Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER IV. GETTING UNDER WAY.

  "Thus nevertheless," writes our Autobiographer, apparently asquitting College, "was there realized Somewhat; namely, I, DiogenesTeufelsdrockh: a visible Temporary Figure (_Zeitbild_), occupying somecubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both physical andspiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the whole wondrous furniture, inmore or less perfection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilitiesthere were in me to give battle, in some small degree, against thegreat Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, withhis spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave alittle Order, where he found the opposite? Nay your very Day-moth hascapabilities in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its ownBody, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead airmakes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming.

  "How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned,or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! ThaumaturgicI name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, andhenceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days,witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how itmakes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannotthe dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him? Has he not seen theScottish Brass-smith's IDEA (and this but a mechanical one) travellingon fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans; and stronger thanany other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetchingand carrying: at home, not only weaving Cloth; but rapidly enoughoverturning the whole old system of Society; and, for Feudalism andPreservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods,Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a Thinking Man isthe worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a oneannounces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through theNether Empire; and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, ifpossible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff him.

  "With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of the Universe,been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though born to the amplestSovereignty, in this way, with no less than sovereign right of Peaceand War against the Time-Prince (_Zeitfurst_), or Devil, and all hisDominions, your coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre isso difficult to get at, or even to get eye on!"

  By which last wire-drawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh mean no more thanthat young men find obstacles in what we call "getting under way"? "Notwhat I Have," continues he, "but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each isgiven a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of Fortune;to each, by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum ofCapability. But the hardest problem were ever this first: To find bystudy of yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what your combinedinward and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul isall budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which is the main andtrue one. Always too the new man is in a new time, under new conditions;his course can be the _fac-simile_ of no prior one, but is by itsnature original. And then how seldom will the outward Capability fitthe inward: though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended,dyspeptical, bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are foolish. Thus,in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, togrope which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one: in this mad workmust several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth,by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay,many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-newdisappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side toside: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten,they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting buried.

  "Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be the generalfate; were it not that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on thisground, as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must a promptchoice be made: hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures andApprenticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, thevague universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded into aspecific Craftsman; and so thenceforth work, with much or with littlewaste of Capability as it may be; yet not with the worst waste, that oftime. Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too isborn blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sightin nine days, but far later, sometimes never,--is it not well that thereshould be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (_Brodzwecke_),preappointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partialor total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedlyround and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward; andrealize much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse'spower in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. Forme too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved aneck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, inthe words of Ancient Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster,which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could.Almost had I deceased (_fast war ich umgekommen_), so obstinately did itcontinue shut."

  We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of much that wasto befall our Autobiographer; the historical embodiment of which, asit painfully takes shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrousdetails, through this Bag _Pisces_, and those that follow. A young manof high talent, and high though still temper, like a young mettledcolt, "breaks off his neck-halter," and bounds forth, from his peculiarmanger, into the wide world; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fencedin. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye; but to him they are forbiddenpasture: either pining in progressive starvation, he must stand; or,in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheerstone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lamehim; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if bymiracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover,yet into a certain bosky wilderness where existence is still possible,and Freedom, though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness.In a word, Teufelsdrockh having thrown up his legal Profession, findshimself without landmark of outward guidance; whereby his previouswant of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated.Necessity urges him on; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Sonof Time; wild passions without solacement, wild faculties withoutemployment, ever vex and agitate him. He too must enact that sternMonodrama, _No Object and no Rest_; must front its successive destinies,work through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what moral he can.

  Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his "neck-halter" satnowise easy on him; that he was in some degree forced to break it off.If we look at the young man's civic position, in this Nameless capital,as he emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern well thatit was far from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come throughtriumphantly; and can even boast that the _Examen Rigorosum_ neednot have frightened him: but though he is hereby "an _Auscultator_ ofrespectability," what avails it? There is next to no employment tobe had. Neither, for a youth without connections, is the process ofExpectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his dispositionmuch cheered from without. "My fellow Auscultators," he says, "wereAuscultators: they dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words;other vitality showed they almost none. Small speculation in those eyes,that they did glare withal! Sense neither for the high nor for thedeep, nor for aught human or divine, save only for the faintest scent ofcoming Preferment." In which words, indicating a total estrangement onthe part of Teufelsdrockh may there not also lurk traces of a bitternessas from wounded vanity? Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may havesniffed at him, with his strange ways; and tried to hate, and what wasmuch more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case,there could not be: already has the young Teufelsdrockh left the otheryoung geese; and swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himselfis cygnet or gosling.

  Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was performed ill, at bestunpleasantly. "Great practical method and expertness" he may br
ag of;but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, onlythe deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figureto ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks withhis independence, and so forth: do not his own words betoken as much?"Like a very young person, I imagined it was with Work alone, and notalso with Folly and Sin, in myself and others, that I had beenappointed to struggle." Be this as it may, his progress from the passiveAuscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently of theslowest. By degrees, those same established men, once partially inclinedto patronize him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and give him upas "a man of genius" against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudlyprotests. "As if," says he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; asif he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolvedon it! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthingfor a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trustnothing but the common copper."

  How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial runner,contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from flying skywardwithout return, is not too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchenseems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth; otherHorn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so that"the prompt nature of Hunger being well known," we are not without ouranxiety. From private Tuition, in never so many languages and sciences,the aid derivable is small; neither, to use his own words, "does theyoung Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but atbest earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Translation.Nevertheless," continues he, "that I subsisted is clear, for you find meeven now alive." Which fact, however, except upon the principle of ourtrue-hearted, kind old Proverb, that "there is always life for a livingone," we must profess ourselves unable to explain.

  Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, bearing themark of Settlement, indicate that he was not without money; but, like anindependent Hearth-holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here alsooccur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhapsthrow light on his condition. The first has now no date, or writer'sname, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: "The (_Inkblot_), tieddown by previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, forward theHerr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and seeshimself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, whatwere otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for aman of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The otheris on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy nowdead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it inthe original: "_Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grafinn, aufDonnerstag, zum AESTHETISCHEN THEE schonstens eingeladen_."

  Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there is the mosturgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a wash ofquite fluid _AEsthetic Tea_! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual hand-gripswith Destiny herself, may have comported himself among these Musical andLiterary dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feastof chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence,and abstinence: otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast at all,it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the rest,as this Frau Grafinn dates from the _Zahdarm House_, she can be noother than the Countess and mistress of the same; whose intellectualtendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the footing ofHerr Towgood, or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That somesort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, to connect ourAutobiographer, though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, wehave elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patronage, itwas in vain; enough for him if he here obtained occasional glimpsesof the great world, from which we at one time fancied him to have beenalways excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuousgarniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art, attracted andattached from without, were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It wasto the _Gnadigen Frau_ (her Ladyship) that this latter improvement wasdue: assiduously she gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringingwas to be had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was Teufelsdrockhalso a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising to be such? "With his_Excellenz_ (the Count)," continues he, "I have more than once had thehonor to converse; chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of theworld, which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorablelight; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism (_dieauszurottende Journalistik_), little to desiderate therein. On somepoints, as his _Excellenz_ was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasantto keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land,there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use,were little developed in him."

  That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise so faultless,and many things besides "the Outrooting of Journalism" might have seemedimprovements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a barrenAuscultatorship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and wishesfrom within, his position was no easy one. "The Universe," he says, "wasas a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede,or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also inthe blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought,unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me; and I as yet knewnot the solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring onlyfrom discords set in harmony; that but for Evil there were no Good, asvictory is only possible by battle."

  "I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he elsewhere, "bynot unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of humanhappiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered underbarrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow theirlawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at theage of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in thelight of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide.Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (_Madchen_)are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so younggentlemen (_Bubchen_) do then attain their maximum of detestability.Such gawks (_Gecken_) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with sucha vulturous hunger for self-indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous,vain-glorious; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No mortal'sendeavor or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as yetunendeavoring, unattaining young gentleman; but he could make it allinfinitely better, were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the mostmanageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three: multiplyyour second and third term together, divide the product by the first,and your quotient will be the answer,--which you are but an ass if youcannot come at. The booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that,do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimalrepeater, and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of."

  In which passage does not there lie an implied confession thatTeufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, had an inward,still greater, to contend with; namely, a certain temporary, youthful,yet still afflictive derangement of head? Alas, on the former sidealone, his case was hard enough. "It continues ever true," sayshe, "that Saturn, or Chronos, or what we call TIME, devours all hisChildren: only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (forsome threescore-and-ten years) escape him; and you too he devours atlast. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Timestand still; even in thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our wholeterrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time; it is wholly aMovement, a Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the material ofit. Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work,--in the rightdirection. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual movement,whether we will or not; in a continual Waste, requiring a continualRepair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole outward and inward Wants werebut satisfaction for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done,is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do anew. OTime-Spirit, how hast thou environed and imprison
ed us, and sunk us sodeep in thy troublous dim Time-Element, that only in lucid momentscan so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us!Me, however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Timethreatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive as I might, there wasno good Running, so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the feet."That is to say, we presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world,that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like other men's, "towork,--in the right direction," and that no work was to be had; wherebyhe became wretched enough. As was natural: with haggard Scarcitythreatening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul languishingin restless inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword byrust,

  "To eat into itself, for lack Of something else to hew and hack;"

  But on the whole, that same "excellent Passivity," as it has all alongdone, is here again vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance maywe not trace the beginnings of much that now characterizes our Professorand perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philosophyitself? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the World is toodefensive; not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of attack."So far hitherto," he says, "as I had mingled with mankind, I wasnotable, if for anything, for a certain stillness of manner, which, asmy friends often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardorof my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of loveand of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him thathas a sense for the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed,and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (_Harte_), myIndifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted,as my favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm wasbut as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that somy own poor Person might live safe there, and in all friendliness, beingno longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general,the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as goodas renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those days, provokeinto some degree of hostility thereby! An ironic man, with his slystillness, and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young man,from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Havewe not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlestindifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy andworm, start ceiling-high (_balkenhock_), and thence fall shattered andsupine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when heproved electric and a torpedo!"

  Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper make way forhimself in Life; where the first problem, as Teufelsdrockh tooadmits, is "to unite yourself with some one, and with somewhat (_sichanzuschliessen_)"? Division, not union, is written on most part of hisprocedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the onlyimportant connection he had ever succeeded in forming, his connectionwith the Zahdarm Family, seems to have been paralyzed, for all practicaluses, by the death of the "not uncholeric" old Count. This fact standsrecorded, quite incidentally, in a certain _Discourse on Epitaphs_,huddled into the present Bag, among so much else; of which Essay thelearning and curious penetration are more to be approved of than thespirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sortsoever, should be Historical rather than Lyrical. "By request of thatworthy Nobleman's survivors," says he, "I undertook to compose hisEpitaph; and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following;which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yetfully visible to myself, still remains unengraven;"--wherein, we maypredict, there is more than the Latinity that will surprise an Englishreader:

  HIC JACET PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, ZAEHDARMI COMES, EX IMPERII CONCILIO, VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI EQUES. QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES PLUMBO CONFECIT: VARII CIBI CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, HAUD SINE TUMULT DEVOLVENS, IN STERCUS PALAM CONVERTIT. NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM OPERA SEQUUNTUR. SI MONUMENTUM QUAERIS, FIMETUM ADSPICE. PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [_sub dato_]; POSTREMUM [_sub dato_].