CHAPTER II.

CHURCH-CLOTHES.

Nor less questionable is his Chapter on Church-Clothes, which has the farther distinction of being the shortest in the Volume. We here translate it entire :

'By Church Clothes, it need not be premised, that I mean 'infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at all 'mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes that men go to 'Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes are, in our vocabu'lary, the Forms, the Vestures, under which men have at various 'periods embodied and represented for themselves the Religious 'Principle; that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World 'with a sensible and practically active Body, so that it might 'dwell among them as a living and life-giving WORD.

'These are unspeakably the most important of all the vestures 'and garnitures of Human Existence. They are first spun and 'woven, I may say, by that wonder of wonders, SOCIETY; for it 'is still only when "two or three are gathered together" that 'Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible however 'latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with "cloven 'tongues of fire"), and seeks to be embodied in a visible Commu'nion, and Church Militant. Mystical, more than magical, is 'that Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward; 'here properly Soul first speaks with Soul; for only in looking 'heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in looking earth'ward, does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin 'to be possible. How true is that of Novalis: "It is certain, my 'Belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can convince another 'mind thereof!" Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those 'eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where 'rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel how thy own so

'quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly-grap'pling Hate); and then say what miraculous virtue goes out of 'man into man. But if so, through all the thick-plied hull of เ our Earthly Life; how much more when it is of the Divine Life 'we speak, and inmost ME is, as it were, brought into contact 'with inmost ME!

Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are first spun 'and woven by Society; outward Religion originates by Society, 'Society becomes possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps every con'ceivable Society, past and present, may well be figured as pro'perly and wholly a Church, in one or other of these three 'predicaments: an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, 'which is the best; second, a Church that struggles to preach ' and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost come; and 'third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which 'only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies

' that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chaunting, let 'him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light of heart "(getrosten Muthes).

'But with regard to your Church proper, and the ChurchClothes specially recognised as Church-Clothes, I remark, fear'lessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues 'Society has not existed, and will not exist. For if Government 'is, so to speak, the outward SKIN of the Body Politic, holding the 'whole together and protecting it; and all your Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues, (lying under 'such SKIN), whereby Society stands and works;-then is Reli'gion 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 raw-hide; and Society 'itself a dead carcass,-deserving to be buried. Men were no 'longer Social, but Gregarious; which latter state also could not

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'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 civilised or even to rational man.

'Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same ChurchClothes 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 doubt'ful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of man'kind; 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 Re-texture of Spiritual Tissues, or Garments, forms, pro'perly 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 Teufelsdröckh, and must his Editor now, terminate the singular chapter on Church-Clothes!

CHAPTER III.

6

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 state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;' and how Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the small 'Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of 'the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the 'bodying forth.' Let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the Paperbags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks:

The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our Professor, 'who shall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars 'might still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) 'for universal worship. Silence is the clement in which great 'things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, 'which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent 'only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most 'undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what 'they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean per'plexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the 'morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes, and duties; what 'wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept 'away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often 'not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought;

'but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As 'the Swiss Inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist 'golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might 'rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

'Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work 'except in Silence: neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. 'Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth! Neither 'shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of "those secrets known 'to all." Is not Shame the soil of all Virtue, of all good man'ners, and good morals? Like other plants, Virtue will not grow 'unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let 'the sun shine on it, nay, do but look at it privily thyself, the 'root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, when 6 we view the fair clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for exam'ple, the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fra6 grance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul 'plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and, with grinning, 'grunting satisfaction, shews us the dung they flourish in! Men 'speak much of the Printing Press with its Newspapers: du Him'mel! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose?'

'Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and 'connected with still greater things, is the wondrous agency of 'Symbols. In a Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: 'here, therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes 'a doubled significance. And if both the Speech be itself high, 'and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their union 'be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple Seal-emblem, 'the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed with quite 'new emphasis.

For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays 'into the small prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated 'therewith. In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, 'there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodi'ment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to 'blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, at'tainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and 'commanded, made happy, made wretched. He everywhere finds

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