Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic¹, that of an incipient² Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine³ of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened⁴. For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments⁵ are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity; how, when, to use his own words, “he understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that,” he will proceed to handle it.

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our Philosopher’s history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character: nay⁶ perhaps in that so well-fostered and every way excellent “Passivity” of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist⁷ Activity, distinguished⁸ his childhood, we may detect the rudiments⁹ of much that, in after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as

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