BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of
Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect,
for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not
only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but
innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also
glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in
Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,--it might strike the reflective
mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental
character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on
the subject of Clothes.
Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well
known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure
forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have
been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks
can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more
commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labors
of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples,
it has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a
World is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning
which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, _How the
apples were got in_, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions
on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the
Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value;
Philosophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of
Intoxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and environment have been laid open
and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and
Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and
scientifically decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears
there are not a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every
cellular, vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies,
Bichats.
How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue
of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by
Science,--the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which
Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole
other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his
whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some
straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure
region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes
as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the
leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have
tacitly figured man as _a Clothed Animal_; whereas he is by nature a _Naked
Animal_; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks
himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before
and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see
what is passing under our very eyes.
But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable,
deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that,
in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract
Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of Catholic
Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every
French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his
scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and
elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cow-horn,
emit his _Horet ihr Herren und lasset's Euch sagen_; in other words, tell
the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is.
Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable
diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be
had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of
finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself
grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries
and crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat-bogs. Of that
unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it,
"By geometric scale
Doth take the size of pots of ale;"
still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen
vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. In
so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the
consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has
tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and
rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare
valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and
turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man?
It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be
increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his
way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all
men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. How often
have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer
light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province; the
hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till
the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was
completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting
new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable
circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he who
counselled that Speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly
towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and
howsoever it listed.
Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science,
especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how our
mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a political
or other immediately practical tendency on all English culture and
endeavor, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this, not Philosophy of
Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here
for the first time published in our language. What English intellect could
have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same
unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German Learned, which
permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner
of nets, it seems probable enough, this abtruse Inquiry might, in spite of
the results it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods.
The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of
confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to
confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain
considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him;
and then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new
Book from Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo; treating expressly of
this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not
even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of
thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as
judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not remained without
effect.
"_Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken_ (Clothes, their Origin and
Influence): _von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J. U. D. etc. Stillschweigen und
Cognie. Weissnichtwo_, 1831.
"Here," says the _Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger_, "comes a Volume of that
extensive, close-printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with
pride, is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from
the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with every
external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set Neglect at
defiance.... A work," concludes the well-nigh enthusiastic Reviewer,
"interesting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic
thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged
independent Germanism and Philanthropy (_derber Kerndeutschheit und
Menschenliebe_); which will not, assuredly, pass current without opposition
in high places; but must and will exalt the almost new name of
Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of
Honor."
Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the first
blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither a
Presentation-copy of his Book; with compliments and encomiums which modesty
forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet without indicated wish or hope
of any kind, except what may be implied in the concluding phrase: _Mochte
es_ (this remarkable Treatise) _auch im Brittischen Boden gedeihen_!