“If now an existing generation of men stand so woven together, not less indissolubly does generation with generation.  Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tradition:  how we inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form of Life; and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us?—­Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes?  Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not.  Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one.  Simpleton!  It was Tubal-cain that made thy very Tailor’s needle, and sewed that court-suit of thine.

“Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates Nature, without which Nature were not.  As palpable lifestreams in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main currents of what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, Churches, above all in Books.  Beautiful it is to understand and know that a Thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future.  It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal Communion of Saints, wide as the World itself, and as the History of the World.

“Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Generations.  Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind:  Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement.  What the Father has made, the Son can make and enjoy; but has also work of his own appointed him.  Thus all things wax, and roll onwards; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but ever completing.  Newton has learned to see what Kepler saw; but there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton; he must mount to still higher points of vision.  So too the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an Apostle of the Gentiles.  In the business of Destruction, as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance:  for Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the Pope’s Bull; Voltaire could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel.  Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig has, in the second generation, become an English Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an English Rebuilder.  Find Mankind where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower:  the Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with her music; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.”