Sartor Resartus
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Thomas Carlyle >> Sartor Resartus
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"But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness of Symbols, so
likewise in his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates them; and
Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not
ceased to be true; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the
distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a
receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be
reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much as
know that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor,
with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo
and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial
Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise, their
culmination, their decline.
"Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is but a piece
of gilt wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and truly, as
Ancient Pistol thought, 'of little price.' A right Conjurer might I name
thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue
they once held.
"Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst thou plant for Eternity, then
plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and Heart;
wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallow
superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, what
will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will we
call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, can shape new
Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such too will not
always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the average of
matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can so much as tell
when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it.
"When, as the last English Coronation* I was preparing," concludes this
wonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion of
England,' he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King, had
brought it so far that he could now 'mount his horse with little
assistance,' I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nigh
superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and
rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World)
dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you
shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce
suffocation?"
*That of George IV.--ED.
CHAPTER IV.
HELOTAGE.
At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a
certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled _Institute for the
Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn
leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag
_Pisces_. Not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire
little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which
rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place
here.
Into the Hofrath's _Institute_, with its extraordinary schemes, and
machinery of Corresponding Boards and the like, we shall not so much as
glance. Enough for us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of
Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally
eats him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath; something
like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness.
Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is there light; nothing
but a grim shadow of Hunger; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world
to terminate by the frightfullest consummation: by its too dense
inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating one another. To
make air for himself in which strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent
heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this _Institute_ of his,
as the best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments thereon
that we concern ourselves.
First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative Radical, has his
own notions about human dignity; that the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies
have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover
of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed:--
"Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that with
earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's.
Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding
lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this
Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled,
with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike.
Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity
as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so
bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert
our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be
unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements
of Labor: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil
on, toil on: _thou_ art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest
for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.
"A second man I honor, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for
the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is
not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward Harmony; revealing this,
by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they high or low?
Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavor are one: when we
can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who
with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble
toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in
return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These
two, in all their degrees, I honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let
the wind blow whither it listeth.
"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united;
and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also
toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing
than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will
take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of Heaven
spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in
great darkness."
And again: "It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we
must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse;
no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and
athirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and
weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his
smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him; and fitful
glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the
lamp of his soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly
knowledge, should visit him; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two
spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the Body
stands so broad and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied,
almost annihilated! Alas, was this too a Breath of God; bestowed in
Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!--That there should one Man die
ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to
happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it
does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united Mankind, in a
wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all
diligence, imparted to all?"
Quite in an opposite strain is the following: "The old Spartans had a
wiser method; and went out and hunted down their Helots, and speared and
spitted them, when they grew too numerous. With our improved fashions of
hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and standing
armies, how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the most thickly
peopled country, some three days annually might suffice to shoot all the
able-bodied Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let Governments
think of this. The expense were trifling: nay the very carcasses would
pay it. Have them salted and barrelled; could not you victual therewith,
if not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, in workhouses and
elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, might see good
to keep alive?"
"And yet," writes he farther on, "there must be something wrong. A
full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two
hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the world. A full-formed
Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him
a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Nevertheless,
which of the two was the more cunningly devised article, even as an Engine?
Good Heavens! A white European Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two
five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his
shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses!"
"True, thou Gold-Hofrath," cries the Professor elsewhere: "too crowded
indeed! Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe
have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? How thick
stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of America; round ancient
Carthage, and in the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the Altaic
chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim
Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year, as I have
understood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others.
Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-glowing,
still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will
enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of
indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and
war-chariot, but with the steam engine and ploughshare? Where are
they?--Preserving their Game!"
CHAPTER V.
THE PHOENIX.
Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them
numerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over these Writings
of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion,
that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society, properly so
called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the gregarious feelings,
and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and
universal national, civil, domestic and personal war! He says expressly:
"For the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a
century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion,
where lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote at and perforated,
needfully and needlessly; till now it is quite rent into shreds; and
Society, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct;
for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will
they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond two days."
"Call ye that a Society," cries he again, "where there is no longer any
Social Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but only of a
common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardless of his
neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can get, and cries
'Mine!' and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat
Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed?
Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your
holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for
Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate-licking: and
your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it
passionately proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave us alone of _your_
guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat you your wages, and
sleep!
"Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywhere that
saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered
Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of
Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, without
honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from
tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols
fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World
becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallen speechless, from
obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened
to get its pay!"
