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'God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion, for which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried.'

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Neither,' observes he elsewhere, 'shall ye tear out one another's eyes, struggling over "Plenary Inspiration," and such like try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of 'you for himself. One BIBLE I know, of whose Plenary Inspira'tion doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes I 'saw the God's-Hand writing it thereof all other Bibles are but 'Leaves, say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker faculty.'

Or to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:

'To me, in this our Life,' says the Professor,' which is an in'ternecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems ' questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy 'brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. 'If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this:/Fellow, see! 'thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, 'something from my share: which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.Alas! and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a "feast of shells," 'for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench 6 one Appetite; and the collective human species clutching at 'them!-Can we not, in all such cases, rather say: "Take it, 'thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional frac'tion of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so want'est: take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough ' for thee !"—If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, “to a certain ex'tent, Applied Christianity," surely to a still greater extent, so is this.

We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it!

'But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature 'endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indu'bitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve 'round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, asa 6 wise man teaches us, that "Doubt of any sort cannot be remov

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ed except by Action." On which ground too let him who gropes 'painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently 'that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: "Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy 'second Duty will already have become clearer.

May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfran'chisement is even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the 'whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly lan'guishing to work, becomes revealed and thrown open; and you 'discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm 6 Meister, that your "America is here or nowhere ?" The Situa'tion that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by 'man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable 'Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy 'Ideal work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free.

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Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the Impediment too is in thyself: ve 'thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal 'out of; what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, 'so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that 'pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to 'the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of 'a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, "here or 'nowhere," couldst thou only see!

'But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the begin'ning of Creation is-Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole 'members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest'tost Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: 'Let there be light? Ever to the greatest that has felt such mo'ment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under 'simpler figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval 'Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements 'bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep silent rock'foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its 'everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful 'Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, Heaven-encompassed World. A'I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a 'World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but

'God's name! then. Up, up!

'the pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day, for the Night 'cometh wherein no man can work.'

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CHAPTER X.

PAUSE.

THUS have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdröckh through the various successive states and stages of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to consider as Conversion. Blame not 'the word,' says he; 'rejoice rather that such a word, signifying 'such a thing, has come to light in our Modern Era, though 'hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old World knew no'thing of Conversion: instead of an Ecce Homo, they had only some Choice of Hercules. It was a new-attained progress in the 'Moral Development of man: hereby has the Highest come home 'to the bosoms of the most Limited; what to Plato was but a ' hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now clear and cer'tain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their 'Pietists and Methodists.'

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It is here then that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdröckh commences: we are henceforth to see him 'work in well-doing,' with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal Workshop he so panted for, is even this same Actual ill-furnished Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself: Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there 'is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has tools. The basest 'of created animalcules, the Spider itself has a spinning-jenny, ' and warping-mill, and power-loom, within its head; the stupid'est of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime house 'to hold it in every being that can live can do something; this 'let him do. Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, furnish'able with some glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold 'a Pen withal? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of prac

'tice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: 'greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which neverthe'less is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that Sound, to 'appearance the most fleeting, should be the most continuing of 'all things. The WORD is well said to be omnipotent in this 'world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a Fiat. Awake, ' arise! Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given thee, 'what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of 'Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest ' in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour enough therein to spend ' and be spent?

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'By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into 'a handicraft,' adds Teufelsdröckh, have I thenceforth abidden. " Writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am I?), 'have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into the mighty seed'field of Opinion; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet 'me here and there. I thank the Heavens that I have now found 'my Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible result, I am 'minded diligently to persevere.

6 Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, 'but this and the other 'pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-work'ing Institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed once cast 'into the right soil, and now stretching out strong boughs to the 'four winds, for the birds of the air to lodge in,-may have been 'properly my doing? Some one's doing it without doubt was; 'from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of all take be'ginning why not from some Idea in mine?' Does Teufelsdröckh here glance at that 'SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY (Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft),' of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these inexpressible Paperbags? An Institution,' hints he, 'not unsuita'ble to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden extension 'proves for already can the Society number, among its office'bearers or corresponding members, the highest Names, if not 'the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France; and con'tributions, both of money and of meditation, pour in from all quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the

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