and to Socrates
a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys,
and the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists."

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh
commences: we are henceforth to see him "work in well-doing," with
the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal
Workshop he so panted for is even this same Actual ill-furnished
Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can say to himself:
"Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now
alive but has tools. The basest of created animalcules, the Spider
itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom within
its head: the stupidest of Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with
stone-and-lime house to hold it in: every being that can live can do
something: this let him _do_.--Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished,
furnishable with some glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold a
Pen withal? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or even before
it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: greater than all recorded
miracles have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this so
solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in continual restless flux,
it is appointed that _Sound_, to appearance the most fleeting, should
be the most continuing of all things. The WORD is well said to be
omnipotent in this world; man, thereby divine, can create as by a
_Fiat_. Awake, arise! Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given
thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of
Priesthood was allotted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in that
sacred Hierarchy, is it not honor enough therein to spend and be spent?

"By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously degrade into a
handicraft," adds Teufelsdrockh, "have I thenceforth abidden. Writings
of mine, not indeed known as mine (for what am I?), have fallen, perhaps
not altogether void, into the mighty seedfield of Opinion; fruits of my
unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens
that I have now found my Calling; wherein, with or without perceptible
result, I am minded diligently to persevere.

"Nay how knowest thou," cries he, "but this and the other pregnant
Device, now grown to be a world-renowned far-working Institution; like
a grain of right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and now
stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds of the
air to