embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name,
Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of
now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have
many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any
clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To
no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without
the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists
(_Pranumeranten_), Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues; extraordinary
names as we have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to
my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, what may the unchristian rather than
Christian 'Diogenes' mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such
designation, to shadow forth my future destiny, or his own present malign
humor? Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who
like an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be hatched into
self-support by the mere sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have
been a smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed
by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied
how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and slung at, wounded,
hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit
(_Zeitgeist_) in thyself and others, till the good soul first given thee
was seered into grim rage, and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me
an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Protest against the
Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is
well named! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now modestly add, was not
perhaps quite lost in air.

"For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is much, nay almost
all, in Names. The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap round the
earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for
there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin.