'pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. 'To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of 'Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, im'measurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indif'ference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast 5 'gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, con'scious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the 'Devil is your God?'

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, more- 10 over, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution even of a Teufelsdröckh threaten to fail? We conjecture that he has known sickness; and, in spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. Hear this, for example: How beautiful to die of broken- 15 'heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in practice; 'every window of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as 'it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole Drugshop in your inwards; the 'foredone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of Disgust!' 20 Putting all which external and internal miseries together, may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our Professor's still vein, significance enough? From 'Suicide a certain aftershine (Nachschein) of Christian'ity withheld me: perhaps also a certain indolence of 25 character; for, was not that a remedy I had at any time 'within reach? Often, however, was there a question. 'present to me: Should some one now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the 'other World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot, how 30 C were it? On which ground, too, I have often, in seastorms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhib'ited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, 'for courage.'

९

९

'So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, 'so had it 'lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long 'years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly 'dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow-consum5 'ing fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no *tear; or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, re'cited Faust's Deathsong, that wild Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet (Happy whom he finds in Battle's 'splendour), and thought that of this last Friend even I 'was not forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom me

ΙΟ

not to die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite 'fear, were it of Man or of Devil: nay, I often felt as if 'it might be solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I 15 'might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; 'tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not 'what it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would hurt me; as if the 20 Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of 'a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to 'be devoured.

'Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry 25 Dog-day, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty little Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer, among civic rub'bish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements 'hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; whereby doubtless 'my spirits were little cheered; when, all at once, 30 there rose a Thought in me, and I asked myself: "What 'art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou 'for ever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trem'bling? Despicable biped! what is the sum-total of the 'worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death;

' and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil ' and Man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast thou 'not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be; and,

as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet 'itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it 5 come, then; I will meet it and defy it!" And as I so 'thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my 'whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me 'forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, *almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my 10 'misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow was 'it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.

Thus had the EVERLASTING No (das ewige Nein) pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my 'Being, of my ME; and then was it that my whole ME 15 'stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most 'important transaction in Life, may that same Indigna'tion and Defiance, in a psychological point of view, be 'fitly called. The Everlasting No had said: "Behold, 20 'thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine '(the Devil's);" to which my whole ME now made answer: "I am not thine, but Free, and forever hate 'thee !"

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It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual 25 New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I di*rectly thereupon began to be a Man.'

CHAPTER VIII.

CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE.

THOUGH, after this 'Baphometic Fire-baptism' of his, our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but increased; as, indeed, Indignation and Defiance,' especially against things in general, are not the most peaceable inmates; 5 yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism: the 10 citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault; and will keep inexpugnable; outwards from which the remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we might say, if in that great 15 moment, in the Rue Saint-Thomas de l'Enfer, the old inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit ; — whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in the mean while, 20 become only the more tumultuous, and difficult to keep

secret.

Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a 25 Spectre does Teufelsdröckh now storm through the world; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many Saints' Wells,' and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secu30 lar wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is

ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to eat his own heart;' and clutches round him outwardly on the NoT-ME for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more natural state?

5

'Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed 'not to look upon with interest. How beautiful to see 'thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote Time; 'to have, as it were, an actual section of almost the earli'est Past brought safe into the Present, and set before 10. 'your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live ember of 'Culinary Fire put down, say only two-thousand years ago; and there, burning more or less triumphantly, with 'such fuel as the region yielded, it has burnt, and still 'burns, and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. 15 'Ah! and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital 'Fire was then also put down there; and still miracu'lously burns and spreads; and the smoke and ashes 'thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and * its bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest; 20 ' and its flame, looking out from every kind countenance, ' and every hateful one, still warms thee or scorches thee. 'Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results | 'are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only: 'such are his Forms of Government, with the Authority 25 'they rest on; his Customs, or Fashions both of ClothHabits and of Soul-habits; much more his collective 'stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired ' of manipulating Nature: all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be 30 fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on 'impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son; if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. Visible 'Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, ever from