Nowise, courteous reader!  The Professor knows full well what he is saying; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong.  If Clothes, in these times, “so tailorize and demoralize us,” have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs?  The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite; and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age “as a Sign,” would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness.  The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him:  nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any man.  For example:—­

“You see two individuals,” he writes, “one dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue:  Red says to Blue, ‘Be hanged and anatomized;’ Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes.  How is this; or what make ye of your Nothing can act but where it is?  Red has no physical hold of Blue, no clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him:  neither are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding Red, that he can tug them hither and thither; but each stands distinct within his own skin.  Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done:  the articulated Word sets all hands in Action; and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work.

“Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold:  First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Men; secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible emblems of that fact.  Has not your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown; whereby all mortals know that he is a JUDGE?—­Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth.

“Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how the ushers and macers and pursuivants are all in waiting; how Duke this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence; and I strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity,—­on a sudden, as by some enchanter’s wand, the—­shall I speak it?—­the Clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every mother’s son of them, stand straddling there, not a shirt on them; and I know not whether to laugh or weep.  This physical or psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those afflicted with the like.”