so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and "bladders
with dried peas." To linger among such speculations, longer than mere
Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. For our purposes
the simple fact that such a _Naked World_ is possible, nay actually exists
(under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit
about "Kings wrestling naked on the green with Carmen," and the Kings being
thrown: "dissect them with scalpels," says Teufelsdrockh; "the same
viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are there:
examine their spiritual mechanism; the same great Need, great Greed, and
little Faculty; nay ten to one but the Carman, who understands
draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, something of the laws of unstable
and stable equilibrium, with other branches 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. Should some sceptical individual still
entertain doubts whether in a world without Clothes, the smallest
Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist, let him turn to the
original Volume, and view there the boundless Serbonian Bog of
Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: over which we have
lightly flown; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink!
If indeed the following argument, in its brief riveting emphasis, be not of
itself incontrovertible and final:--

"Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how,
without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, and true
pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?"