brushed thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rat-grinder, get new
material to grind down. O subter-brutish! vile! most vile! For have not I
too a compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass
of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then; or a tightly articulated,
homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive?

"Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest
facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in
the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a
blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and
consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver;
mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose; thus let but a Rising
of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen _twice_, and it ceases
to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a
lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any country or
generation, be he gold-mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his
Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible; that _he_ is naked,
without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and
button them.

"For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes-thatch, and how,
reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes
us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind; almost as one
feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing
deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the
meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when
a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that
he is naked, and, as Swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with bandy
legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries."