Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER XI. PROSPECTIVE.

  The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predictedit would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of acloud-capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without azure loomings inthe far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness; the highlyquestionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and moreimportant for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, criesmany a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of atruth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burningmarl of a Hell-on-Earth?

  Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, givesan Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leadsus to; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his viewsand glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but aWhole:--

  "Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take the wings of the morningand dwell in the uttermost parts of the Universe, God is there.' Thouthyself, O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but aProsaist, knowing GOD only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of theworld where at least FORCE is not? The drop which thou shakest from thywet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it sweptaway; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropicof Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkestthou there is aught motionless; without Force, and utterly dead?

  "As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little firewhich glows star-like across the dark-growing (_nachtende_) moor, wherethe sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thylost horse-shoe,--is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from thewhole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, thatsmithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air thatcirculates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog-star; therein,with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, arecunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought about; itis a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system ofImmensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on thebosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influencereach quite through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet bybrain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay preaches forth(exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of Freedom, theGospel of Man's Force, commanding, and one day to be all-commanding.

  "Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothinghitherto was ever stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a witheredleaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless,shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses.The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it andaround it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot?Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from whichthe earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant;all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks intoInfinitude itself."

  Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant,high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

  "All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on itsown account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists onlyspiritually, and to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth. HenceClothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant.Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of wantonly, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand,all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven or hand-woven:must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein theelse invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason are, likeSpirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful; the rather if, aswe often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise)reveal such even to the outward eye?

  "Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed withBeauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Manhimself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothingor visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like alight-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothedwith a Body.

  "Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should ratherbe, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said thatImagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are herstuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements(of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such,or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown andcolorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures inthe Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissuesand living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seekfor: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_? The differencelies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seemsosseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking;while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth,sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency.Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that sameThought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolsteringit out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks(_Putz-Mantel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and readsmay gather whole hampers,--and burn them."

  Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to seea more surprisingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chiefgrievance; the Professor continues:--

  "Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shallfade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture ofthe Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit toSpirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season,and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES,rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed,done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is butClothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OFCLOTHES."

  Towards these dim infinitely expanded regions, close-bordering onthe impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetualdifficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling.Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expectedAid of Hofrath Heuschrecke; which daystar, however, melts now, not intothe red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertainwhether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, theseso-called Biographical Documents are in his hand. By the kindness ofa Scottish Hamburg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantileworld, he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now and oftenbefore spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger,he cannot soon forget,--the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all itsCustom-house seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens ofTravel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The readershall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with whatbreathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what unquietdisappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and againtaken up.

  Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments,Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeraltrivialities, proceeds to remind us of what we knew well already:that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Scienceoriginating in the Head (_Verstand_) alone, no Life-Philosophy(_Lebensphilosophie_), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, whichoriginates equally in the Character (_Gemuth_), and equally speaksthereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is knownand seen; "till the Author's View of the World (_Weltansicht_), and howhe actively and passively came by such view, are clear: in short tilla Biography of him has been philosophico-poetically written, andphilosophico-poetically read.... Nay," adds he, "were the speculativescientific Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, askyourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How?--and rest not, till, ifno better may be, Fancy have shaped out an answer; and either in the
authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, a completepicture and Genetical History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavor liesbefore you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, "do I dilateon the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr Ministervon Goethe has penetratingly remarked that Man is properly the _only_object that interests man:' thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwoour whole conversation is little or nothing else but Biography orAutobiography; ever humano-anecdotical (_menschlich-anekdotisch_).Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, universallypleasant of all things: especially Biography of distinguishedindividuals.

  "By this time, _mein Verehrtester_ (my Most Esteemed)," continueshe, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined fromTeufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well-nighunaccountable, "by this time you are fairly plunged (_vertieft_) in thatmighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy; and looking round, as all readersdo, with astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you havealready mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strangecuriosity touching the mind they issued from; the perhaps unparalleledpsychical mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and emitted it tothe light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he,at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he ever,in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his; looks he alsowistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, where only winds,and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he foughtduels;--good Heaven! how did he comport himself when in Love? By whatsingular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughsof Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderfulprophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells?

  "To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yetsilent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Travellerfrom a far Country; more or less footsore and travel-soiled; hasparted with road-companions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by badcookery, blistered with bug-bites; nevertheless, at every stage (forthey have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the wholeparticulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesqueSketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indeliblesympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhereforthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty Volume(of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unboundup, as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds?

  "No, _verehrtester Herr Herausgeber_, in no wise! I here, by theunexampled favor you stand in with our Sage, send not a Biography only,but an Autobiography: at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if Imisreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so thewhole Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear tothe wondering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, throughHindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (_einnehmen_)great part of this terrestrial Planet!"

  And now let the sympathizing reader judge of our feeling when, inplace of this same Autobiography with "fullest insight," we find--Sixconsiderable PAPER-BAGS, carefully sealed, and marked successively, ingilt China-ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs,beginning at Libra; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneousmasses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in ProfessorTeufelsdrockh's scarce legible _cursiv-schrift_; and treating of allimaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personalhistory only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner.

  Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as he here,speaking in the third person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not oncenamed. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theologicalDisquisition, "Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, "Thecontinued Possibility of Prophecy," we shall meet with some quiteprivate, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets standDreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions areomitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly looselyon separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are longpurely Autobiographical delineations; yet without connection, withoutrecognizable coherence; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, theyalmost remind us of "P.P. Clerk of this Parish." Thus does famine ofintelligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears to beunknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhapsin the Bag _Capricorn_, and those near it, the confusion a littleworse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, "On receiving theDoctor's-Hat," lie wash-bills, marked _bezahlt_ (settled). His Travelsare indicated by the Street-Advertisements of the various cities he hasvisited; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here isperhaps the completest collection extant.

  So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have nowinstead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo whichby intermixture will farther volatilize and discompose it! As we shallperhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags inthe British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them,may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is,clearly enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy,shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly ofintellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader,rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to thataqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us,and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineation of it.

  Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles)deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed_cursiv-schrift_; collating them with the almost equally unimaginableVolume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley ofhigh and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (byunion of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge forBritish travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sinand Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, didany Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor.For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly presume, far otherwardsthan that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished up from theweltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, thereanother, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath: nor isthere any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the Diligenceand feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavoring to evolveprinted Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, ashe shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why tothe far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to beswallowed up.

  Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor,dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; somefraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and littlebut an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use ofhealth, or of life, if not to do some work therewith? And what worknobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domesticsoil; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest areprivileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can weever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, thefirst dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, inUniversal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward withus, courageous reader; be it towards failure, or towards success! Thelatter thou sharest with us; the former also is not all our own.

  BOOK II.