'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.

เ

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 languishing to work, becomes revealed and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm 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. 'Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the Impediment too is in thyself: 'thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal เ 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 6 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.

'I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a 'World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but

'the pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in 'God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it 'then. Up, up! 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.'

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.'

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?

6

เ 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.

'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

'world, and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round 'this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdröckh mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that so notable Eigenthums-conservirende (Owndom-conserving') Gesellschaft; and, if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He again hints: 'At a time when the di'vine Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, wherein truly, if well 'understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with 'Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, the 'Code Napoleon, and all Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moral'ities whatsoever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced 'with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance at a ' time, I say, when this divine Commandment has all but faded 'away from the general remembrance; and, with little disguise, 'a new opposite Commandment, Thou shalt steal, is everywhere 'promulgated, it perhaps behoved in this universal dotage and 'deliration the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves 'and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that di'vine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or con'ceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, 'and the world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no Property in our very Bodies but only an accidental Possession, and Life'rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catch'poles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep down 'the smaller sort of vermin: but what, except perhaps some such 'Universal Association, can protect us against whole meatdevouring and man-devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, 'therefore, the more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his 'privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written Program in 'the Public Journals, with its high Prize- Questions and so lib'eral Prizes, could have proceeded,-let him now cease such 'wonder; and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the 'Concurrenz (Competition).'

:

We ask Has this same 'perhaps not ill-written Program,' or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in any Journal, foreign or domestic? If so, what are those Prize-Questions ; what are the terms of Competition, and when and where? No printed Newspaper leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met