ll
intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there.
Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an
incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would
trouble Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine
of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as
with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least
all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in
the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his
Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in
this latter capacity; how when, to use his own words, 'he understands
the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to
handle it.

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our
Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo
character: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and everyway excellent
'Passivity' of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist
Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of
much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes
the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdroeckh is oftenest a man
without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a
man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual,
close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or
even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A
dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European; above all,
disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! Now as heretofore it will
behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to
do his endeavour.

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a
man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion
of his History, Teufelsdroeckh looks down professedly as indifferent.
Reading he 'cannot remember ever to have learned'; so perhaps had it
by nature. He says generally: 'Of the insignificant portion of my
Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be
taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner
of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a
downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild
are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he,
good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learne