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Sartor Resartus: the life and opinions of Herr Teufelsdrocke by Thomas Carlyle
page 83 of 256 (32%)
PEDAGOGY.

Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge,
borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone; seated, indeed, and
much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel
eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called
upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his
aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the
abstract; perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein
the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For
with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy
(at least all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands
in the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active.
The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter
capacity; how, when, to use his own words, "he understands the tools a
little, and can handle this or that," he will proceed to handle it.

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our Philosopher's
history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character: nay perhaps in
that so well-fostered and every way excellent "Passivity" of his, which,
with no free development of the antagonist Activity, distinguished his
childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in after days, and
still in these present days, astonishes the world. For the
shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Activity of any
kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with Activity almost
superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal
can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as
ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult temper for the modern
European; above all, disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! Now as
heretofore it will behoove the Editor of these pages, were it never so
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