n "pools and
plashes," we have ascertained its general direction; do we not already
know that, by one way and other, it _has_ long since rained down again
into a stream; and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still,
fraught with the _Philosophy of Clothes_, and visible to whoso will
cast eye thereon? Over much invaluable matter, that lies scattered,
like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have
occasion to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right
place: meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended.

If now, before reopening the great _Clothes-Volume_, we ask what our
degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has been, towards right
understanding of the _Clothes-Philosophy_, let not our discouragement
become total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over
Chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they
drift straggling on the Flood; how far they will reach, when once the
chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be matter of
conjecture.

So much we already calculate: Through many a little loophole, we have
had glimpses into the internal world of Teufelsdrockh; his strange
mystic, almost magic Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradually
drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas
on TIME, which merit consideration, and are not wholly unintelligible
with such, may by and by prove significant. Still more may his somewhat
peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to Nature. How
all Nature and Life are but one _Garment_, a "Living Garment," woven and
ever a-weaving in the "Loom of Time;" is not here, indeed, the outline
of a whole _Clothes-Philosophy_; at least the arena it is to work in?
Remark, too, that the Character of the Man, nowise without meaning
in such a matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much tumultuous
obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable
Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom forth, as the two
mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all the rest were based and
built?

Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's Biography, allowing it
even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it
were preappointed for Clothes-Philosophy? To look through the Shows of
things into Things themselves he is led and compelled. The "Passivity"
given him by birth is fostered by all turns