s the path, so gyved were
the feet.' That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this
lower world, that Teufelsdroeckh'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 characterises 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 ardour 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 God-like. Often,
notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my
so-called Hardness (_Haerte_), my Indifferentism towards men; and the
seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite 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 (_balkenhoch_), and thence
fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without
indignation, when he proved e