Note III-27 — Chapter III · PHYSICAL MYTHS.

Singularly apt in this connection are the wise words that Carlyle, Past and Present Chartism, book i., p. 233, puts into the mouth of his mythical friend Sauerteig—'Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness, that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection, how it radiates in on thee with cunning symbolic influences, to the very soul!... It remains a religious duty from oldest time in the East.... Even the dull English feel something of this; they have a saying, "cleanliness is near of kin to Godliness."'