'guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your 'wages, and sleep! 'Thus, too,' continues he, 'does an observant eye discern every'where that saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglect'ed, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Over'growth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honour from 'the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, as from tavern'waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once sacred Symbols 'fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the 'expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the CHURCH fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the 'STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!' We might ask, are there many 'observant eyes,' belonging to Practical men, in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only from the mystic elevation of a German Wahngasse that such wonders are visible? Teufelsdröckh contends that the aspect of a 'deceased or expiring Society' fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. 'What, for example,' says he, 'is the universally-arrogated Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? 'For some half century, it has been the thing you name, "Inde'pendence." Suspicion of "Servility," of reverence for Superiors 'the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your 'Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence 'for them were even your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and 'everywhere prescribe it?' But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of Nature? The Soul Politic having departed,' says Teufelsdröckh, 'what can follow but that the Body Politic be 'decently interred, to avoid putrescence? Liberals, Economists, 'Utilitarians enough I see marching with its bier, and chaunting 'loud paans, towards the funeral-pile, where, amid wailings from 'some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable 'Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, 'Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ulti'mately carry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing 'Institutions of Society, seems a thing which has some time ago 'ceased to be doubtful. 'Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated England? A living 'nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the ' van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless diffu'sion, activity, and cooperative spirit: has not Utilitarianism 'flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves, and 'in every European country, at some time or other, within the 'last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps Eng'land, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Think'ers, and sunk to Journalists and the popular mass,—who sees 'not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now 'needs no Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the doctrine ' everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit 'pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop-intellect and heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop-strength 'and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such scenes to make 'proselytes enough.-Admirably calculated for destroying, only 'not for rebuilding! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness; till 'the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe to the Hunts'men, with or without their whips! They should have given the 'quadrupeds water,' adds he; 'the water, namely, of Knowledge 'and of Life, while it was yet time.' Thus, if Professor Teufelsdröckh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless' Armament of Mechanisers' and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! The World,' says he, 'as it needs must, is 'under a process of devastation and waste, which, whether by 'silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as the 'case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms 'of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, 'it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are 'once divested, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly 'be burnt; but the sounder Rags among them be quilted toge'ther into one huge Irish watch-coat for the defence of the Body only -This, we think, is but Job's news to the humane reader. 'Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdröckh, 'who can hinder it; who 'is there that can clutch into the wheel-spokes of Destiny, and " say to the Spirit of the Time: Turn back, I command thee?— 'Wiser were it that we yielded to the Inevitable and Inexorable, ' and accounted even this the best.' Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdröckh individually had yielded to this same Inevitable and Inexorable' heartily enough; and now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a huge Ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old Symbols' were raining down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those 'unhunted Helots' of his; and the uneven sic-vos-non-vobis pressure, and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass-eyes, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,'-we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe himself in that 'Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo,' he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose rings, halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do her work ;-to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples, with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might be built! Remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences. 'Society,' says he, 'is not dead: that Carcass, which you call 'dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to 'assume a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, ' in fairer and fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two or three Living Men are ga'thered together, there is Society; or there it will be, with its cun'ning mechanisms and stupendous structures, overspreading this 'little Globe, and reaching upwards to Heaven and downwards 'to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the Pul'pit, namely, and the Gallows.' Indeed, we already heard him speak of 'Religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures;'-Teufelsdröckh himself being one of the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism of Saint-Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said: 'L'age d'or, qu'une 'aveugle tradition a placé jusqu'ici dans le passé, est devant nous; 'The golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in 'the Past, is Before us.'-But listen again: 'When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not 'be sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them 'such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that high'eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still also have " we to fear that incautious beards will get singed. 'For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will 'be completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom 'will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen about his 'ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred 'Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three hundred years 'and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of 'them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death-Birth 'itself will require, depends on unseen contingencies.-Mean'while, would Destiny offer Mankind that after, say two centuries ' of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-crea'tion should be accomplished, and we find ourselves again in a เ Living Society, and no longer fighting but working, were it not 'perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?' Thus is Teufelsdröckh content that old sick Society should be deliberately burnt (alas! with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in the faith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heavenborn young one will rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: From a Doctor utriusque Juris, titular Professor in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society, bad as she is, has given not |