ke it all
infinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most
manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiply
your second and third term together, divide the product by the first,
and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if you
cannot come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that,
do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal
repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of."

In which passage does not there lie an implied confession that
Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward,
still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful,
yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former side
alone, his case was hard enough. "It continues ever true," says
he, "that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all his
Children: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for
some threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours at
last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time
stand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our whole
terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly a
Movement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material of
it. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the right
direction. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement,
whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a continual
Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward Wants were
but satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done,
is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. O
Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so
deep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments
can so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us!
Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time
threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might, there was
no good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet."
That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world,
that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "to
work,--in the right direction," and that no work was to be had; whereby
he became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcity
threatening him in the distance;