion, nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my
upbringing! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded,
everyway unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic
solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the
stem from which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful
soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every
deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such I must ever love
the good Gretchen, did me one altogether invaluable service: she
taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look and
habitude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. Andreas too
attended Church; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the
other world expected pay with arrears,--as, I trust, he has received;
but my Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though uncultivated
sense, was in the strictest acceptation Religious. How indestructibly
the Good grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy
entanglements of Evil! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw
bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in Heaven: such
things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your
being; mysteriously does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility
in the mysterious deeps; and Reverence, the divinest in man, springs
forth undying from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou rather
be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God
in Heaven and in Man; or a duke's son that only knew there were
two-and-thirty quarters on the family-coach?'

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

Chapter III

Pedagogy


Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow
serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated,
indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop; but (except
his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still
intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there.
Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an
incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would
trouble Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine
of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as
with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least
all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in
the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his
Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in
this latter capacity; how when, to use his own words, 'he understands
the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to
handle it.

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our
Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo
character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and everyway excellent
'Passivity' of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist
Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of
much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes
the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdröckh is oftenest a man
without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a
man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual,
close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or
even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A
dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European; above all,
disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will
behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to
do his endeavour.

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a
man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion
of his History, Teufelsdröckh looks down professedly as indifferent.
Reading he 'cannot remember ever to have learned'; so perhaps had it
by nature. He says generally: 'Of the insignificant portion of my
Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be
taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner
of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a
downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild
are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he,
good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions;
and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the
University. Meanwhile, what printed thing soever I could meet with I
read. My very copper pocket-money I laid-out on stall-literature;
which, as it accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By
this means was the young head furnished with a considerable miscellany
of things and shadows of things: History in authentic fragments lay
mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality; and the
whole not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive
for a mind as yet so peptic.'

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now know. Indeed,
already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness,
there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much;
symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical.
Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other
phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages
stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following?
'It struck me much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and
watched it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had
flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune,
from beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the morning
when Joshua forded Jordan; even as at the midday when Cæsar, doubtless
with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his _Commentaries_ dry,--this
little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on
across the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the
Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand
World-circulation of Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, has
lasted and lasts simply with the World. Thou fool! Nature alone is
antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on
is six-thousand years of age.' In which little thought, as in a little
fountain, may there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh
unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mystery of TIME, and its
relation to ETERNITY, which play such a part in this Philosophy of
Clothes?

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers
so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there
are still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there
stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. 'With my first view of the
Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, 'my evil days began. Well do I
still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full
of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of
the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and
_Schuldthurm_ (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in
to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past; for some
human imps had tied a tin-kettle to its tail; thus did the agonised
creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the
Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering
Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere
does) has malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him
on; which the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly
and more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in
that mischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and
epitome!

'Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: I
was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards
me; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and
alone.' His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him: 'They were
Boys,' he says, 'mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude
Nature, which bids the deerherd fall upon any stricken hart, the
duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on
all hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits, that though
'perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he succeeded ill in
battle, and would fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear,
owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he
was 'incredibly nimble'), than to his 'virtuous principles': 'if it
was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, 'it was only a shade less
disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was I drawn two ways at
once, and in this important element of school-history, the
war-element, had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent
'Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdröckh's childhood, is here visibly
enough again getting nourishment. 'He wept often; indeed to such a
degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (the Tearful), which
epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite
unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst-forth into
fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestüm_) under which the
boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of
Mankin.' In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and
cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass and
ignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only,
and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned to
its _breadth_?

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 'mechanically'
taught; Hebrew scarce even mechanically; much else which they called
History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at
all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself
'went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops,
there learning many things'; and farther lighted on some small store
of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he
lodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts
the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment.
Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag _Scorpio_, where we now are,
and often in the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on
the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might
presume to be anger.

'My Teachers,' says he, 'were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of
man's nature, or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and
quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language,
for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called
it fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical
Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be
manufactured at Nürnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growth of
anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by
having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a
spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at
the fire of living Thought? How shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own
inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt-out to a dead
grammatical cinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough;
and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory,
and could be acted-on through the muscular integument by appliance of
birch-rods.

'Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hodman is
discharged, or reduced to hodbearing, and an Architect is hired, and
on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals
discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a
generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies
to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for
killing, there should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it
possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though
the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool,
nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of
his instructing-tool: nay, were he to walk abroad with birch girt on
thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would there not, among the
idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited?'

In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to
have died: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for
the first time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite
inexpressible melancholy. 'The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under
our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their
innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the
inexorable word, NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept,
and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of
tears, pent-up in silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is
strong; Life is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death:
these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination,
rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with
not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine,
through long years of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do;
for I have now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now
my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon
the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life
placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still
smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of
Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who
wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing
the flinty ground with your blood,--yet a little while, and we shall
all meet THERE, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all; and
Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna
Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth
harm us any more!'

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured Character
of the deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts
in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into
the genealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as Henry
the Fowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment.
It only concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen
revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred, or
indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the
way already known to us. 'Thus was I doubly orphaned,' says he;
'bereft not only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and
Wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit.
Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole
nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my
whole thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and
night-dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a
corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no
other_; in which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener
to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring of
Tendencies, which in my Life have become remarkable enough? As in
birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my fellows are
perhaps not numerous.'

       *       *       *       *       *

In the Bag _Sagittarius_, as we at length discover, Teufelsdröckh has
become a University man; though, how, when, or of what quality, will
nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in
the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise
our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel
in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found,
and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In
_Sagittarius_, however, Teufelsdröckh begins to show himself even more
than usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts; scraps of regular
Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums,
Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast;
all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the
sane Historian. To combine any picture of these University, and the
subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative
primordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem
as the reader may imagine.

So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering
thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily
through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood,
now at length perfect in 'dead vocables,' and set down, as he hopes,
by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From
such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom
with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate;
discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or
supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for
'the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from not disinterested
relatives has sent him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing
but too feeble hand.' Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and
manifold Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character is in
him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in
weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which are
prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and of what Time brings, has the
stripling Diogenes Teufelsdröckh waxed into manly stature; and into so
questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, How he
specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit
answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially significant
fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo
of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation.

As if, in the Bag _Scorpio_, Teufelsdröckh had not already
expectorated his antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name
_Sagittarius_, he had thought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we
here again fall-in with such matter as this: 'The University where I
was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know
its name well; which name, however, I, from tenderness to existing
interests and persons, shall in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty
to say that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all
hitherto discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right
Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible: however, in degrees of
wrongness there is no limit: nay, I can conceive a worse system than
that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than
absolute hunger.

'It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into
the ditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be
safer, if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in
Crim Tartary; walled-in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small,
ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred
Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to
seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being
stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and
exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical
structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our
High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was
quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily,
we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of
smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far
costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration
aloud, you could not be sure of gulling.

'Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled,
with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics
of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange
indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for minor
Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand
all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of
Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and
mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all!
Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature
and Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet
Polish; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying,
in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements,
incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But
to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely-complected departments
of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial,
intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true
Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To
what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and
countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here
truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which
hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in
our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so
high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a
Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far
from the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be
anticipated, as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the
manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and
clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length
becomes all but wholly unnecessary!

'This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the
present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education,
Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so
little can as yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative,
anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose
your sinews of war quite broken; I mean your military chest insolvent,
forage all but exhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny,
disband, and cut your and each other's throat,--then were it not well
could you, as if by miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed
them on coagulated water, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till
the real supply came up, they might be kept together and quiet? Such
perhaps was the aim of Nature, who does nothing without aim, in
furnishing her favourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather
omnipatient Talent of being Gulled.

'How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makes
mechanism for itself! These Professors in the Nameless lived with
ease, with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times,
and then too with no great effort, by quite another class of persons.
Which Reputation, like a strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk
into the general current, bade fair, with only a little annual
repainting on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord
assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers!
They themselves needed not to work; their attempts at working, at what
they called Educating, now when I look back on it, filled me with a
certain mute admiration.

'Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in the
highest degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mind
furnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages,
Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out
into a state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had
soon to end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode
(_crepiren_) in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents
become dead.--But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our era is
the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is there not a better
coming, nay come? As in long-drawn Systole and long-drawn Diastole,
must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Denial; must the
vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual
Representations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow, the
autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his
whole earthly being, endeavour and destiny shaped for him by Time:
only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we
stand on made manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it
is for the nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been
born, and to be awake and work; and for the duller a felicity, if,
like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca University, or
Sybaris City, or other superstitious or voluptuous Castle of
Indolence, they can slumber-through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken
when the loud-roaring hailstorms have all done their work, and to our
prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed.'

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth,
Teufelsdröckh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. 'The
hungry young,' he says, 'looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, for
food, were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversial
Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely named
Science, was current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the
most. Among eleven-hundred Christian youths, there will not be wanting
some eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth,
a certain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I
took less to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading,
which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that
Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books perhaps than had been
known to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life
was hereby laid : I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in
almost all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences;
farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my
favourite employment to read character in speculation, and from the
Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Nature
and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I
look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as
yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognised groundplan, the
truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there, and by additional
experiments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.'

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the
destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for
himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help.
Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage
monsters. Teufelsdröckh gives us long details of his 'fever-paroxysms
of Doubt'; his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of
religious Faith; and how 'in the silent night-watches, still darker in
his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the
All-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for
deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not till after long years, and
unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; sink into
spell-bound sleep, under the night-mare, Unbelief; and, in this
hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant
Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Purgatory pain,'
continues he, 'it is appointed us to pass; first must the dead Letter
of Religion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the
living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel-house, is to
arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and with new healing under its wings.'

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberal
measure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want of
sympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid
season of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires,
yet here so poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit
oppressed and overloaded from without and from within; the fire of
genius struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with
more of bitter vapour than of clear flame?

From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is
to be inferred that Teufelsdröckh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was,
had not altogether escaped notice: certain established men are aware
of his existence; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, have at
least their eyes on him. He appears, though in dreary enough humour,
to be addressing himself to the Profession of Law;--whereof, indeed,
the world has since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these
broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, let us present
rather the following small thread of Moral relation; and therewith,
the reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our
dim arras-picture of these University years.

'Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, as
it is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality
(_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected,
by blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zähdarm, in this quarter
of Germany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with
all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably
ill-cultivated; with considerable humour of character: and, bating his
total ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little
Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent
fury, than for most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I
owe my first practical knowledge of the English and their ways;
perhaps also something of the partiality with which I have ever since
regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could
he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the
Zähdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of
perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of
infancy, hither to a University where so much as the notion of
perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! Often
we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young in this era: how,
after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the world, with
beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attributes of manhood;
no existing thing that we were trained to Act on, nothing that we
could so much as Believe. "How has our head on the outside a polished
Hat," would Towgood exclaim, "and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of
Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small cost men are educated to make
leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what am I educated to make?
By Heaven, Brother! what I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus
far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables."--"Man,
indeed," I would answer, "has a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept
working, were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis-education,
make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on
thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _Frisch zu, Bruder!_
Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here is a whole Earth
and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on them: _Frisch zu!_"

'Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and even fire.
We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at once
harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, not
unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. For
myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young
warmhearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I was even near
experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish
Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could
have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother
once and always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and
its wants. If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and
Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true
meaning of Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of
Friends, are Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away
chimeras.'

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little
incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood,
or Toughgut? He has dived-under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and
swims we see not where. Does any reader 'in the interior parts of
England' know of such a man?

Chapter IV

Getting Under Way


'Thus, nevertheless,' writes our autobiographer, apparently as
quitting College, 'was there realised Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes
Teufelsdröckh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some
cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and
spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in
more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man.
Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in some small degree,
against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and
Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so
leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very
Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organises something
(into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and
of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by
humming.

'How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned,
or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic
I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and
henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these
days, witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and
how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but
cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not
seen the Scottish Brassmith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one)
travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and
stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly
fetching and carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth, but rapidly
enough overturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism
and Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure
methods, Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a
Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every
time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder
through the Nether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, with new
tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him.

'With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, been
called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest
Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace
and War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfürst_), or Devil, and all his
Dominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre
is so difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!'

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdröckh mean no more
than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'getting under
way'? 'Not what I Have,' continues he, 'but what I Do is my Kingdom.
To each is given a certain inward Talent, a certain outward
Environment of Fortune; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a
certain maximum of Capability. But the hardest problem were ever this
first: To find by study of yourself, and of the ground you stand on,
what your combined inward and outward Capability specially is. For,
alas, our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and we see not
yet which is the main and true one. Always too the new man is in a new
time, under new conditions; his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no
prior one, but is by its nature original. And then how seldom will the
outward Capability fit the inward: though talented wonderfully enough,
we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than
all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go
stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the
wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be
spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of
distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole
term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from
enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as
exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their
last enterprise, that of getting buried.

'Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general
fate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this
ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt
choice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and
Apprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, the
vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a
specific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with little
waste of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that
of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too
is born blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive
sight in nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well
that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies
(_Brodzwecke_), pre-appointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse,
for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can
travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward
and forward; and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an
additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of
Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided;
only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I
broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world
generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to
open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased (_fast wär ich
umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut.'

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was
to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as
it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim
disastrous details, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow.
A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young
mettled colt, 'breaks-off his neck-halter,' and bounds forth, from his
peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all
rigorously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him
they are forbidden pasture: either pining in progressive starvation,
he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping
against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only
lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and
endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into
luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness
where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though waited on by
Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdröckh having
thrown-up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of
outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or
inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on;
Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions
without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and
agitate him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, _No Object and no
Rest_; must front its successive destinies, work through to its
catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his 'neck-halter' sat
nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off.
If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless
capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern
well that it was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has
come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the _Examen
Rigorosum_ need not have frightened him: but though he is hereby 'an
_Auscultator_ of respectability,' what avails it? There is next to no
employment to be had. Neither, for a youth without connexions, is the
process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his
disposition much cheered from without. 'My fellow Auscultators,' he
says, 'were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked
articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small
speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither
for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save
only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In which words,
indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdröckh, may
there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity?
Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his
strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to
despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be:
already has the young Teufelsdröckh left the other young geese; and
swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or
gosling.

Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best
unpleasantly. 'Great practical method and expertness' he may brag of;
but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only
the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure
to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with
his independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much?
'Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not
also with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been
appointed to struggle.' Be this as it may, his progress from the
passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently
of the slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially
inclined to patronise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and
give him up as 'a man of genius': against which procedure he, in these
Papers, loudly protests. 'As if,' says he, 'the higher did not
presuppose the lower; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also
walk post if he resolved on it! But the world is an old woman, and
mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often
cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper.'

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner,
contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward
without return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old
Gretchen seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the
Earth; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for
him; so that 'the prompt nature of Hunger being well known,' we are
not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many
languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; neither, to use
his own words, 'does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself
any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his
wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,' continues he, 'that I
subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive.' Which fact,
however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old
Proverb, that 'there is always life for a living one,' we must profess
ourselves unable to explain.

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the
mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like
an independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here
also occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which
perhaps throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or
writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 'The
(_Inkblot_), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, except by best
wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdröckh's views on the Assessorship in
question; and sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing,
for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in
opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs
are yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a
sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and
beneficently worked. We give it in the original: '_Herr Teufelsdröckh
wird von der Frau Gräfinn, auf Donnerstag, zum_ ÆSTHETISCHEN THEE
_schönstens eingeladen._'

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most
urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash
of quite fluid _Æsthetic Tea!_ How Teufelsdröckh, now at actual
handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these
Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion
invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in
expressive silence, and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such
case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on
the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Gräfinn dates from the
_Zähdarm House_, she can be no other than the Countess and mistress of
the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to
Teufelsdröckh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own
footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed,
continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps
feebly enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express
evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough
for him if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world,
from which we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded.
'The Zähdarms,' says he, 'lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of
Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted and attached from
without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the
_Gnädigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due:
assiduously she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, what fringing was
to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was Teufelsdröckh
also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? 'With his
_Excellenz_ (the Count),' continues he, 'I have more than once had the
honour to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the
world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no
unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of
Journalism (_die auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate
therein. On some points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I
found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being
that of Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, as
superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.'

That to Teufelsdröckh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless,
and many things besides 'the Outrooting of Journalism' might have
seemed improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a
barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and
wishes from within, his position was no easy one. 'The Universe,' he
says, 'was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet
must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet
also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished
Thought, unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as
yet knew not the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can
spring only from discords set in harmony; that but for Evil there were
no Good, as victory is only possible by battle.'

'I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he elsewhere, 'by
not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human
happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered
under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to
follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder
and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least
as considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say
that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as
young ladies (_Mädchen_) are, to mankind, precisely the most
delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (_Bübchen_) do then
attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (_Gecken_) are they;
and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for
self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglorious; in all
senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour or attainment
will, in the smallest, content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining
young gentleman; but he could make it all infinitely better, were it
worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most manageable matter, simple
as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply your second and third
term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will
be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The
booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will,
there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no
net integer quotient so much as to be thought of.'

In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that
Teufelsdröckh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an
inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary,
youthful, yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the
former side alone, his case was hard enough. 'It continues ever true,'
says he, 'that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all
his Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you
(for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours
at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time
stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole
terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a
Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of
it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the
right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual
movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a
continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward
Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have
done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do
anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and
sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid
moments can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to
us! Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was
Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might,
there was no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were
the feet.' That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this
lower world, that Teufelsdröckh's whole duty and necessity was, like
other men's, 'to work,--in the right direction,' and that no work was
to be had; whereby he became wretched enough. As was natural: with
haggard Scarcity threatening him in the distance; and so vehement a
soul languishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir
Hudibras's sword by rust,

  To eat into itself for lack
  Of something else to hew and hack!

But on the whole, that same 'excellent Passivity,' as it has all along
done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may
we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterises our
Professor; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the
Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards
the World is too defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold
attitude of attack. 'So far hitherto,' he says, 'as I had mingled with
mankind, I was notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of
manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill
express the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with
an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed,
is ever divine to him that has a sense for the God-like. Often,
notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my
so-called Hardness (_Härte_), my Indifferentism towards men; and the
seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in
conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case,
wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person
might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer
exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the
language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as
renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke
into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly
stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man,
from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society.
Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with
gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an
insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhoch_), and thence
fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without
indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!'

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for
himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdröckh too admits,
is 'to unite yourself with some one and with somewhat (_sich
anzuschliessen_)'? Division, not union, is written on most part of his
procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only
important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, his connexion
with the Zähdarm Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all
practical uses, by the death of the 'not uncholeric' old Count. This
fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on
Epitaphs_, huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which
Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved of
than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of
what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. 'By request
of that worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says he, 'I undertook to compose
his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following;
which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet
fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven';--wherein, we may
predict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English
reader:

                             HIC JACET

               PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS,

                          ZAEHDARMI COMES,
                        EX IMPERII CONCILIO,
         VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI
                                EQUES.

                      QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,

                      QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES

                          PLUMBO CONFECIT:

                             VARII CIBI

                CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,
            PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE
                    HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS,

                             IN STERCUS

                          PALAM CONVERTIT.

                    NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM
                          OPERA SEQUUNTUR.

                       SI MONUMENTUM QUÆRIS,
                          FIMETUM ADSPICE.

    PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].

Chapter V

Romance


'For long years,' writes Teufelsdröckh, 'had the poor Hebrew, in this
Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks without
stubble, before ever the question once struck him with entire force:
For what?--_Beym Himmel!_ For Food and Warmth! And are Food and Warmth
nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discoverable?--Come of it
what might, I resolved to try.'

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent capacity, though
perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdröckh is now a man without
Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers,
where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he
desperately steers-off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass
of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdröckh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic,
nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not _a Fleet_, sailing in
prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combination,
wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings,
each could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown
seas; and for thyself find that shorter North-west Passage to thy fair
Spice-country of a Nowhere?--A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with
such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith
discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and
as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning.

'If in youth,' writes he once, 'the Universe is majestically
unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to
the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself
as in the Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life of
ours, it has been so appointed. On the whole, as I have often said, a
Person (_Persönlichkeit_) is ever holy to us: a certain orthodox
Anthropomorphism connects my _Me_ with all _Thees_ in bonds of Love:
but it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such
heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns-out
into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indifferent
to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to
unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing
all these, unite ourselves to him? But how much more, in this case of
the Like-Unlike! Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of
such a union, the highest in our Earth; thus, in the conducting medium
of Fantasy, flames-forth that _fire_-development of the universal
Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and woman, we
first emphatically denominate LOVE.

'In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there already
blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest Eve;
nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden,
is a Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof,
wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a
Flaming Sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, the
imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season
of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable celestial
barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have not shrunk into the
mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite
and free!

