_, Money. Yet
hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and
Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are
Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is
sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to
feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over
him,--to the length of sixpence.--Clothes too, which began in
foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased
Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame,
divine Shame (_Schaam_, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the
Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a
mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us
individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of
us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us.
'But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 'Man is a
Tool-using Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of
small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled,
of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his
legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three
quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses
him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise
Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before
him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his
smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you
find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is
all.'
Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a
remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal, appears to us,
of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is
called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt
to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher?
Teufelsdroeckh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we
make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which,
indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a
Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on
it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up
his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how
would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians, who,
according to Humboldt, l
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