he special Doctrine of Clothes is
as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the
Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are
there); yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young Boy,
namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The more impatient are we
to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, to
use his own words, "he understands the tools a little, and can handle
this or that," he will proceed to handle it.

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our
Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character:
nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and every way excellent "Passivity"
of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist Activity,
distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that,
in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world.
For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without
Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man
with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden,
enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when
it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous,
difficult temper for the modern European; above all, disadvantageous in
the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will behoove the Editor of
these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavor.

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man
of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion of his
History, Teufelsdrockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he
"cannot remember ever to have learned;" so perhaps had it by nature.
He says generally: "Of the insignificant portion of my Education, which
depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned
what others learn; and kept it stored by in a corner of my head,
seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a down-bent,
broken-hearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did
little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul,
pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I must
be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. Meanwhile,
what printed thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper
pocket-money I laid out on stall-literature; which, as it accumulated,
I with