Therefore it seems doubtful whether it was judicious to make a German Professor the hero of _Sartor_.Berkeley began his _Siris_with tar-water;but what can English readers be expected to make of _Gukguk_by way of prelibation to your nectar and tokay?The circumstances and details do not flash with living reality on the minds of your readers,but,on the contrary,themselves require some of that attention and minute speculation,the whole original stock of which,in the minds of most of them,would not be too much to enable them to follow your views of Man and Nature.In short,there is not a sufficient basis of the common to justify the amount of peculiarity in the work.In a book of science,these considerations would of course be inapplicable;but then the whole shape and coloring of the book must be altered to make it such;and a man who wishes merely to get at the philosophical result,or summary of the whole,will regard the details and illustrations as so much unprofitable surplusage.
"The sense of strangeness is also awakened by the marvellous combinations,in which the work abounds to a degree that the common reader must find perfectly bewildering.This can hardly,however,be treated as a consequence of the _style_;for the style in this respect coheres with,and springs from,the whole turn and tendency of thought.The noblest images are objects of a humorous smile,in a mind which sees itself above all Nature and throned in the arms of an Almighty Necessity;while the meanest have a dignity,inasmuch as they are trivial symbols of the same one life to which the great whole belongs.And hence,as I divine,the startling whirl of incongruous juxtaposition,which of a truth must to many readers seem as amazing as if the Pythia on the tripod should have struck up a drinking-song,or Thersites had caught the prophetic strain of Cassandra.
"All this,of course,appears to me true and relevant;but I cannot help feeling that it is,after all,but a poor piece of quackery to comment on a multitude of phenomena without adverting to the principle which lies at the root,and gives the true meaning to them all.Now this principle I seem to myself to find in the state of mind which is attributed to Teufelsdrockh;in his state of mind,I say,not in his opinions,though these are,in him as in all men,most important,--being one of the best indices to his state of mind.Now what distinguishes him,not merely from the greatest and best men who have been on earth for eighteen hundred years,but from the whole body of those who have been working forwards towards the good,and have been the salt and light of the world,is this:That he does not believe in a God.Do not be indignant,I am blaming no one;--but if Iwrite my thoughts,I must write them honestly.
"Teufelsdrockh does not belong to the herd of sensual and thoughtless men;because he does perceive in all Existence a unity of power;because he does believe that this is a real power external to him and dominant to a certain extent over him,and does not think that he is himself a shadow in a world of shadows.He had a deep feeling of the beautiful,the good and the true;and a faith in their final victory.