THE PHOENIX.
Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them
numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these Writings
of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion,
that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society, properly so
called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the gregarious feelings,
and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and
universal national, civil, domestic and personal war! He says expressly:
"For the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a
century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion,
where lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote at and perforated,
needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and
Society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct;
for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will
they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond two days."
"Call ye that a Society," cries he again, "where there is no longer any
Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but only of a
common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardless of his
neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can get, and cries
'Mine!' and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat
Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed?
Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your
holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for
Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate-licking: and
your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it
passionately proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave us alone of _your_
guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and
sleep!
"Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywhere that
saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered
Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of
Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, without
honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from
tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols
fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World
becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallen speechless, from
obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened
to get its pay!"
We might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belonging to practical men
in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only
from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ that such wonders are
visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a "deceased or expiring
Society" fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. "What, for
example," says he, "is the universally arrogated Virtue, almost the sole
remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? For some half-century, it has
been the thing you name 'Independence.' Suspicion of 'Servility,' of
reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools!
Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for
them were even your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is
rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe
it?"
But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of
Nature? "The Soul Politic having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, "what can
follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid
putrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with
its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile, where, amid
wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable
Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, Liberals,
Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their
point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of Society,
seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful.
"Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come
to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract
and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis;
properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the
others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of
boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not
Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves,
and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty
years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England, it has ceased to
flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and
the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so
the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is in full universal Action,
the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit
pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart,
nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it
requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--
Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads
like a sort of Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid:
then woe to the Huntsmen, with or without their whips! They should have
given the quadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of Knowledge and
of Life, while it was yet time."
Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a
most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of
Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World,"
says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste.
which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion,
as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of
Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, it is
contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once _divested_,
these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the
sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watch-coat
for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is but Job's-news to
the humane reader.
"Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there that
can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the
Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yielded to the
Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best."
Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what
stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh, individually had yielded to
this same "Inevitable and Inexorable" heartily enough; and now sat waiting
the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even
Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a "huge
Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old Symbols" were raining down
everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those
"unhunted Helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_ pressure and
hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what
with the so hateful "empty Masks," full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring
out on him, from their glass eyes, "with a ghastly affectation of
life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be
thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe himself in that
"Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that
the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings,
halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should
go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples
with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better
might be built! Remarkable in this point of view are the following
sentences.
"Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead
Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a
nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer
development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two
or three Living Men are gathered together, there is Society; or there it
will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures,
overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to Heaven and
downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure, it has
two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and
the Gallows."
Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks,
weaving for herself new Vestures;"--Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the
loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism
of Saint Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said:
"_L'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le passe, est
devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed
in the Past, is Before us."--But listen again:--
"When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks
flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon,
have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths
consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get
singed.
"For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be
completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the deepest
in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till
it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger
as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three
hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of
them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will
require, depends on unseen contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer
Mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration,
more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to
find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but
working,--were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?"
Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be deliberately
burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in the faith that she
is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one will rise out of her
ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear
commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and
reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: From a
_Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professor in a University, and man to
whom hitherto, for his services, Society, bad as she is, has given not only
food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected
more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future
which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast,
than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country.