Sartor Resartus

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Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own
sorrows, over the many-colored world, and pertinently enough note what is
passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual
culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were richer
than this. Internally, there is the most momentous instructive Course of
Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on; towards the right
comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, favorable to Meditation,
might help him rather than hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders to and
fro, there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet for the
seeing eye sights enough in these so boundless Travels of his, granting
that the Satanic School was even partially kept down, what an incredible
knowledge of our Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is to
say, of all knowable things, might not Teufelsdrockh acquire!

"I have read in most Public Libraries," says he, "including those of
Constantinople and Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the Chinese
Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen that there was no studying. Unknown
Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the Air,
by my organ of Hearing; Statistics, Geographics, Topographics came, through
the Eye, almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how he seeks food,
and warmth, and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known
to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted out much of the terraqueous Globe
with a pair of Compasses that belonged to myself only.

"Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, I lingered reflecting, and
even composing (_dichtete_), by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in that
clear Lakelet moistened my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of
Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of China
I have seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped and covered
with granite, and shows only second-rate masonry.--Great Events, also, have
not I witnessed? Kings sweated down (_ausgemergelt_) into Berlin-and-Milan
Customhouse-Officers; the World well won, and the World well lost; oftener
than once a hundred thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day.
All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and
shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite.
The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in
cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me.

"For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection; and can perhaps
boast that few such in this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men are the
inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine BOOK OF REVELATIONS,
whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named
HISTORY; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented men, and your
innumerable untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic Commentaries,
and wagon-load of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For
my study, the inspired Texts themselves! Thus did not I, in very early
days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs,
under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the
great Schiller and greater Goethe; and hearing what I have not forgotten.
For--"

--But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of caution, some time
ago laid down, and must suppress much. Let not the sacredness of
Laurelled, still more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a
future day, find circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication,
then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious be conceded;
which for the present were little better than treacherous, perhaps
traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor
Tarakwang, and the "White Water-roses" (Chinese Carbonari) with their
mysteries, no notice here! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, glancing
from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to have been
of very varied character. At first we find our poor Professor on the point
of being shot as a spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched
on the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly dismissed,
almost thrown out of doors, as an "Ideologist." "He himself," says the
Professor, "was among the completest Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists:
in the Idea (_in der Idee_) he lived, moved and fought. The man was a
Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through the
cannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La carriere ouverte aux talens_ (The
Tools to him that can handle them), which is our ultimate Political
Evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is
true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect
utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case
admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to
fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not
entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom,
notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the
boundless harvest, bless."

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdrockh's appearance and
emergence (we know not well whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on
that June Midnight. He has a "light-blue Spanish cloak" hanging round him,
as his "most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment;" and stands
there, on the World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like a
little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, if
stirred, to ring quaintest changes.

"Silence as of death," writes he; "for Midnight, even in the Arctic
latitudes, has its character: nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged,
the peaceable gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the
utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were
slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold;
yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous
fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my
feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable; for who would speak,
or be looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep,
except the watchmen; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the
Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp?

"Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or monster, scrambling
from among the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear,
hails me in Russian speech: most probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler.
With courteous brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband trade, my
humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain: the monster,
counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded to make sport for
himself, or perhaps profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever
assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced,
till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily
down below. What argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic
reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I,
deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs,
a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, 'Be so obliging as retire,
Friend (_Er ziehe sich zuruck, Freund_), and with promptitude!' This logic
even the Hyperborean understands: fast enough, with apologetic,
petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for suicidal as well as
homicidal purposes, need not return.

"Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men
alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more
_Mind_, though all but no _Body_ whatever, then canst thou kill me first,
and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless, and the
David resistless; savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is
all.

"With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things, in this
so surprising world, strike me with more surprise. Two little visual
Spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the
UNFATHOMABLE, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon,--make pause
at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, simultaneously
by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into Dissolution; and
off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on it (_verdammt_), the little
spitfires!--Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trimberg: 'God must needs laugh
outright, could such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins here below.'"

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great generality, which
is our chief quest here: How prospered the inner man of Teufelsdrockh,
under so much outward shifting! Does Legion still lurk in him, though
repressed; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We can answer that the
symptoms continue promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor; and
with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a patient, swallowing many a
bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong to the numerous class of
Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be effected.
We should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty
well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room;
whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable
state.

"At length, after so much roasting," thus writes our Autobiographer, "I was
what you might name calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is the
more frequent issue, reduced to a _caput-mortuum_! But in any case, by
mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many things. Wretchedness
was still wretched; but I could now partly see through it, and despise it.
Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found a
Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked through his brave
garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside,
thought I: but what, had they even been all granted! Did not the Boy
Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar
System; or after that, a whole Universe? _Ach Gott_, when I gazed into
these Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their
serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot
of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been
swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and
Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their
courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the
plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth;
what art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody:
true; but who, then, is Something, Somebody? For thee the Family of Man
has no use; it rejects thee; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb: so be
it; perhaps it is better so!"

Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh! Yet surely his bands are loosening; one day
he will hurl the burden far from him, and bound forth free and with a
second youth.

