kable in this point of view are the following sentences.

"Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead
Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume
a nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer
and fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity.
Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered together, there is
Society; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous
structures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to
Heaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other
figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the
Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows."

Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks,
weaving for herself new Vestures;"--Teufelsdrockh himself being one
of the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange
aphorism of Saint Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be
said: "_L'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le
passe, est devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition has
hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us."--But listen again:--

"When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks
flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon,
have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths
consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will
get singed.

"For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be
completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the
deepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his
old house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen
Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to
the extent of three hundred years and more after all life and sacredness
had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time the
Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseen
contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, say
two centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the
fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to find ourselves again
in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it not
perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?"

Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be
deliberately burnt (alas, w