CLOTHING. 279 



the art and mystery of it is first given in the skin.* The materials 

 of our garments tally with its emanations. The linen is the cool 

 and watery envelope of the body j the cotton is the middle, or 

 earthy; woolen and cloth are the prolongations of the hair, the 

 unctuous and the oily ; silks and satins, with their metalline glow 

 and ocular glancing, stand for the ether and unresting fire that 

 goes out and in, and changes forever in the eyes and countenance 

 with illusive lustre. Jewels and ornaments also are of the brother- 

 hood of the eyes and face, and make dress into rank and dignity. 

 The costume of nations, sexes, times and events descends from their 

 countenances and skins. White and scarlet and Tyrian purple are 

 but their chromatic refractions. The Persian scarf, the Thibetan 

 wool, England and France with their stuffs and laces, China with 

 its cloth of gold, only continue in measured movements the infinite 

 fabric of the weaving corium. The great first shuttle is human 

 nature still. 



This skin, like all things besides, ascends by its powers to other 



* It will be seen on our principle?, that clothes are natural to the human body, 

 because art is included in our nature (p. 135). and man, the image of the Creator, 

 cannot but surround himself with those secondary creations which we are 

 accustomed to term artificial. Vestments however are as natural as birds' nests, 

 or birds' feathers ; but as they spring from the nature of reason and imagination, 

 from the constructive faculties of mind instead of those of body or instinct, they 

 are more free and various than animal clothes. But wherever the human form is, 

 in whatever world, the principle of utility that commands the arts will reproduce 

 the vestures to the occasion. The productions of art are in fact the comparative 

 anatomy of the human frame, as distinct from the comparative anatomy of the 

 animal frame, the procession of which latter is exhibited in the kingdoms of 

 nature. And the tendency and promise of the true humanity is, a world which 

 spontaneously follows what Bacon calls " human uses." " Houses not made with 

 hands" are spoken of in the Bible ; also garments that wax not old. In the same 

 book we learn that the people of heaven are not naked, but clothed in shining 

 raiment ; and the Ancient of Days has " a waistcoat of white wool ;" the armies 

 here also are " clothed in fine linen, white and clean." For if manis immortal, 

 all is immortal — sense, faculty, art, decency ; and in the more plastic world of 

 the spirit, the constructive powers realize instantaneously and organically what 

 is here the result of the same powers working through imperfect machineries. 

 So much for the naturalness of clothes, whose forces and forms are those of the 

 human mind, and accompany the mind wjthersoever it goes. We write this 

 note, because the Bible narratives are sometimes discredited for attributing 

 investiture to the future man, whereas this attribution is in harmony with com- 

 mon sense, and the contrary is a part of the indecent doctrine, that man, when 

 he dies, goes nowhere, and has nothing on. 



