d works;--then is Religion the
inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm
Circulation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones
and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic
vitality; the SKIN would become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting
rawhide; and Society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men
were no longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not
continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish discord, hatred,
savage isolation, and dispersion;--whereby, as we might continue to say,
the very dust and dead body of Society would have evaporated and
become abolished. Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the
Church-Clothes to civilized or even to rational men.

"Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church-Clothes have gone
sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become
mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit
any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid
accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you
with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life,--some
generation-and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and
in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith
to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or
Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is
a Sham-priest (_Schein-priester_) the falsest and basest; neither is it
doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be
torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of mankind; or even to
burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes.

"All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in my Second
Volume, _On the Palingenesia, or Newbirth of Society_; which volume,
as treating practically of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture
of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the
Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my work on _Clothes_, and is
already in a state of forwardness."

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary being added,
does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular
chapter on Church-Clothes!

CHAPTER III. SYMBOLS.

Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscure
utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculations
on _Symbols_. To