'As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teufelsdröckh, evidently meaning
himself, 'in his secluded way of life, and with his glowing Fantasy,
the more fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating
furnace, his feeling towards the Queens of this Earth was, and indeed
is, altogether unspeakable. A visible Divinity dwelt in them; to our
young Friend all women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw
them flitting past, in their many-coloured angel-plumage; or hovering
mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of _Æsthetic Tea_: all of air
they were, all Soul and Form; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses,
in whose hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might
mount into very Heaven. That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for
himself one of these Gracefuls (_Holden_)--_Ach Gott!_ how could he
hope it; should he not have died under it? There was a certain
delirious vertigo in the thought.

'Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and Angels such as
the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts
of true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly hovered round him whereso he
went; and they had that religious worship in his thought, though as
yet it was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named them.
But now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maiden,
incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast any electric
glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, "Thou too mayest love and be
loved"; and so kindle him,--good Heaven, what a volcanic,
earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably kindled!'

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst-forth, with
explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes;
as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative
style, we might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of
Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous
Humour enough; the whole lying in such hot neighbourhood, close by 'a
reverberating furnace of Fantasy': have we not here the components of
driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to
blaze-up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks anywhere
wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round,
would one day, leaving 'the outskirts of _Æsthetic Tea_,' flit nigher;
and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework.
Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed-off rocketwise, in
successive beautiful bursts of splendour, each growing naturally from
the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love; till
the whole were safely burnt-out; and the young soul relieved with
little damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Conflagration and
mad Explosion; painfully lacerating the heart itself; nay perhaps
bursting the heart in pieces (which were Death); or at best, bursting
the thin walls of your 'reverberating furnace,' so that it rage
thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous combustibles (which
were Madness): till of the so fair and manifold internal world of our
Diogenes, there remained Nothing, or only the 'crater of an extinct
volcano!'

From multifarious Documents in this Bag _Capricornus_, and in the
adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our
philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and
even frantically in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether
his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved once; not
wisely but too well. And once only: for as your Congreve needs a new
case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can
properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the 'First Love which is
infinite' can be followed by no second like unto it. In more recent
years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard
Teufelsdröckh as a man not only who would never wed, but who would
never even flirt; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and _St. Martin's
Summer_ of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new myrtle-garland.
To the Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art; of Celestial
Art, indeed; which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries,
but has lost thought of purchasing.

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see how
Teufelsdröckh, in this for him unexampled predicament, demeans
himself; with what specialties of successive configuration, splendour
and colour, his Firework blazes-off. Small, as usual, is the
satisfaction that such can meet with here. From amid these confused
masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean
ware lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter,
not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without
doubt, the title _Blumine_, whereby she is here designated, and which
means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real name
Flora, then? But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what
station in Life was she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect?
Specially, by what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did the
Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a world; how did they
behave in such meeting? To all which questions, not unessential in a
Biographic work, mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. 'It
was appointed,' says our Philosopher, 'that the high celestial orbit
of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of our Forlorn; that
he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of
Light was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows; and finding
himself mistaken, make noise enough.'

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, beautiful, and some
one's Cousin; highborn, and of high spirit; but unhappily dependent
and insolvent; living, perhaps, on the not-too-gracious bounty of
monied relatives. But how came 'the Wanderer' into her circle? Was it
by the humid vehicle of _Æsthetic Tea_, or by the arid one of mere
Business? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; or of the Gnädige Frau,
who, as ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirtation,
especially for young cynical Nondescripts? To all appearance, it was
chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature.

'Thou fair Waldschloss,' writes our Autobiographer, 'what stranger
ever saw thee, were it even an absolved Auscultator, officially
bearing in his pocket the last _Relatio ex Actis_ he would ever write,
but must have paused to wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in
deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene
solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western
sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal.
Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills;
of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of
crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To
the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also as an Ammon's Temple, in the
Libyan Waste; where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay
written. Well might he pause and gaze; in that glance of his were
prophecy and nameless forebodings.'

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscultator has
handed-in his _Relatio ex Actis_; been invited to a glass of
Rhine-wine; and so, instead of returning dispirited and athirst to his
dusty Town-home, is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where sit the
choicest party of dames and cavaliers: if not engaged in Æsthetic Tea,
yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for
we hear of 'harps and pure voices making the stillness live.'
Scarcely, it would seem, is the Gardenhouse inferior in respectability
to the noble Mansion itself. 'Embowered amid rich foliage,
rose-clusters, and the hues and odours of thousand flowers, here sat
that brave company; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook
over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching,
undulating onwards to the remote Mountain peaks: so bright, so mild,
and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures: it was all as
if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the bosom-vesture of
Summer herself. How came it that the Wanderer advanced thither with
such forecasting heart (_ahndungsvoll_), by the side of his gay host?
Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be
shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; to mock
him, and see whether there were Humour in him?

'Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; and especially
by name to--Blumine! Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced
Blumine, there in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights.
Noblest maiden! whom he bent to, in body and in soul; yet scarcely
dared look at, for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest
embarrassment.

'Blumine's was a name well known to him; far and wide was the fair one
heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices: from all which
vague colourings of Rumour, from the censures no less than from the
praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen
of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than
your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins
circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public
places; that light yet so stately form; those dark tresses, shading a
face where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps: but all this
he had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost
without reality. Her sphere was too far from his; how should she ever
think of him; O Heaven! how should they so much as once meet together?
And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him; the light
of _her_ eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she will hear it! Nay,
who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but
Blumine herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable; perhaps,
from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder,
gathered favour for him? Was the attraction, the agitation mutual,
then; pole and pole trembling towards contact, when once brought into
neighbourhood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of the Queen of
Hearts; like the Sea swelling when once near its Moon! With the
Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at
the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its
deepest recesses; and all that was painful and that was blissful
there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future,
are heaving in unquiet eddies within him.

'Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend shrunk
forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and flutterings, of
what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming
Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the core of
his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into
fearlessness and clearness? It was his guiding Genius (_Dämon_) that
inspired him; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. Show thyself now,
whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your
anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able
to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne
on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so
rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a
certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent,
but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which
thenceforth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say
that he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain
inspiration was imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in
our late era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in
free, glowing words; his soul is as one sea of light, the peculiar
home of Truth and Intellect; wherein also Fantasy bodies-forth form
after form, radiant with all prismatic hues.'

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked one
'Philistine'; who even now, to the general weariness, was dominantly
pouring-forth Philistinism (_Philistriositäten_); little witting what
hero was here entering to demolish him! We omit the series of
Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy in their way,
whereby the monster, 'persuaded into silence,' seems soon after to
have withdrawn for the night. 'Of which dialectic marauder,' writes
our hero, 'the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most: but
what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening every moment to
become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? He
ventured to address her, she answered with attention: nay what if
there were a slight tremor in that silver voice; what if the red glow
of evening were hiding a transient blush!

'The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought called forth
another: it was one of those rare seasons, when the soul expands with
full freedom, and man feels himself brought near to man. Gaily in
light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that
circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of
Ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as
into vapour; and the poor claims of _Me_ and _Thee_, no longer parted
by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all
harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign
and owner of which were Love only. Such music springs from kind
hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. And yet as the light
grew more aërial on the mountain-tops, and the shadows fell longer
over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have breathed through
the heart; and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every one
that as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so likewise
must the Day of Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness; and
with all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises sink in the
still Eternity.

'To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy was he and happy: the
words from those sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty
grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper: It is good
for us to be here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the
balmy twilight, with the kind stars above them, he spoke something of
meeting again, which was not contradicted; he pressed gently those
small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not
angrily withdrawn.'

Poor Teufelsdröckh! it is clear to demonstration thou art smit: the
Queen of Hearts would see a 'man of genius' also sigh for her; and
there, by art-magic, in that preternatural hour, has she bound and
spell-bound thee. 'Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says he elsewhere;
'yet has it many points in common therewith. I call it rather a
discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which
discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or
demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in
common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds itself to sight; on the
so petty domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby to
move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true
Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small
temporary stage (_Zeitbühne_), whereon thick-streaming influences from
both these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and
melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, in most countries, for
some eighteenpence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems
will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet
drinking no better red wine than he had before.' Alas! witness also
your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and verging
towards Insanity, for prize of a 'high-souled Brunette,' as if the
earth held but one and not several of these!

He says that, in Town, they met again: 'day after day, like his
heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. Ah! a little while
ago, and he was yet in all darkness; him what Graceful (_Holde_) would
ever love? Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never learned
to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own
fastnesses; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he
saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the
fairest hopes of existence. And now, O now! "She looks on thee," cried
he: "she the fairest, noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou
art not despised? The Heaven's-Messenger! All Heaven's blessings be
hers!" Thus did soft melodies flow through his heart; tones of an
infinite gratitude; sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that
for him also unutterable joys had been provided.

'In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, laughter,
tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech of Music: such
was the element they now lived in; in such a many-tinted, radiant
Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend
be blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature unrolled to him.
Fairest Blumine! And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a
very Light-ray incarnate! Was there so much as a fault, a "caprice,"
he could have dispensed with? Was she not to him in very deed a
Morning-Star; did not her presence bring with it airs from Heaven? As
from Æolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue
struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around him,
and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fled away to the
distance; Life bloomed-up with happiness and hope. The past, then, was
all a haggard dream; he had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and
could not discern it! But lo now! the black walls of his prison melt
away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his Disenchantress?
_Ach Gott!_ His whole heart and soul and life were hers, but never had
he named it Love: existence was all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a
Thought.'

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must be shaped;
for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, mere 'Children of Time,'
can abide by Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, 'how
in her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on hest
of Necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds.' He even appears
surprised at the 'Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, 'in whose
meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts was,
from the first, faintly approved of.' We, even at such distance, can
explain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one
question: What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdröckh likely
to make in polished society? Could she have driven so much as a
brass-bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish
'absolved Auscultator,' before whom lies no prospect of capital, will
any yet known 'religion of young hearts' keep the human kitchen warm?
Pshaw! thy divine Blumine when she 'resigned herself to wed some
richer,' shows more philosophy, though but 'a woman of genius,' than
thou, a pretended man.

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, and with
what royal splendour it waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold
the glories of its dominant state; much less the horrors of its almost
instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic masses, henceforth
madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living
delineation be organised? Besides, of what profit were it? We view,
with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start from the
ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it dwindle
to a luminous star: but what is there to look longer on, when once, by
natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded? A hapless
air-navigator, plunging amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused
wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that
Teufelsdröckh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a
natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular
one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough
to do the like, paint it out for himself: considering only that if he,
for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent such
agonies and frenzies, what must Teufelsdröckh's have been, with a
fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance merely at the final
scene:

'One morning, he found his Morning-Star all dimmed and dusky-red; the
fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed to have been weeping.
Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent,
announcing that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, in a tremulous
voice, They were to meet no more.' The thunder-struck Air-sailor is
not wanting to himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? We omit
the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since all was
vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him; and hasten to the
catastrophe. '"Farewell, then, Madam!" said he, not without sternness,
for his stung pride helped him. She put her hand in his, she looked in
his face, tears started to her eyes: in wild audacity he clasped her
to his bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two
dew-drops, rushed into one,--for the first time, and for the last!'
Thus was Teufelsdröckh made immortal by a kiss. And then? Why,
then--'thick curtains of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the
immeasurable Crash of Doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered
Universe was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss.'

Chapetr VI

Sorrow of TeufelsdrÖckh


We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, matters must
often be expected to take a course of their own; that in so multiplex,
intricate a nature, there might be channels, both for admitting and
emitting, such as the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, that on
no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor in the
woe-storm, could you predict his demeanour.

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that
the so passionate Teufelsdröckh, precipitated through 'a shivered
Universe' in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things
which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing
Satanic Poetry; or blow-out his brains. In the progress towards any of
which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance
enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings
of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of
furniture, if not arson itself?

Nowise so does Teufelsdröckh deport him. He quietly lifts his
_Pilgerstab_ (Pilgrim-staff), 'old business being soon wound-up'; and
begins a perambulation and circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe!
Curious it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such
intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable habits of
Exaggeration in speech, he combines that wonderful stillness of his,
that stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement,
in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real Doomsday
and Dissolution of Nature, in which light doubtless it partly appeared
to himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is
compressed closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic
appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things
rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from their
glass phial: but no sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than
the strange casket of a heart springs-to again; and perhaps there is
now no key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdröckh, as we
remarked, will not love a second time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner
has that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects
to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to be
said. 'One highest hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an Angel,
had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a
gleam of Tophet passed-over the face of his Angel; he was rapt away in
whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,'
adds he, 'whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste
Ocean-waters: a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for _he_ saw it.'
But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what
ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdröckh's soul was the scene of,
he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence.
We know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen
collected his dismembered philosophies, and buttoned himself together;
he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather and the Journals: only by
a transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of
those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce
fire,--might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within; that a whole
Satanic School were spouting, though inaudibly, there. To consume your
own choler, as some chimneys consume their own smoke; to keep a whole
Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative
yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these times.

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the strange
measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity;
whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in
_Capricornus_ and _Aquarius_ is no bad emblem. His so unlimited
Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps
assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders,
wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he
were 'made like unto a wheel.' Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of
these Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of
preparation, for example, we come upon the following slip: 'A peculiar
feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some
hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed
among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a
toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet
unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is
then truly a starward-pointing finger; the canopy of blue smoke seems
like a sort of Life-breath: for always, of its own unity, the soul
gives unity to whatsoever it looks on with love; thus does the little
Dwelling place of men, in itself a congeries of houses and huts,
become for us an individual, almost a person. But what thousand other
thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena
of joyous or mournful experiences; if perhaps the cradle we were
rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, if
our Buried ones there slumber!' Does Teufelsdröckh, as the wounded
eagle is said to make for its own eyrie, and indeed military
deserters, and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in
the direction of their birthland,--fly first, in this extremity,
towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting that there no help awaits
him, take but one wistful look from the distance, and then wend
elsewhither?

