stable equilibrium, with other branches
of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on
Nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their
so unspeakable difference? From Clothes." Much also we shall omit about
confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere
"Hail fellow well met," and Chaos were come again: all which to any one
that has once fairly pictured out the grand mother-idea, _Society in
a state of Nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some
sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world without
Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist,
let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless
Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over
which we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole
nations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief
riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:--

"Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how,
without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and
true pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?"

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdrockh; at worst,
one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in looking at
the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures,
he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and
indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that
unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference,
which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there is
that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past
and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of
Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a
Transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he
degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on
the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality
with the Gods.

"To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous Biped
that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a
Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there
lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses),
contextured in the Loom of Heaven; where