Animal (_Handthierendes Thier_). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he
stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square
foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind
supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for
him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag.
Nevertheless he can use Tools; can devise Tools: with these the granite
mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it
were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying
steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is
nothing, with Tools he is all."

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a
remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all
that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a
Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and
is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh
himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that
other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous
scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook,
when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does
the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in
the like case, might do? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those
Orinoco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, on the
branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay,
the whole country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the
human being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very
Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no
brute has or can have.

"Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdrockh, in his abrupt way;