X.

Respectability.

(1) That very spectacle of an Immortal Nature, with faculties and destiny extending through Eternity, hampered and bandaged up, by nurses, pedagogues, posturemasters, and the tongues of innumerable old women (named "force of public opinion"); by prejudice, custom, want of knowledge, want of money, want of strength, into, say, the meagre Pattern-Figure that, in these days, meets you in all thoroughfares a "god-created Man," all but abnegating the character of Man; forced to exist, automatised, mummy-wise (scarcely in rare moments audible or visible from amid his wrappages and cerements), as Gentleman or Gigman; and so selling his birthright of Eternity for the three daily meals, poor at best, which Time yields-is not this spectacle itself highly romantic, tragical, if we had eyes to look at it?' 10. 131.

1

1'I always considered him a respectable man.-What do you mean by respectable? He kept a Gig.' Thurtell's Trial.

'Income of 100/ a year, and no dry-rot in the soul of you anywhere; income of 100,000 a year, and nothing but dry and wet-rot in the soul of you (ugly appetites, unveracities, blusterous conceits, and probably, as symbol of all things, a potbelly to your poor body itself): Oh, my friends!' 26. 145.

'The man goes through his prescribed fuglemotions at church and elsewhere, keeping his conscience and sense of decency at ease thereby ; and in some empty part of his brain, if he have fancy left, or brain other than a beaver's, there goes on occasionally some dance of dreamy hypotheses, sentimental echoes, shadows, and other inane make-believes,-which I think are quite the contrary of a possession to him; leading to no clear Faith, or divine life-and-death Certainty of any kind; but to a torpid species of delirium somnians and delirium stertens rather. In his head or in his heart this man has of available religion none.' 20. 267.

'Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on!' 13. 193.

'Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great

man, and set him over the heads of men ! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep-out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way.' 13. 205.

'Wretched mortal, who with a single eye to be "respectable" forever sittest cobbling together two Inconsistencies, which stick not for an hour, but require ever new gluten and labour,-will it, by no length of experience, no bounty of Time or Chance, be revealed to thee that Truth is of Heaven, and Falsehood is of Hell; that if thou cast not from thee the one or the other, thy existence is wholly an Illusion and optical and tactual Phantasm; that properly thou existest not at all? Respectable! What, in the Devil's name, is the use of Respectability, with never so many gigs and silver spoons, if thou inwardly art the pitifulest of all men? I would thou wert either cold or hot.' 10. 68.

PART FIFTH.

I.

Creeds Formulas.

(1) 'Man is a born idol-worshipper, sightworshipper; so sensuous-imaginative is he; and also partakes much of the nature of the ape.' 4. 193.

'Blamable Idolatry is Cant, and even what one may call Sincere-Cant. Sincere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of Worship ends with this phasis.' 13. 114.

'Formulas all begin by being full of substance; you may call them the skin, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: they had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of true Formulas ; that they were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this world....' 13. 167.

'The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols: we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous.' 13. I12.

(2) 'Formulas too, as we call them, have a reality in Human Life. They are real as the very skin and muscular tissue of a Man's Life; and a most blessed indispensable thing, so long as they have vitality withal, and are a living skin and tissue to him!' 14. 109.

And yet, again, when a man's Formulas become dead; as all Formulas, in the progress of living growth, are very sure very sure to do!' 14.

109.

... Habit is our primal, fundamental law ; Habit and Imitation, there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They They are the source of all Working and all Apprenticeship, of all Practice and all Learning, in this world.'

'Yes, the wise man too speaks, and acts, in Formulas; all men do so. And in general, the more completely cased with Formulas a man may be, the safer, happier is it for him.'

I IO.

14.

'There is no mortal extant, out of the depths