broadbrims, and overalls and mudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin
and mittens, thou hast bestrode that "Horse I ride;" and, though it were in
wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its
lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples; it lighted only on thy
impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds
howl,--forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep,--and the
storms heap themselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool: thou
flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild
music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a "sailor of the air;" the wreck
of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting
tide. Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been; what
had thy fleet quadruped been?--Nature is good, but she is not the best:
here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might
have pierced thee; all short of this thou couldst defy.

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh forgotten what he
said lately about "Aboriginal Savages," and their "condition miserable
indeed"? Would he have all this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to
the "matted cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick natural fell"?

Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows full well what he is saying;
and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these
times, "so tailorize and demoralize us," have they no redeeming value; can
they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to
the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no
Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this
degenerate age "as a Sign," would nowise wish to do it, as those old
Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is
altogether apparent to him: nay perhaps he has an insight into their more
recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent