Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdrockh; at worst,
one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in looking at
the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he
dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and
indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that
unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference,
which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers, --there is that
within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present
Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdrockh is,
that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no
less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most
animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him
beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods.

"To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous Biped
that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a
Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under
all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the
Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in
UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with
azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under
that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colors and Forms, as it were, swathed
in, and inextricably over-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a
God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of
Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay
does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness,
even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint
Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, 'the true SHEKINAH is Man:' where else
is the GOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts,