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 hissoft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a stillintelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto,accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipientPhilosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle HerrHeuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes isas yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, theMan may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments arethere); 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 weto discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, touse his own words, "he understands the tools a little, and can handlethis or that," he will proceed to handle it.
Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of ourPhilosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character:nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and every way excellent "Passivity"of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist Activity,distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that,in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world.For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man withoutActivity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a manwith Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden,enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even whenit has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous,difficult temper for the modern European; above all, disadvantageous inthe hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will behoove the Editor ofthese pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor.
Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a manof letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion of hisHistory, Teufelsdrockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he"cannot remember ever to have learned;" so perhaps had it by nature.He says generally: "Of the insignificant portion of my Education, whichdepended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learnedwhat others learn; and kept it stored by in a corner of my head,seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a down-bent,broken-hearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, didlittle for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul,pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I mustbe sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile,what printed thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copperpocket-money I laid out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated,I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this means was the younghead furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadowsof things: History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulouschimeras, wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, butas 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, theremay have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; symptomsof a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to saynothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of thatearlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in theirtwelfth 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 earliestdate of History. Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded Jordan;even as at the mid-day when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam theNile, yet kept his _Commentaries_ dry,--this little Kuhbach, assiduousas Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilderness, asyet unnamed, unseen: here, too, as in the Euphrates and the Ganges, isa vein or veinlet of the grand World-circulation of Waters, which, withits atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the World.Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; thatidle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age." In which littlethought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning ofthose well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and mysteryof TIME, and its relation to ETERNITY, which play such a part in thisPhilosophy of Clothes?
Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingersso lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts thereare still; but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and therestagnating into sour marshes of discontent. "With my first view of theHinterschlag Gymnasium," writes he, "my evil days began. Well do I stillremember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, trotting full of hopeby 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 impshad tied a tin kettle to its tail; thus did the agonized creature,loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Borough, andbecome notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, towhom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) hasmalignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to chase him on; whichthe faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and morefoolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in thatmischievous Den; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome!
"Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance: Iwas among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towardsme; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone."His school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: "They were Boys," hesays, "mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, whichbids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put todeath any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all hands the strongtyrannize over the weak." He admits that though "perhaps in an unusualdegree morally courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would fainhave avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to his smallpersonal 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 asfought; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important elementof school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow." On thewhole, that same excellent "Passivity," so notable in Teufelsdrockh'schildhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. "He weptoften; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed _Der Weinende_ (theTearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeednot quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burstforth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (_Ungestum_) underwhich the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or atleast of Mankin." In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-treeand cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass andignoble shrubs; and forced if it would live, to struggle upwards only,and not outwards; into a _height_ quite sickly, and disproportioned toits _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. Sothat, except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself "wentabout, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops, therelearning many things;" and farther lighted on some small storeof curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where helodged,--his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts theProfessor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed,throughout the whole of this Bag _Scorpio_, where we now are, and oftenin the following Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on the matterof Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to beanger.
"My Teachers," says he, "were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge ofman's nature, or of boy'
s; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterlyaccount-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for theythemselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called itfostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanicalGerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, bemanufactured at Nurnberg out of wood and leather, foster the growthof anything; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (byhaving its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit,by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire ofliving Thought? How shall _he_ give kindling, in whose own inwardman there is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammaticalcinder? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syntax enough; and of the humansoul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be actedon through the muscular integument by appliance of birch-rods.
"Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the Hod-man isdischarged, or reduced to hod-bearing; and an Architect is hired, and onall hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover,not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation byKnowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces byGunpowder; that with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, thereshould be world-honored Dignitaries, and were it possible, trueGod-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wearsopenly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I havetravelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay,were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefromexpected honor, would there not, among the idler class, perhaps acertain levity be excited?"
In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas seems to havedied: the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for thefirst time clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressiblemelancholy. "The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, hadyawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerablesilent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word,NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow gotvent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up insilent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life isso healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these sternexperiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to awhole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodioussighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long yearsof youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have nowpitched my tent under a Cypress-tree; the Tomb is now my inexpugnableFortress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the hostilearmaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life placidly enough,and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. O ye lovedones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life Icould only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered stilltoil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty ground withyour blood,--yet a little while, and we shall all meet THERE, andour Mother's bosom will screen us all; and Oppression's harness, andSorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabitever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more!"
Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored Character ofthe deceased Andreas Futteral; of his natural ability, his deserts inlife (as Prussian Sergeant); with long historical inquiries into thegenealogy of the Futteral Family, here traced back as far as Henry theFowler: the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. Itonly concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchenrevealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; orindeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the wayalready known to us. "Thus was I doubly orphaned," says he; "bereft notonly of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder,here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. Such adisclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my wholenature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my wholethoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreamsgrew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civicdepression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no other_; in whichfixed idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullestresults, may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, which inmy Life have become remarkable enough? As in birth, so in action,speculation, and social position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous."
In the Bag _Sagittarius_, as we at length discover, Teufelsdrockh hasbecome a University man; though how, when, or of what quality, willnowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in theway of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise ourreaders; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel ina Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found,and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In _Sagittarius_,however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show himself even more thanusually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts: scraps of regular Memoir,College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, tornBillets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown togetheras if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. Tocombine any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years; muchmore, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of theClothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine.
So much we can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some waveringthicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily throughChildhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now atlength perfect in "dead vocables," and set down, as he hopes, by theliving Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From suchFountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with hiswhole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate; discouragements,entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhapsare even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who inspite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent himhither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand."Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humorof that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively revealsitself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety ofcolors, some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time and ofwhat Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh waxed intomanly stature; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with neweagerness, How he specially came by it, and regret anew that there isno more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible and partiallysignificant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted fromthat Limbo of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual preparation.
As if, in the Bag _Scorpio_, Teufelsdrockh had not already expectoratedhis antipedagogic spleen; as if, from the name _Sagittarius_, he hadthought himself called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in withsuch matter as this: "The University where I was educated still standsvivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well; which name,however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall innowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of England andSpain, 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; aspoisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger.
"It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into theditch: wherefore, in such circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer,if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in CrimTartary, walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small,ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundredChristian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three toseven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, beingstationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, andexact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanicalstructure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of ourHigh Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure w
asquite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily,we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full ofsmoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without farcostlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declarationaloud, 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 _Statisticsof Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strangeindifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables forminor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grandall-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, ofQuackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts andmysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all!Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature andShoeblacking, are realized by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish;what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying,in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements,incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? Butto ask, How far, in all the several infinitely complected departmentsof social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial,intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by trueWare; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, Towhat extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times andcountries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: heretruly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to whichhitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, inour Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so higheven as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope,Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far fromthe mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated,as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing ofShams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinctiontherefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but whollyunnecessary!
"This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the presentbrazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education, Polity,Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little canas yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature,and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews ofwar quite broken; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all butexhausted; and that the whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cutyour and each other's throat,--then were it not well could you, as ifby miracle, pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulatedwater, or mere imagination of meat; whereby, till the real supply cameup, they might be kept together and quiet? Such perhaps was the aim ofNature, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her favorite,Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipatient Talent of beingGulled.
"How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, almost makesmechanism for itself! These Professors in the Nameless lived with ease,with safety, by a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and thentoo with no great effort, by quite another class of persons. WhichReputation, like a strong brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into thegeneral current, bade fair, with only a little annual re-painting ontheir part, to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduouslygrind for them. Happy that it was so, for the Millers! They themselvesneeded not to work; their attempts at working, at what they calledEducating, now when I look back on it, fill me with a certain muteadmiration.
"Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational University; in thehighest degree hostile to Mysticism; thus was the young vacant mindfurnished with much talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages,Prejudice, and the like; so that all were quickly enough blown out intoa state of windy argumentativeness; whereby the better sort had soon toend in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode (_crepiren_)in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents become dead.--Butthis 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 inlong-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of Faithalternate with the period of Denial; must the vernal growth, the summerluxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations,be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winterdissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole earthly being,endeavor and destiny shaped for him by Time: only in the transitoryTime-Symbol is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest.And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the nobler-mindedperhaps a comparative misery to have been born, and to be awake andwork; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hibernating animals,safe-lodged in some Salamanca University or Sybaris City, or othersuperstitious or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumberthrough, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaringhailstorms have all alone their work, and to our prayers and martyrdomsthe new Spring has been vouchsafed."
