own, and again
taken up.

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments,
Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral
trivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already:
that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science
originating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy
(_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which
originates equally in the Character (_Gemuth_), and equally speaks
thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known
and seen; "till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and how
he actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short till
a Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, and
philosophico-poetically read.... Nay," adds he, "were the speculative
scientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask
yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not, till, if
no better may be, Fancy have shaped out an answer; and either in the
authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a complete
picture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavor lies
before you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, "do I dilate
on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr Minister
von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that Man is properly the _only_
object that interests man:' thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo
our whole conversation is little or nothing else but Biography or
Autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_).
Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universally
pleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguished
individuals.

"By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed)," continues
he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from
Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nigh
unaccountable, "by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in that
mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readers
do, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you have
already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange
curiosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleled
psychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it to
the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he,
at one tim