wafting tide.
Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what had
thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best:
here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed
might have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy.

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdroeckh forgotten what
he said lately about 'Aboriginal Savages,' and their 'condition
miserable indeed'? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake
ourselves again to the 'matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a 'thick
natural fell'?

Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is
saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes,
in these times, 'so tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no
redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of
necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdroeckh, though a
Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go
forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do
it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of
Clothes is altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight
into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might
call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before
vouchsafed to any man. For example:

'You see two individuals,' he writes, 'one dressed in fine Red, the
other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, "Be hanged and
anatomised"; Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!)
marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed-up, vibrates his
hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton
for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your _Nothing
can act but where it is_? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no
_clutch_ of him, is nowise in _contact_ with him: neither are those
ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so
related to commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither;
but each stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is
spoken, so is it done: the articulated Word sets all hands in Action;
and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work.

'Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold: First, that _Man is
a Spirit_, and bound by invisible bonds to _All Men_; secondly, that
_he wears Clothes_, which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has
not your Red hanging-indivi