That in the environment, here mysteriously enough shadowed forth,Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. "Thehungry young," he says, "looked up to their spiritual Nurses; and, forfood, were bidden eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversialMetaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely namedScience, was current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than themost. Among eleven hundred Christian youths, there will not be wantingsome eleven eager to learn. By collision with such, a certain warmth, acertain polish was communicated; by instinct and happy accident, I tookless to rioting (_renommiren_), than to thinking and reading, whichlatter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that Library, Isucceeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been known to thevery keepers thereof. The foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid:I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivatedlanguages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is everthe prime object to man, already it was my favorite employment to readcharacter in speculation, and from the Writing to construe the Writer.A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself inme; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole Universe,physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious,recognized groundplan, the truest I had, _was_ beginning to be there,and by additional experiments might be corrected and indefinitelyextended."
Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in thedestitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire forhimself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Neverthelessa desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters.Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his "fever-paroxysms of Doubt;"his Inquiries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith;and how "in the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart thanover sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and withaudible prayers cried vehemently for Light, for deliverance from Deathand the Grave. Not till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, didthe believing heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under thenightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, mistake God's fairliving world for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. Butthrough such Purgatory pain," continues he, "it is appointed us topass; first must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and droppiecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from thisits charnel-house, is to arise on us, new-born of Heaven, and with newhealing under its wings."
To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if we add a liberalmeasure of Earthly distresses, want of practical guidance, want ofsympathy, want of money, want of hope; and all this in the fervid seasonof youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet hereso poor in means,--do we not see a strong incipient spirit oppressed andoverloaded from without and from within; the fire of genius strugglingup among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter vaporthan of clear flame?
From various fragments of Letters and other documentary scraps, it is tobe inferred that Teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, hadnot altogether esc
aped notice: certain established men are aware of hisexistence; and, if stretching out no helpful hand, have at least theireyes on him. He appears, though in dreary enough humor, to be addressinghimself to the Profession of Law;--whereof, indeed, the world has sinceseen him a public graduate. But omitting these broken, unsatisfactorythrums of Economical relation, let us present rather the following smallthread of Moral relation; and therewith, the reader for himself weavingit in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture of theseUniversity years.
"Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr Towgood, or, asit is perhaps better written, Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality(_von Adel_), from the interior parts of England. He stood connected, byblood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter ofGermany; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with allfriendliness, brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakablyill-cultivated; with considerable humor of character: and, bating histotal ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar,showed less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than formost part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I owe my firstpractical knowledge of the English and their ways; perhaps alsosomething of the partiality with which I have ever since regarded thatsingular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he have come atany light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm Family,he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting hisstudies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither toa University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say theeffort after it, no longer existed! Often we would condole over the harddestiny of the Young in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to beturned out into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with fewother attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we were trained toAct on, nothing that we could so much as Believe. 'How has our head onthe outside a polished Hat,' would Towgood exclaim, 'and in the insideVacancy, or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic! At a small cost menare educated to make leather into shoes; but at a great cost, what amI educated to make? By Heaven, Brother! what I have already eatenand worn, as I came thus far, would endow a considerable Hospital ofIncurables.'--'Man, indeed,' I would answer, 'has a Digestive Faculty,which must be kept working, were it even partly by stealth. But as forour Miseducation, make not bad worse; waste not the time yet ours, intrampling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. _Frischzu, Bruder_! Here are Books, and we have brains to read them; here isa 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 atonce harlequins dance, and men are beheaded and quartered: motley, notunterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. Formyself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this youngwarm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed Herr Towgood I was evennear experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolishHeathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could haveloved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once andalways. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants.If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and UtilitarianPhilosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true meaning ofSpiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, areDinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras."
So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipientromance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut?He has dived under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see notwhere. Does any reader "in the interior parts of England" know of such aman?
Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh Page 14