Little happier seems to be his next flight: into the wilds of Nature;
as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. So at least we
incline to interpret the following Notice, separated from the former
by some considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy:

'Mountains were not new to him; but rarely are Mountains seen in such
combined majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of that sort called
Primitive by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in
masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is
here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness of
environment: in a climate favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff,
itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a garment of foliage or
verdure; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the
everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, Beauty alternates with
Grandeur: you ride through stony hollows, along straight passes,
traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rock; now winding
amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly emerging
into some emerald valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a
Lake, and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if
Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength.

'To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the Son of Time
not pretend: still less if some Spectre haunt him from the Past; and
the future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably
might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this
world's happiness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that
is not mad? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the
original Greek if that suit better: "Whoso can look on Death will
start at no shadows."

'From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention called outwards;
for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain
mass, the stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished
on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the
evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some
moments there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in
complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their descent
towards every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your
feet, and folded together: only the loftier summits look down here and
there as on a second plain; lakes also lie clear and earnest in their
solitude. No trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who
fashioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would seem,
scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But
sunwards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the
diadem and centre of the mountain region! A hundred and a hundred
savage peaks, in the last light of Day; all glowing, of gold and
amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness; there in their
silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge
first dried! Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our
Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost
with longing desire; never till this hour had he known Nature, that
she was One, that she was his Mother, and divine. And as the ruddy
glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now
departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death and of Life,
stole through his soul; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, as
if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its
throne in that splendour, and his own spirit were therewith holding
communion.

'The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. Emerging from the
hidden Northward, to sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay
Barouche-and-four: it was open; servants and postillions wore
wedding-favours: that happy pair, then, had found each other, it was
their marriage evening! Few moments brought them near: _Du Himmel!_ It
was Herr Towgood and--Blumine! With slight unrecognising salutation
they passed me; plunged down amid the neighbouring thickets, onwards,
to Heaven, and to England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, _I
remained alone, behind them, with the Night_.'

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be the place to
insert an observation, gleaned long ago from the great _Clothes-Volume_,
where it stands with quite other intent: 'Some time before Small-pox
was extirpated,' says the Professor, 'there came a new malady of the
spiritual sort on Europe: I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of
View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with Senses, had
also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup
which holds good or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, or
with slight incidental commentary: never, as I compute, till after the
_Sorrows of Werter_, was there man found who would say: Come let us
make a Description! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat the
glass! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek.' Too
true!

We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings,
so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear
insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not.
That Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have
withered-up what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in
him: Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long
years, our Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about at
random, and naturally with more haste than progress.

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in
this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of
which, were clear record possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the
obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country to
country, from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no
man can calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he
wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. If in any
scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time,
and forms connexions, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let
him sink out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatisirender_), living
by the grace of God in some European capital, you may next find him as
Hadjee in the neighbourhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable
Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our Traveller,
instead of limbs and high-ways, had transported himself by some
wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted
emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that collection of
Street-Advertisements); with only some touch of direct historical
notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the world of
haze! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an enigma
than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed
a spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised Fact unparalleled in Biography:
The river of his History, which we have traced from its tiniest
fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing current, into
the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as
a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray!
Low down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only at
a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a general
stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools and plashes, and
trace whither they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit of
our endeavour.

For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, where they
can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of this sort too there
occurs much, which, with our present light, it were questionable to
emit. Teufelsdröckh, vibrating everywhere between the highest and the
lowest levels, comes into contact with public History itself. For
example, those conversations and relations with illustrious Persons,
as Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are they not as
yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a biographic? The Editor,
appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting
the possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this
province for the present; a new time may bring new insight and a
different duty.

If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for there was none,
yet with what immediate outlooks; at all events, in what mood of mind,
the Professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage,--the
answer is more distinct than favourable. 'A nameless Unrest,' says he,
'urged me forward; to which the outward motion was some momentary
lying solace. Whither should I go? My Loadstars were blotted out; in
that canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I; the ground
burnt under me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. I was
alone, alone! Ever too the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for
itself: towards these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly wander.
A feeling I had, that for my fever-thirst there was and must be
somewhere a healing Fountain. To many fondly imagined Fountains, the
Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to great
Cities, to great Events: but found there no healing. In strange
countries, as in the well-known; in savage deserts, as in the press of
corrupt civilisation, it was ever the same: how could your Wanderer
escape from--_his own Shadow_? Nevertheless still Forward! I felt as
if in great haste; to do I saw not what. From the depths of my own
heart, it called to me, Forwards! The winds and the streams, and all
Nature sounded to me, Forwards! _Ach Gott_, I was even, once for all,
a Son of Time.'

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic School was still
active enough? He says elsewhere: 'The _Enchiridion of Epictetus_ I
had ever with me, often as my sole rational companion; and regret to
mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.' Thou foolish
Teufelsdröckh! How could it else? Hadst thou not Greek enough to
understand thus much: _The end of Man is an Action, and not a
Thought_, though it were the noblest?

'How I lived?' writes he once: 'Friend, hast thou considered the
"rugged all-nourishing Earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she
feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more her darling, man? While
thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of victual. My
breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the
Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted
wild-eggs in the sand of Sahara; I have awakened in Paris _Estrapades_
and Vienna _Malzleins_, with no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental
liquid. That I had my Living to seek saved me from Dying,--by suicide.
In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for Intellect,
in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, educational,
commercial departments? In Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes?
Living! Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul; how,
as with its little finger, it can create provision enough for the body
(of a Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite other
than provision; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.'

Poor Teufelsdröckh! Flying with Hunger always parallel to him; and a
whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of Hunger is
comparatively a friend's! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient Cain,
or of the modern Wandering Jew,--save only that he feels himself not
guilty and but suffering the pains of guilt,--wend to and fro with
aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by
footprints), write his _Sorrows of Teufelsdröckh_; even as the great
Goethe, in passionate words, had to write his _Sorrows of Werter_,
before the spirit freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly
is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape 'from his own Shadow'!
Nevertheless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven first
descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as ours,
richer than usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades
grown obsolete,--what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of
Lies, wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle
and despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the
publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the other dialect,
becomes almost a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation
with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron
publishes his _Sorrows of Lord George_, in verse and in prose, and
copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his _Sorrows of
Napoleon_ Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of
cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are
the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of
embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.--Happier is he who,
like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be
written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also
survive the writing thereof!

Chapter VII

The Everlasting No


Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our Professor has now
shrouded himself, no doubt but his spiritual nature is nevertheless
progressive, and growing: for how can the 'Son of Time,' in any case,
stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, in a state of
crisis, of transition: his mad Pilgrimings, and general solution into
aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fermentation;
wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve
itself?

Such transitions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults
is sickly; and, to attain his new beak, must harshly dash-off the old
one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual
acts and motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of
anarchy and misery raging within; coruscations of which flash out: as,
indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him disappointed,
bemocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart
might desire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst
instance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an 'excellent
Passivity'; but of useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the
former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this
wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity,
though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness, which had
been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 'ruddy morning' in
the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; and then with that
poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and
even hisses over in a deluge of foam.

