GETTING UNDER WAY.
"Thus nevertheless," writes our Autobiographer, apparently as quitting
College, "was there realized Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh:
a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some cubic feet of
Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and spiritual; hopes,
passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less
perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in
me to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of
Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish
many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the
opposite? Nay your very Day-moth has capabilities in this kind; and ever
organizes something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before
Inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the
faintest, by humming.
"How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, or
begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name
it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth
innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some.
Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it makes and unmakes
whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot the dullest hear
Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen the Scottish
Brass-smith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one) travelling on fire-wings
round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger than any other
Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carrying: at
home, not only weaving Cloth; but rapidly enough overturning the whole old
system of Society; and, for Feudalism and Preservation of the Game,
preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, Industrialism and the
Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the
Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a one announces himself, I
doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire; and new
Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and
hoodwink and handcuff him.
"With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe, been
called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplest
Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace and
War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfurst_), or Devil, and all his Dominions,
your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult
to get at, or even to get eye on!"
By which last wire-drawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh mean no more than
that young men find obstacles in what we call "getting under way"? "Not
what I Have," continues he, "but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each is given
a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune; to each,
by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum of Capability. But
the hardest problem were ever this first: To find by study of yourself,
and of the ground you stand on, what your combined inward and outward
Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul is all budding with
Capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main and true one. Always
too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his course can be
the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by its nature original. And then
how seldom will the outward Capability fit the inward: though talented
wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay what
is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of
Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and
often clutch the wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our
small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions
of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term,
and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise
to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated
striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise,
that of getting buried.
"Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the general fate;
were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on this ground, as
the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made:
hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures and Apprenticeships for our
irrational young; whereby, in due season, the vague universality of a Man
shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific Craftsman; and so
thenceforth work, with much or with little waste of Capability as it may
be; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in matters
spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does not, like
certain other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far later,
sometimes never,--is it not well that there should be what we call
Professions, or Bread-studies (_Brodzwecke_), preappointed us? Here,
circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no
evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still
fancying that it is forward and forward; and realize much: for himself
victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill
or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string
been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled
me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the
world generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to
open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased (_fast war ich
umgekommen_), so obstinately did it continue shut."
We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to
befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it
painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous
details, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow. A young man of
high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt,
"breaks off his neck-halter," and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger,
into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in.
Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture:
either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad
exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls,
which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last,
after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his
way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain
bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though
waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, Teufelsdrockh
having thrown up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of
outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward
guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will not
stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild
faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact
that stern Monodrama, _No Object and no Rest_; must front its successive
destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral
he can.
Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his "neck-halter" sat nowise
easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off. If we look
at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges
from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from
enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly; and
can even boast that the _Examen Rigorosum_ need not have frightened him:
but though he is hereby "an _Auscultator_ of respectability," what avails
it? There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a youth
without connections, is the process of Expectation very hopeful in itself;
nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without. "My fellow
Auscultators," he says, "were Auscultators: they dressed, and digested,
and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none. Small
speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal! Sense neither for
the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the
faintest scent of coming Preferment." In which words, indicating a total
estrangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of
a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators
may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what
was much more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case,
there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the other
young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is
cygnet or gosling.
Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at best
unpleasantly. "Great practical method and expertness" he may brag of; but
is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the
deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to
ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with his
independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much? "Like a
very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and not also with
Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been appointed to
struggle." Be this as it may, his progress from the passive
Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of the
slowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclined to
patronize him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him up as "a
man of genius" against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly
protests. "As if," says he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; as
if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on
it! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a
gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing
but the common copper."
How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner,
contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skyward without
return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to
have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; other Horn of Plenty,
or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that "the prompt nature of
Hunger being well known," we are not without our anxiety. From private
Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is
small; neither, to use his own words, "does the young Adventurer hitherto
suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread-and-water
wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless," continues he,
"that I subsisted is clear, for you find me even now alive." Which fact,
however, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old Proverb,
that "there is always life for a living one," we must profess ourselves
unable to explain.
Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing the mark of
Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like an
independent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also
occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps throw
light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a
huge Blot; and runs to this effect: "The (_Inkblot_), tied down by
previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward the Herr
Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself
under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were
otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of
genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The other is on gilt
paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which
once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original: "_Herr
Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, auf Donnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN
THEE schonstens eingeladen_."
Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the most
urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash of
quite fluid _AEsthetic Tea_! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-grips
with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical and
Literary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of
chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and
abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it
cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as
this Frau Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_, she can be no other than
the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, and
good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on
his own footing, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed,
continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly
enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere express evidence.
Doubtless, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; enough for him if he
here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which we at one
time fancied him to have been always excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he,
"lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature
and Art, attracted and attached from without, were to serve as the
handsomest fringing. It was to the _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that
this latter improvement was due: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she
fitted on, what fringing was to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place
yielded." Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising
to be such? "With his _Excellenz_ (the Count)," continues he, "I have more
than once had the honor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the
aspect of the world, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no
unfavorable light; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism
(_die auszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. On some
points, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to
keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, there
might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were little
developed in him."
That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless, and
many things besides "the Outrooting of Journalism" might have seemed
improvements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren
Auscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishes from
within, his position was no easy one. "The Universe," he says, "was as a
mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be
devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the
blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding
itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knew not the
solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring only from discords
set in harmony; that but for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only
possible by battle."
"I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he elsewhere, "by not
unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness,
could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or
rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies
and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of
twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of
a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide.
Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_Madchen_) are,
to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young
gentlemen (_Bubchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such
gawks (_Gecken_) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with such a
vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous,
vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal's
endeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yet
unendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it all
infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most
manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply
your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and
your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you cannot
come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, do what one
will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no
net integer quotient so much as to be thought of."
In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that
Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward,
still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet
still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former side alone, his
case was hard enough. "It continues ever true," says he, "that Saturn, or
Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all his Children: only by incessant
Running, by incessant Working, may you (for some threescore-and-ten years)
escape him; and you too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy
Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in thought, shake
themselves free of Time? Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and
built of Time; it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author
of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to
work,--in the right direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in
continual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring
a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward
Wants were but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done,
is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O
Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep
in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can so much
as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us! Me, however, as a
Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time threatening to eat quite
prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was no good Running, so
obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet." That is to say, we
presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teufelsdrockh's
whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "to work,--in the right
direction," and that no work was to be had; whereby he became wretched
enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the
distance; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless inaction, and
forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust,
"To eat into itself, for lack
Of something else to hew and hack;"
But on the whole, that same "excellent Passivity," as it has all along
done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may we
not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our Professor and
perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy itself?
Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too defensive;
not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. "So far
hitherto," he says, "as I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for
anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often
rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor of my feelings. I,
in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. The
mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the
Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers
hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), my Indifferentism towards men;
and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favorite dialect in
conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case,
wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might
live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by
wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil;
for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it. But how many
individuals did I, in those days, provoke into some degree of hostility
thereby! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more
especially an ironic young man, from whom it is least expected, may be
viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name
coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of
sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_),
and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not
without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!"
Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for himself
in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdrockh too admits, is "to unite
yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sich anzuschliessen_)"?
Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. Let us add
too that, in no great length of time, the only important connection he had
ever succeeded in forming, his connection with the Zahdarm Family, seems to
have been paralyzed, for all practical uses, by the death of the "not
uncholeric" old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a
certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_, huddled into the present Bag, among so
much else; of which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more to
be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary
inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather than
Lyrical. "By request of that worthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I
undertook to compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules,
produced the following; which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a
defect never yet fully visible to myself, still remains
unengraven;"--wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity that
will surprise an English reader:
HIC JACET
PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS,
ZAEHDARMI COMES,
EX IMPERII CONCILIO,
VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI
EQUES.
QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT,
QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES
PLUMBO CONFECIT:
VARII CIBI
CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA,
PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE,
HAUD SINE TUMULT DEVOLVENS,
IN STERCUS
PALAM CONVERTIT.
NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM
OPERA SEQUUNTUR.
SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS,
FIMETUM ADSPICE.
PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].