. Phantasms
enough he has had to struggle with; 'Cloth-webs and Cob-webs,' of
Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did
he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite
mysterious, world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever
hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he
now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In
a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other,
its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his
rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed.

Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains
to Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us
safe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may
be considered as beginning. 'Courage, then!' may our Diogenes exclaim,
with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous
Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to be
unintelligible; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and
all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of
speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious
selection and adjustment, shall study to do ours:

'Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' thus quietly
begins the Professor; 'far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile,
the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that
Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried
with him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a
miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific,
do not I work a miracle, and magical "_Open sesame!_" every time I
please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_,
or shut Turnpike?

'"But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?"
ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of
Nature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no
violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law,
now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest
have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force.

'Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground
shall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that therefore he
can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth