ed, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by
the Time-Spirit (_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good
soul first given thee was seared into grim rage; and thou hadst
nothing for it but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future,
and living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same Spirit not
of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and
Protest, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air.

'For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay
almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round
the earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more
tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty
centuries) than the very skin. And now from without, what mystic
influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in
those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft,
and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree!
Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most
important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not
only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if
thou consider it, than a right _Naming_. Adam's first task was giving
names to natural Appearances: what is ours still but a continuation of
the same; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic,
stars or starry movements (as in Science); or (as in Poetry) passions,
virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods?--In a very plain sense the
Proverb says, _Call one a thief, and he will steal_; in an almost
similar sense may we not perhaps say, _Call one Diogenes
Teufelsdroeckh, and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes?_'

* * * * *

'Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his
Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light;
sprawling-out his ten fingers and toes; listening, tasting, feeling;
in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of
Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened
Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of
this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what
it might. Infinite was his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he
could perform the miracle of--Speech! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not
like brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is