become its prey. It is the sick shudder of the frustrated religious demand, and not the mere necessary outcome of animal experience. Teufelsdröckh himself could have made shift to face the general chaos and bedevilment of this world’s experiences very well were he not the victim of an originally unlimited trust and affection towards them. If he might meet them piecemeal, with no suspicion of any Whole expressing itself in them, shunning the bitter parts and husbanding the sweet ones, as the occasion served, and as (to use a vulgar phrase) he struck it fat or lean, he could have zigzagged fairly towards an easy end, and felt no obligation to make the air vocal with his lamentations. The mood of levity, of “I don’t care,” is for this world’s ills a sovereign and practical anæsthetic. But no! something deep down in Teufelsdröckh and in the rest of us tells