We might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belonging to practical men
in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; or is it only
from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ that such wonders are
visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a "deceased or expiring
Society" fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. "What, for
example," says he, "is the universally arrogated Virtue, almost the sole
remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days? For some half-century, it has
been the thing you name 'Independence.' Suspicion of 'Servility,' of
reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools!
Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for
them were even your only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is
rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere prescribe
it?"
But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of
Nature? "The Soul Politic having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, "what can
follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid
putrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with
its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile, where, amid
wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the venerable
Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men, Liberals,
Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their
point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of Society,
seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful.
"Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come
to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract
and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis;
properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the
others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of
boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not
Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves,
and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty
years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England, it has ceased to
flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and
the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so
the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but is in full universal Action,
the doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit
pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged workshop intellect and heart,
nowise without their corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it
requires but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--
Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads
like a sort of Dog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid:
then woe to the Huntsmen, with or without their whips! They should have
given the quadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of Knowledge and
of Life, while it was yet time."
Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hour in a
most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of
Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World,"
says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and waste.
which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion,
as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of
Society; replace them with what it may. For the present, it is
contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once _divested_,
these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt; but the
sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irish watch-coat
for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is but Job's-news to
the humane reader.
"Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is there that
can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the
Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yielded to the
Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best."
Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from what
stands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh, individually had yielded to
this same "Inevitable and Inexorable" heartily enough; and now sat waiting
the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even
Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a "huge
Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old Symbols" were raining down
everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those
"unhunted Helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_ pressure and
hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what
with the so hateful "empty Masks," full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring
out on him, from their glass eyes, "with a ghastly affectation of
life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be
thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe himself in that
"Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent, with a tragic solemnity, that
the monster UTILITARIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings,
halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should
go forth to do her work;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples
with her broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better
might be built! Remarkable in this point of view are the following
sentences.
"Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, which you call dead
Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a
nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer
development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two
or three Living Men are gathered together, there is Society; or there it
will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous structures,
overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to Heaven and
downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the other figure, it has
two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and
the Gallows."
Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks,
weaving for herself new Vestures;"--Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the
loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphorism
of Saint Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be said:
"_L'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans le passe, est
devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition has hitherto placed
in the Past, is Before us."--But listen again:--
"When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks
flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon,
have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths
consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will get
singed.
"For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will be
completed, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among the deepest
in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit his old house till
it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger
as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three
hundred years and more after all life and sacredness had evaporated out of
them. And then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will
require, depends on unseen contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer
Mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and conflagration,
more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to
find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but
working,--were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?"
Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should be deliberately
burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in the faith that she
is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young one will rise out of her
ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear
commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader shake his head, and
reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think: From a
_Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professor in a University, and man to
whom hitherto, for his services, Society, bad as she is, has given not only
food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected
more gratitude to his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future
which resembles that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast,
than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country.
CHAPTER VI.
OLD CLOTHES.
As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is in practice
probably the politest man extant: his whole heart and life are penetrated
and informed with the spirit of politeness; a noble natural Courtesy shines
through him, beautifying his vagaries; like sunlight, making a
rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds; nay
brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from the crucible of an
alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself
on this head:--
"Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the rich? In
Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High-breeding, only as it
gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists
on its own rights, I discern no special connection with wealth or birth:
but rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all men
towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and worth
anything when there, this, with so much else, would be reformed. Nay, each
man were then also his neighbor's schoolmaster; till at length a
rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with, than a Peasant
unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the clod he
broke was created in Heaven.
"For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou ALIVE; is
not this thy brother ALIVE? 'There is but one temple in the world,' says
Novalis, 'and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this
high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in
the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human Body.'
"On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most do; and whereas
the English Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with a
shovel-hat, I would bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat
whatever. Is not he a Temple, then; the visible Manifestation and
Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing
serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; and
too often the bow is but pocketed by the _former_. It would go to the
pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these
times); therefore must we withhold it.
"The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to those Shells and
outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but
only the pure emblem and effigies of Man: I mean, to Empty, or even to
Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do reverence: to
the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddling animal with bandy
legs' which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord
my-lorded in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer? Nevertheless, I
say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practical deception:
for how often does the Body appropriate what was meant for the Cloth only!
Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps
see good to take a different course. That reverence which cannot act
without obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free
course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is
not less sacred than the God; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment
with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man: nay, with more, for I now
fear no deception, of myself or of others.
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