PROSPECTIVE.
The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would
do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloud-capt, almost
chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and
streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highly questionable purport and
promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to
ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer,
or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into
beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth?
Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an
Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us
to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and
glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a Whole:--
"Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.' Thou thyself,
O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist,
knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where
at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand,
rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away; already
on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How
came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught
motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?
"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire
which glows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, where the
sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost
horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole
Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire
was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air that circulates from
before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog-star; therein, with Iron Force,
and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities
and battles and victories of Force brought about; it is a little ganglion,
or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if
thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose
iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All;
whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the
mystery of Force; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little
textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding,
and one day to be all-commanding.
"Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto
was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works
together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of
Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is
not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though working in
inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man
makes Paper, or the litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed
no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through
which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself."
Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant,
high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?
"All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own
account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only
spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. Hence
Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant.
Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want
only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all
Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven: must
not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else
invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits,
revealed, and first become all-powerful; the rather if, as we often see,
the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even
to the outward eye?
"Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with Beauty,
with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself,
and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible
Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down
from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed with a Body.
"Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be,
Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that
Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her
stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements
(of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no
longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and
colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in
the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues
and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek
for: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_? The difference lies
here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous;
some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others
again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as
in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are
sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked),
and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false
stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Mantel_), and tawdry woollen
rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn
them."
Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more
surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the
Professor continues:--
"Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall
fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the
Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to
Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and
to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly
understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been:
the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the
essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES."
Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering on the
impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual
difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till
lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of
Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of
morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day
or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical
Documents are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Merchant,
whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but
whose honorable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to
him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget,--the bulky
Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Custom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs,
and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and
free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken
up, with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what
unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and
again taken up.
Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments,
Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral
trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already: that
however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating
in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy (_Lebensphilosophie_),
such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the
Character (_Gemuth_), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its
significance till the Character itself is known and seen; "till the
Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and how he actively and
passively came by such view, are clear: in short till a Biography of him
has been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically
read.... Nay," adds he, "were the speculative scientific Truth even known,
you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why,
and How?--and rest not, till, if no better may be, Fancy have shaped out an
answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones
of Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the Man and his
spiritual Endeavor lies before you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed
say we, "do I dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The
great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that Man is
properly the _only_ object that interests man:' thus I too have noted,
that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing else but
Biography or Autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical
(_menschlich-anekdotisch_). Biography is by nature the most universally
profitable, universally pleasant of all things: especially Biography of
distinguished individuals.
"By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed)," continues he, with
an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh, or
some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, "by this time
you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that mighty forest of
Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment
enough. Such portions and passages as you have already mastered, and
brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the
mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which
manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had
Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear
drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever, in rapture and tears,
clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the long
burial-aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give
inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels;--good Heaven! how did he comport
himself when in Love? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and
subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has
he reached this wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where
he now dwells?
"To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet
silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller
from a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; has parted
with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery,
blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let
him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole particulars of his
Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque Sketches he took, though
all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible
interior Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one
other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad,
unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport
of rainy winds?
"No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by the
unexampled favor you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only, but
an Autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I
misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so the
whole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the
wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan,
and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_) great part of
this terrestrial Planet!"
And now let the sympathizing reader judge of our feeling when, in place of
this same Autobiography with "fullest insight," we find--Six considerable
PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China-ink,
with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra; in
the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and
oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce
legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of all imaginable things under the
Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare
intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner.
Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here, speaking
in the third person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not once named.
Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition,
"Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, "The continued Possibility of
Prophecy," we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant
Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while
the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without
date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline
leaves. Interspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delineations;
yet without connection, without recognizable coherence; so unimportant, so
superfluously minute, they almost remind us of "P.P. Clerk of this Parish."
Thus does famine of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order,
appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio;
only perhaps in the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a
little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, "On receiving
the Doctor's-Hat," lie wash-bills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). His Travels
are indicated by the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he has
visited; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is
perhaps the completest collection extant.
So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now
instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo which by
intermixture will farther volatilize and discompose it! As we shall
perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the
British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be
spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly
enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive
likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of
imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them.
Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the
contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be
incorporated with our delineation of it.
Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering
these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed _cursiv-schrift_;
collating them with the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in
legible print. Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold,
moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is
Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since
our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from
Hell-gate to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task
as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly
presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to
be fished up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here
one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil
beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the
Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavoring to
evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein,
as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the
far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed
up.
Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor,
dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some
fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but
an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of health, or
of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what work nobler than
transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil; except indeed
planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do? Wild
as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real
meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and
already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a
prize worth some striving? Forward with us, courageous reader; be it
towards failure, or towards success! The latter thou sharest with us; the
former also is not all our own.