living on
wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonian, squatted himself in
morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements,
without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole
possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord
of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with
deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge
once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (_Putz_).
Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in
his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for
Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people we find
tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want
of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the
barbarous classes in civilised countries.

'Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest Serene
Highness; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden, worthy
to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a
divine Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, she is,--has
descended, like thyself, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling
Aboriginal Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of
the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by
time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or
beholds, is in continual growth, regenesis and self-perfecting
vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living,
ever-working Universe: it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed
to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove
(perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand years.

'He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of _Movable
Types_ was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and
Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented
the Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and
Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what will
the last do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration of Force under
Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. A simple invention it was
in the old-world Grazier,--sick of lugging his slow Ox about the
country till he got it bartered for corn or oil,--to take a piece of
Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or
_Pecus_); put it in his pocket, and call it _Pecunia