we looked on it like brave youths. For
myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this young
warm-hearted, strong-headed and wrong-headed Herr Towgood I was even
near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish
Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could have
loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and
always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and its wants.
If man's _Soul_ is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, and Utilitarian
Philosophy, a kind of _Stomach_, what else is the true meaning of
Spiritual Union but an Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are
Dinner-guests; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras."

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little incipient
romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut?
He has dived under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not
where. Does any reader "in the interior parts of England" know of such a
man?

CHAPTER IV. GETTING UNDER WAY.

"Thus nevertheless," writes our Autobiographer, apparently as
quitting College, "was there realized Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes
Teufelsdrockh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying some
cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and
spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, in
more or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities
there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against the
great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with
his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a
little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Day-moth has
capabilities in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its own
Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air
makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming.

"How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned,
or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic
I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and
henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days,
witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it
makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot
the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen the
Scot