We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that was to befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag Pisces, and those that follow.  A young man of high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, “breaks off his neck-halter,” and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in.  Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbidden pasture:  either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom, though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness.  In a word, Teufelsdrockh having thrown up his legal Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated.  Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate him.  He too must enact that stern Monodrama, No Object and no Rest; must front its successive destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his “neck-halter” sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off.  If we look at the young man’s civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far from enviable.  His first Law-Examination he has come through triumphantly; and can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not have frightened him:  but though he is hereby “an Auscultator of respectability,” what avails it?  There is next to no employment to be had.  Neither, for a youth without connections, is the process of Expectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition much cheered from without.  “My fellow Auscultators,” he says, “were Auscultators:  they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words; other vitality showed they almost none.  Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal!  Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.”  In which words, indicating a total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity?  Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, to despise him.  Friendly communion, in any case, there could not be:  already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the other young geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling.