for us, who happen to live while the world–phoenix is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she engage to have done “within two centuries,” there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. not altogether so, however, does the professor figure it. “in the living subject,” says he, “change is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. little knowest thou of the burning of a world–phoenix, who fanciest that she must first burn out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap; and therefrom the young one start up by miracle, and fly heavenward. far otherwise! in that fire-whirlwind, creation and destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the old are blown about, do organic filaments of the new mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the whirlwind element come tones of a melodious death-song, which end not but in tones of a more melodious birth-song. nay, look into the fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see.” let us actually look, then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. first, therefore, this of mankind in general:—
“in vain thou deniest it,” says the professor; “thou art my brother. thy very hatred, thy very envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted sympathy? were i a steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? not thou! i should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well.
“wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all; whether by the soft binding of love, or the iron chaining of necessity, as we like to choose it. more than once have i said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting figure, such as provokes whimsical thoughts: ‘wert thou, my little brotherkin, suddenly covered up within the largest imaginable glass bell, — what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the world! post letters, more or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against thy glass walls, but have to drop unread: neither from within comes there question or response into any post-bag; thy thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy manufacture into no purchasing hand: thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest through all space and all time: there has a hole fallen out in the immeasurable, universal world-tissue, which must be darned up again!’
“such venous-arterial circulation, of letters, verbal messages, paper and other packages, going out from him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye: but the finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you cannot see, but only imagine. i say, there is not a red indian, hunting by lake winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? it is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.
“if now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. hast thou ever meditated on that word, tradition: how we inherit not life only, but all the garniture and form of life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us? — who printed thee, for example, this unpretending volume on the philosophy of clothes? not the herren stillschweigen and company; but cadmus of thebes, faust of mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. had there been no moesogothic ulfila, there had been no english shakspeare, or a different one. simpleton! it was tubal-cain that made thy very tailor’s needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine.
“yes, truly, if nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more is mankind, the image that reflects and creates nature, without which nature were not. as palpable lifestreams in that wondrous individual mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main currents of what we call opinion; as preserved in institutions, polities, churches, above all in books. beautiful it is to understand and know that a thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole future. it is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the wise man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal communion of saints, wide as the world itself, and as the history of the world.
“noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into generations. generations are as the days of toilsome mankind: death and birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement. what the father has made, the son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him. thus all things wax, and roll onwards; arts, establishments, opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing. newton has learned to see what kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in newton; he must mount to still higher points of vision. so too the hebrew lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an apostle of the gentiles. in the business of destruction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance: for luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the pope’s bull; voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. thus likewise, i note, the english whig has, in the second generation, become an english radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an english rebuilder. find mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower: the phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.”
let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they can. we subjoin another passage, concerning titles:—
“remark, not without surprise,” says teufelsdrockh, “how all high titles of honor come hitherto from fighting. your herzog (duke, dux) is leader of armies; your earl (jarl) is strong man; your marshal cavalry horse-shoer. a millennium, or reign of peace and wisdom, having from of old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such fighting titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher need to be devised?
“the only title wherein i, with confidence, trace eternity is that of king. konig (king), anciently konning, means ken-ning (cunning), or which is the same thing, can-ning. ever must the sovereign of mankind be fitly entitled king.”
“well, also,” says he elsewhere, “was it written by theologians: a king rules by divine right. he carries in him an authority from god, or man will never give it him. can i choose my own king? i can choose my own king popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy i may with him: but he who is to be my ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in heaven. neither except in such obedience to the heaven-chosen is freedom so much as conceivable.”
the editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous provinces of teufelsdrockh’s spiritual world, there is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, as in the political. how, with our english love of ministry and opposition, and that generous conflict of parties, mind warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the public good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable constitution kept warm and alive; how shall we domesticate ourselves in this spectral necropolis, or rather city both of the dead and of the unborn, where the present seems little other than an inconsiderable film dividing the past and the future? in those dim long-drawn expanses, all is so immeasurable; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very radiances and straggling light-beams have a supernatural character. and then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries or only by days), does he sit; — and live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his own! it is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable radicalism, such as fills us with shuddering admiration.
thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the elective franchise; at least so we interpret the following: “satisfy yourselves,” he says, “by universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether freedom, heaven-born and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to light in that same ballot–box of yours; or at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable box, edifice, or steam-mechanism. it were a mighty convenience; and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto.” is teufelsdrockh acquainted with the british constitution, even slightly? — he says, under another figure: “but after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere is, to rebuild your old house from the top downwards (since you must live in it the while), what better, what other, than the representative machine will serve your turn? meanwhile, however, mock me not with the name of free, ‘when you have but knit up my chains into ornamental festoons.’" — or what will any member of the peace society make of such an assertion as this: “the lower people everywhere desire war. not so unwisely; there is then a demand for lower people — to be shot!”
gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism, into somewhat clearer regions. here, looking round, as was our hest, for “organic filaments,” we ask, may not this, touching “hero-worship,” be of the number? it seems of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. our readers shall look with their own eyes:—
“true is it that, in these days, man can do almost all things, only not obey. true likewise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; he that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing. nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his faculty of reverence; that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. painful for man is that same rebellious independence, when it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently bowing down before the higher does he feel himself exalted.
“or what if the character of our so troublous era lay even in this: that man had forever cast away fear, which is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial reverence, which is the higher and highest?
“meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. before no faintest revelation of the godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. thus is there a true religious loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox hero-worship. in which fact, that hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living rock, whereon all polities for the remotest time may stand secure.”
do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what teufelsdrockh, is looking at? he exclaims, “or hast thou forgotten paris and voltaire? how the aged, withered man, though but a sceptic, mocker, and millinery court-poet, yet because even he seemed the wisest, best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of france would have laid their hair beneath his feet! all paris was one vast temple of hero-worship; though their divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish.
“but if such things,” continues he, “were done in the dry tree, what will be done in the green? if, in the most parched season of man’s history, in the most parched spot of europe, when parisian life was at best but a scientific hortus siccus, bedizened with some italian gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; what is to be looked for when life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your hero–divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be wholly human? know that there is in man a quite indestructible reverence for whatsoever holds of heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. show the dullest clodpoll, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship.”
organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the following passage:—
“there is no church, sayest thou? the voice of prophecy has gone dumb? this is even what i dispute: but in any case, hast thou not still preaching enough? a preaching friar settles himself in every village; and builds a pulpit, which he calls newspaper. therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man’s salvation; and dost not thou listen, and believe? look well, thou seest everywhere a new clergy of the mendicant orders, some barefooted, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for copper alms and the love of god. these break in pieces the ancient idols; and, though themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the sites of new churches, where the true god-ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and minister. said i not, before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it?”
perhaps also in the following; wherewith we now hasten to knit up this ravelled sleeve:—
“but there is no religion?” reiterates the professor. “fool! i tell thee, there is. hast thou well considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name literature? fragments of a genuine church-homiletic lie scattered there, which time will assort: nay fractions even of a liturgy could i point out. and knowest thou no prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? none to whom the godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and highest forms of the common; and by him been again prophetically revealed: in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, man’s life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? knowest thou none such? i know him, and name him — goethe.
“but thou as yet standest in no temple; joinest in no psalm-worship; feelest well that, where there is no ministering priest, the people perish? be of comfort! thou art not alone, if thou have faith. spake we not of a communion of saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? their heroic sufferings rise up melodiously together to heaven, out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred miserere; their heroic actions also, as a boundless everlasting psalm of triumph. neither say that thou hast now no symbol of the godlike. is not god’s universe a symbol of the godlike; is not immensity a temple; is not man’s history, and men’s history, a perpetual evangel? listen, and for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the morning stars sing together.”