"This," says our Professor, "was the CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE I had now
reached; through which whoso travels from the Negative Pole to the Positive
must necessarily pass."

CHAPTER IX.
THE EVERLASTING YEA.

"Temptations in the Wilderness!" exclaims Teufelsdrockh, "Have we not all
to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by
birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is
the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force:
thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.
For the God-given mandate, _Work thou in Well-doing_, lies mysteriously
written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us
no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn
forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the
clay-given mandate, _Eat thou and be filled_, at the same time persuasively
proclaims itself through every nerve,--must not there be a confusion, a
contest, before the better Influence can become the upper?

"To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son of Man, when such
God-given mandate first prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must
now be vanquished or vanquish,--should be carried of the spirit into grim
Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him;
defiantly setting him at naught till he yield and fly. Name it as we
choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of
rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and
baseness,--to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not!
Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never
blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubiously
amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly
vapors!--Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our
Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these
also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the
consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or
faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests,
demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest
wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes--of that
Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!"

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure; as figures are, once for
all, natural to him: "Has not thy Life been that of most sufficient men
(_tuchtigen Manner_) thou hast known in this generation? An outflush of
foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many
weeds as valuable herbs: this all parched away, under the Droughts of
practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, in thought and act,
often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial!
If I have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit
under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be
the Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even exemplars."

So that, for Teufelsdrockh, also, there has been a "glorious revolution:"
these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his were but some
purifying "Temptation in the Wilderness," before his apostolic work (such
as it was) could begin; which Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil
once more worsted! Was "that high moment in the _Rue de l'Enfer_," then,
properly the turning-point of the battle; when the Fiend said, _Worship me,
or be torn in shreds_; and was answered valiantly with an _Apage
Satana_?--Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story
in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags,
for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow,
fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How
paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies
of Man's Soul; in what words, known to these profane times, speak even
afar-off of the unspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times,
profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by
commission? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and
involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_.
Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must
endeavor to combine for their own behoof.

He says: "The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl went
silent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in
my wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it was as if
the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly,
and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you no more, I
will believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not
for you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here: for I am
way-weary and life-weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to die or
to live is alike to me; alike insignificant."--And again: "Here, then, as
I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper
Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away,
and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary moral
Act, Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-todtung_), had been happily
accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved."

Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to his
Locality, during this same "healing sleep;" that his Pilgrim-staff lies
cast aside here, on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose is
already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that the tone, in
some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have
expected! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism:
light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while
by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We
transcribe the piece entire.

"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing and meditating;
on the high table-land, in front of the Mountains; over me, as roof, the
azure Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains,--namely,
of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding.
And then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain
hollows; with their green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels,
lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood
many a Mother baking bread, with her children round her:--all hidden and
protectingly folded up in the valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as
if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and
Villages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were
wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; and, in
almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds;
whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For
it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday,
eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose
up into the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the nine,
saying, as plainly as smoke could say: Such and such a meal is getting
ready here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole Borough, with all
its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in
miniature, and could cover it all with your hat.--If, in my wide
Way-farings, I had learned to look into the business of the World in its
details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general
propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom.

"Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through the
Distance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying
vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's
hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your
Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor had held snow. How
thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting-vat and laboratory
of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I
not name thee GOD? Art not thou the 'Living Garment of God'? O Heavens, is
it, in very deed, HE, then, that ever speaks through thee; that lives and
loves in thee, that lives and loves in me?

"Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of that Truth, and
Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than
Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to
her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like
soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came that
Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with
spectres; but godlike, and my Father's!

"With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellowman: with an
infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou
not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear
the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so
heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother,
why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy
eyes!--Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with
the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a
melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature,
which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor
joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad
Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become the dearer to me; and even for his
sufferings and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus was I
standing in the porch of that '_Sanctuary of Sorrow_;' by strange, steep
ways had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would
open, and the '_Divine Depth of Sorrow_' lie disclosed to me."

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been
strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. "A vain
interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at present called
Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the
beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle
Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end to. The most,
in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough
Suppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it is
indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different
terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is
found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from
century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic
_Church-Catechism_ of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands:
meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt to elucidate the matter so.
Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because
there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite
bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers
and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to
make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two:
for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would
require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation,
simply this allotment, no more, and no less: _God's infinite Universe
altogether to himself_, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as
fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus:
speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No
sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of
better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he
sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares
himself the most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in our
sunshine: it is even, as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_.

"But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain
valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of
average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of
indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts;
requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such _overplus_ as there may be
do we account Happiness; any _deficit_ again is Misery. Now consider that
we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of
Self-conceit there is in each of us,--do you wonder that the balance should
so often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, what a
payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!--I tell thee, Blockhead, it all
comes of thy Vanity; of what thou _fanciest_ those same deserts of thine to
be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt
feel it happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged
in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

"So true is it, what I then said, that _the Fraction of Life can be
increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening
your Denominator_. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, _Unity_ itself
divided by _Zero_ will give _Infinity_. Make thy claim of wages a zero,
then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time
write: 'It is only with Renunciation (_Entsagen_) that Life, properly
speaking, can be said to begin.'

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