stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements
(of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no
longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and
colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in
the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues
and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek
for: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_? The difference lies
here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous;
some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others
again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as
in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are
sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked),
and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false
stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Mantel_), and tawdry woollen
rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn
them."

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more
surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the
Professor continues:--

"Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall
fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the
Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to
Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and
to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly
understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been:
the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the
essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES."