and so vehement a soul languishing
in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by
rust,

"To eat into itself, for lack
Of something else to hew and hack;"

But on the whole, that same "excellent Passivity," as it has all along
done, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance may
we not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our Professor
and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophy
itself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is too
defensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack.
"So far hitherto," he says, "as I had mingled with mankind, I was
notable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, as
my friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor
of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love
and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that
has a sense for the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed,
and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), my
Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted,
as my favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was
but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so
my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being
no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general,
the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good
as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provoke
into some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his sly
stillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man,
from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have
we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest
indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and
worm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_), and thence fall shattered and
supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he
proved electric and a torpedo!"

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way for
himself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdrockh too
admits, is "to unite yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sich
anzuschliessen_)"? Division, not union, is written on most part of his
procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of t