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Chapter 10 PURE REASON

Word Count: 1734    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

nalia of civilised Life, which we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and 'bladders with dried peas.' To linger among such speculations, longer than mere Scien

es of wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so unspeakable difference? From Clothes.' Much also we shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere 'Hail fellow well met,' and Chaos were come again: all which to any one that has once fairly pictured-out the grand mother-idea, Society in a state of nakedness, will spontaneously suggest itself. Sh

how, without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's

rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,-there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled

and Division; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternit

forth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment,

oorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit: were it never so honourable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagi

nt. "The Philosopher," says the wisest of this age, "must station himself in the middle": how true! The Philosopher

s, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our imagination? Or, on

per Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less inc

o singular a Planet as ours. 'Wonder,' says he, 'is the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign in partibu

my, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,-but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head

ays, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full

the whole Mécanique Céleste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his

re under our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattlestall,-he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?-Armer Teufel! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull g

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