CHAPTER X. PURE REASON.
It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, isa speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; acknowledging, formost part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized Life, whichwe make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and"bladders with dried peas." To linger among such speculations, longerthan mere Science requires, a discerning public can have no wish. Forour purposes the simple fact that such a _Naked World_ is possible,nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much,therefore, we omit about "Kings wrestling naked on the green withCarmen," and the Kings being thrown: "dissect them with scalpels," saysTeufelsdrockh; "the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and otherlife-tackle, are there: examine their spiritual mechanism; the samegreat Need, great Greed, and little Faculty; nay ten to one but theCarman, who understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, somethingof the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with other branchesof wagon-science, and has actually put forth his hand and operated onNature, is the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, theirso unspeakable difference? From Clothes." Much also we shall omit aboutconfusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it would be everywhere"Hail fellow well met," and Chaos were come again: all which to any onethat has once fairly pictured out the grand mother-idea, _Society ina state of Nakedness_, will spontaneously suggest itself. Should somesceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world withoutClothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist,let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundlessSerbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching sour and pestilential: overwhich we have lightly flown; where not only whole armies but wholenations might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its briefriveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final:--
"Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how,without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul's seat, andtrue pineal gland of the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE?"
Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufelsdrockh; at worst,one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though, in looking atthe fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures,he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; andindeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of thatunsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference,which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers,--there isthat within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other pastand present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity ofTeufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines aTranscendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand hedegrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, onthe other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equalitywith the Gods.
"To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous Bipedthat wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, aSpirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, therelies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses),contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like,and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions forhimself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands ofYears. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Soundsand Colors and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricablyover-shrouded: yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands he notthereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? Hefeels; power has been given him to know, to believe; nay does not thespirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here,though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom,with his lips of gold, 'the true SHEKINAH is Man:' where else is theGOD'S-PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as inour fellow-man?"
In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Platonic Mysticism of ourAuthor, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, burstsforth, as it were, in full flood: and, through all the vapor and tarnishof what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment,we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love;--though,alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it fromview.
Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this man; andindeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothingthat he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings:thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, aswell as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gypsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay,Contemptibility; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverendWorth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, themanifestation of Spirit: were it never so honorable, can it be more? Thething Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived asVisible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestialInvisible, "unimaginable formless, dark with excess of bright"? Underwhich point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, sostrange in phrase, seems characteristic enough:--
"The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on Clothes, or even witharmed eyesight, till they become _transparent_. 'The Philosopher,' saysthe wisest of this age, 'must station himself in the middle:' how true!The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has descended, and the Lowesthas mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.
"Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether woven inArkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly in ourImagination? Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot love;since all was created by God?
"Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, andfleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Manhimself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate,a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutablevenerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with eyes!"
For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in thefeeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity and high worth of universalWonder; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizenof so singular a Planet as ours. "Wonder," says he, "is the basis ofWorship: the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; onlyat certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, areign _in partibus infidelium_." That progress of Science, which is todestroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration,finds small favor with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise veneratesthese two latter processes.
"Shall your Science," exclaims he, "proceed in the small chink-lighted,or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man'smind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mereTables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what youcall Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, whichthe scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor'sin the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecutewithout shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menialhandicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is toonoble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhapspoisonous; at best, dies like cookery with the day that called it forth;does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreadingharvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all Time."
In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, accordingto ability; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, withcharitable intent. Above all, that class of "Logic-choppers, andtreble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in thesedays, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics'Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslingsround their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, asilluminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in fulldaylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you andguarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, and the streetpopulous with mere justice-loving men:" that whole class isinexpress
ibly wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation heperorates:--
"The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (andworship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carriedthe whole _Mecanique Celeste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the epitomeof all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his singlehead,--is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Letthose who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.
"Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy worldby the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lampof what I call Attorney-Logic; and 'explain' all, 'account' for all, orbelieve nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizesthe unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhereunder our feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an Oracleand Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall,--he shall be adelirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusivelyproffer thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks hisfoot through it?--_Armer Teufel_! Doth not thy cow calve, doth notthy bull gender? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die?'Explain' me all this, or do one of two things: Retire into privateplaces with thy foolish cackle; or, what were better, give it up,and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world alldisembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante andsand-blind Pedant."
Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh Page 10