He himself says once, with more justice than originality: 'Man is,
properly speaking, based upon Hope, he has no other possession but
Hope; this world of his is emphatically the Place of Hope.' What,
then, was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the present,
quite shut-out from Hope; looking not into the golden orient, but
vaguely all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with
earthquake and tornado.

Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! For,
as he wanders wearisomely through this world, he has now lost all
tidings of another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of
religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not
that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 'Doubt had darkened
into Unbelief,' says he; 'shade after shade goes grimly over your
soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.' To such
readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man's
life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-loss
Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is _not_ synonymous
with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, 'that,
for man's well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how,
with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and
the cross; and without it, worldlings puke-up their sick existence, by
suicide, in the midst of luxury': to such it will be clear that, for a
pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of
everything. Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued
Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all
wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its
life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild way:
'Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle,
ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and
_see_ing it go? Has the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no
divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made-up of
Desire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and from Dr. Graham's
Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approving Conscience! Did not Paul of
Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that _he_ was
"the chief of sinners"; and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit
(_wohlgemuth_), spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish
Word-monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly
mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue
from the husks of Pleasure,--I tell thee, Nay! To the unregenerate
Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of
his wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, that he feels himself
the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the
heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion; some bubble of the
blood, bubbling in the direction others _profit_ by? I know not: only
this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are
we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much.
But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of
Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on
Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our
frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and
live at ease on the fat things _he_ has provided for his Elect!'

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done,
shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and
receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair
world of his; wherein is heard only the howling of wild-beasts, or the
shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day,
and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such
length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. 'But what boots it (_was
thut's_)?' cries he: 'it is but the common lot in this era. Not having
come to spiritual majority prior to the _Siècle de Louis Quinze_, and
not being born purely a Loghead (_Dummkopf_), thou hadst no other
outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old
Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof,
crumble down; and men ask now: Where is the Godhead; our eyes never
saw him?'

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to call our
Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no
era of his life was he more decisively the Servant of Goodness, the
Servant of God, than even now when doubting God's existence. 'One
circumstance I note,' says he: 'after all the nameless woe that
Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of
Truth, had wrought me, I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would
bate no jot of my allegiance to her. "Truth"! I cried, "though the
Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! though a whole
celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy." In conduct it was
the same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous
Handwriting on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me _This thou
shalt do_, with what passionate readiness, as I often thought, would I
have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal Fire. Thus, in
spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss
Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination they had
brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present to me:
living without God in the world, of God's light I was not utterly
bereft; if my as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing,
could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and
His heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there.'

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and spiritual
destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured!
'The painfullest feeling,' writes he, 'is that of your own Feebleness
(_Unkraft_); ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true
misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling,
save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. Between
vague wavering Capability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a
difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in
us; which only our Works can render articulate and decisively
discernible. Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees
its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible
Precept, _Know thyself_; till it be translated into this partially
possible one, _Know what thou canst work-at_.

'But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of
my Workings amounted as yet simply to--Nothing. How then could I
believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in?
Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous
question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a
certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the
completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful Unbelief
is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had not my first,
last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid open,
and I dared to love, been all-too cruelly belied? The speculative
Mystery of Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither in the
practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but been
everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast-out. A feeble
unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, I seemed to have
nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern my own wretchedness.
Invisible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from
all living: was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press
trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I kept a lock upon
my lips: why should I speak much with that shifting variety of
so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain and too-hungry souls
Friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such cases, your
resource is to talk little, and that little mostly from the
Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was a strange isolation I then
lived in. The men and women around me, even speaking with me, were but
Figures; I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they
were not merely automatic. In midst of their crowded streets and
assemblages, I walked solitary; and (except as it was my own heart,
not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the tiger in his
jungle. Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have
fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I
imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful:
but in our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been
pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the
Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of
Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling
on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast,
gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living
banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil;
nay, unless the Devil is your God'?

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, moreover, as the
worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a
Teufelsdröckh threaten to fail? We conjecture that he has known
sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of
the chronic sort. Hear this, for example: 'How beautiful to die of
broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; every window
of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and
mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in
your inwards; the fordone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of
Disgust!'

Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not
find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein,
significance enough? 'From Suicide a certain aftershine (_Nachschein_)
of Christianity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of
character; for, was not that a remedy I had at any time within reach?
Often, however, was there a question present to me: Should some one
now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space,
into the other World, or other No-World, by pistol-shot,--how were it?
On which ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities
and other death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability, which passed,
falsely enough, for courage.'

'So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, 'so had it lasted, as in
bitter protracted Death-agony, through long years. The heart within
me, unvisited by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous,
slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear;
or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's
Deathsong, that wild _Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet_ (Happy
whom _he_ finds in Battle's splendour), and thought that of this last
Friend even I was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me
not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it
of Man or of Devil: nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing,
could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to
me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely
enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous,
pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all
things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if
the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring
monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured.

'Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole
French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much
perambulation, toiling along the dirty little _Rue Saint-Thomas de
l'Enfer_, among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over
pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless my
spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, there rose a Thought
in me, and I asked myself: "What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like
a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and
trembling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the worst that
lies before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say the pangs of Tophet too,
and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast
thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and, as a
Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy
feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and
defy it!" And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over
my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was
strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that
time, the temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow
was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.

'Thus had the EVERLASTING NO (_das ewige Nein_) pealed authoritatively
through all the recesses of my Being, of my ME; and then was it that
my whole ME stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis
recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most important transaction
in Life, may that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological
point of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: "Behold,
thou are fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's)";
to which my whole Me now made answer: "_I_ am not thine, but Free, and
forever hate thee!"

'It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual New-birth,
or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a
Man.'

Chapter VIII

Centre of Indifference


Though, after this 'Baphometic Fire-baptism' of his, our Wanderer
signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, 'Indignation
and Defiance,' especially against things in general, are not the most
peaceable inmates; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no
longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a
fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptised soul, long so
scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling
is its Baphometic Baptism: the citadel of its whole kingdom it has
thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from
which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will
doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another
figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the _Rue
Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer_, the old inward Satanic School was not yet
thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to
quit;--whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings,
and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become
only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret.

Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps
discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness.
Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdröckh now storm through the
world; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a
Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many 'Saints' Wells,'
and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little
secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is
ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to
'eat his own heart'; and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME
for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a
much more natural state?

'Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed not to look
upon with interest. How beautiful to see thereby, as through a long
vista, into the remote Time; to have, as it were, an actual section of
almost the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set before
your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire
put down, say only two thousand years ago; and there, burning more or
less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt,
and still burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah!
and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put
down there; and still miraculously burns and spreads; and the smoke
and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and its
bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; and its flame,
looking out from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, still
warms thee or scorches thee.

'Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are aeriform,
mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: such are his Forms of
Government, with the Authority they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions
both of Cloth-habits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective
stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of
manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless
as they are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must
flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you
demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible
Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain
downwards: but where does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic,
and other Manufacturing SKILL lie warehoused? It transmits itself on
the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by Vision); it
is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like
manner, ask me not, Where are the LAWS; where is the GOVERNMENT? In
vain wilt thou go to Schönbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais
Bourbon: thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and
some bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that same
cunningly-devised almighty GOVERNMENT of theirs to be laid hands on?
Everywhere, yet nowhere: seen only in its works, this too is a thing
aeriform, invisible; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So
spiritual (_geistig_) is our whole daily Life: all that we do springs
out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force; only like a little
Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body
itself forth from the great mystic Deep.

'Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I reckon-up to the
extent of three: Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled
Fields, to either or to both of which divisions Roads with their
Bridges may belong; and thirdly----Books. In which third truly, the
last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two others.
Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of
stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled
field, but then a spiritual field: like a spiritual tree, let me
rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have
Books that already number some hundred-and-fifty human ages); and
yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Commentaries, Deductions,
Philosophical, Political Systems; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets,
Journalistic Essays), every one of which is talismanic and
thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men. O thou who art able to write a
Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted
to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly
pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a
Conqueror and Victor: but of the true sort, namely over the Devil:
thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a
wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic
Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.--Fool! why
journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on
the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara? These stand
there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert,
foolishly enough, for the last three-thousand years: but canst thou
not open thy Hebrew BIBLE, then, or even Luther's Version thereof?'

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in Battle, yet on
some Battle-field; which, we soon gather, must be that of Wagram; so
that here, for once, is a certain approximation to distinctness of
date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows:

'Horrible enough! A whole Marchfeld strewed with shell-splinters,
cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; stragglers
still remaining not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps: ay,
there lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue has
been blown; and now are they swept together, and crammed-down out of
sight, like blown Egg-shells!--Did Nature, when she bade the Donau
bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian
Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, richest
level,--intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon
her children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the
more commodiously be throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad
Highways, meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for
Ammunition-wagons, then? Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many
ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg might batter with
artillery, and with artillery be battered? König Ottokar, amid yonder
hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; here Kaiser Franz falls
a-swoon under Napoleon's: within which five centuries, to omit the
others, how has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and defiled! The
greensward is torn-up and trampled-down; man's fond care of it, his
fruit-trees, hedgerows, and pleasant dwellings, blown-away with
gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of
Sculls.--Nevertheless, Nature is at work; neither shall these
Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her: but all that
gore and carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure; and next
year the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied
Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little profit of thy
own,--how dost thou, from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life
for the Living!

'What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and
upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil,
in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five-hundred souls.
From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the French, there are
successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied
men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she
has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and
even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build,
another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone
avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are
selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges,
some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed
there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain,
are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like
manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties
come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty,
each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given:
and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty
brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it
must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as
the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the
entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even,
unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How
then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen-out; and, instead of
shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads
shoot.--Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other
lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must
pay the piper!"--In that fiction of the English Smollet, it is true,
the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth;
where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe,
filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's
faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era,
what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still
divide us!'

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from
his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, and pertinently enough
note what is passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter
of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his
life were richer than this. Internally, there is the most momentous
instructive Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going
on; towards the right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits,
favourable to Meditation, might help him rather than hinder.
Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, there are, if for the
longing heart little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough:
in these so boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School
was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge of our
Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to say, of all
knowable things, might not Teufelsdröckh acquire!

'I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, 'including those of
Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese
Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying.
Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural
repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics,
Topographics came, through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The
ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for
himself, in most regions, are ocularly known to me. Like the great
Hadrian, I meted-out much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of
Compasses that belonged to myself only.

'Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting,
and even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pinechasms of Vaucluse; and in
that clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees
of Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of
China I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and
covered with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events,
also, have not I witnessed? Kings sweated-down (_ausgemergelt_) into
Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the
World well lost; oftener than once a hundred-thousand individuals shot
(by each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations
dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might
ferment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy,
wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven,
could not escape me.

'For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can
perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great
Men are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK
OF REVELATIONS, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch,
and by some named HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous
talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the better or
worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or
orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study the inspired Texts themselves!
Thus did not I, in very early days, having disguised me as
tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at
Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great Schiller and
greater Goethe; and hearing what I have not forgotten. For----'

----But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution,
some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the
sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered
with. Should we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and the
time come for Publication, then may these glimpses into the privacy of
the Illustrious be conceded; which for the present were little better
than treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron,
therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the 'White
Water-roses' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, no notice here!
Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark that
Teufelsdröckh's relation to him seems to have been of very varied
character. At first we find our poor Professor on the point of being
shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on
the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed,
almost thrown out of doors, as an 'Ideologist.' 'He himself,' says the
Professor, 'was among the completest Ideologists, at least
Ideopraxists: in the Idea (_in der Idee_) he lived, moved and fought.
The man was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and
preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La
carrière ouverte aux talens_ (The Tools to him that can handle them),
which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty
lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first
Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy
rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him,
if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated
forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely
forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding,
the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest,
bless.'

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdröckh's appearance
and emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North
Cape, on that June Midnight. He has 'a light-blue Spanish cloak'
hanging round him, as his 'most commodious, principal, indeed sole
upper garment'; and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking
over the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now
motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes.

'Silence as of death,' writes he; 'for Midnight, even in the Arctic
latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs
ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean,
over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if
he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and
cloth-of-gold; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters,
like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and
hide itself under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is
invaluable; for who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies
all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before
him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun
is but a porch-lamp?

'Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster,
scrambling from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the
Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian speech: most probably,
therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify my
indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, yet strong
wish to be private. In vain: the monster, counting doubtless on his
superior stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps
profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me
with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we
stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily
down below. What argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean,
cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such
extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my
interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say,
"Be so obliging as retire, Friend (_Er ziehe sich zurück, Freund_),
and with promptitude!" This logic even the Hyperborean understands;
fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and,
except for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return.

'Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men
alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more
_Mind_, though all but no Body whatever, then canst thou kill me
first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless,
and the David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive
Spiritualism is all.

'With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in
this so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little
visual Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the
midst of the UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very
soon,--make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl
round; and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one
another into Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant!
Deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little spitfires!--Nay, I think with old
Hugo von Trimberg: "God must needs laugh outright, could such a thing
be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below."'

       *       *       *       *       *

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality,
which is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of
Teufelsdröckh under so much outward shifting? Does Legion still lurk
in him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We
can answer that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the
grand spiritual Doctor; and with him Teufelsdröckh has now been long a
patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong
to the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure
will doubtless be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the
Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, but next
to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the heart remains, for the
while, in a quiet but no comfortable state.

'At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our Autobiographer,
'I was what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather,
as is the more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in
any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many
things. Wretchedness was still wretched; but I could now partly see
through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane
Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and,
when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy
wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, had they even
been all granted! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not
two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a
whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, when I gazed into these Stars, have they
not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like
Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man!
Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been
swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and
Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in
their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them
in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of
an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still
Nothing, Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee
the Family of Man has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a
dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is better so!'

Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdröckh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one
day he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and
with a second youth.

'This,' says our Professor, 'was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now
reached; through which whoso travels from the Negative Pole to the
Positive must necessarily pass.'