Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA.

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

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

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

  So that, for Teufelsdrockh, also, there has been a "gloriousrevolution:" these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings ofhis were but some purifying "Temptation in the Wilderness," before hisapostolic work (such as it was) could begin; which Temptation is nowhappily over, and the Devil once more worsted! Was "that high moment inthe _Rue de l'Enfer_," then, properly the turning-point of the battle;when the Fiend said, _Worship me, or be torn in shreds_; and wasanswered valiantly with an _Apage Satana_?--Singular Teufelsdrockh,would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! But it isfruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing butinnuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering,prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How paint to the sensualeye," 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 theunspeakable?" We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, profane asthey are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? Notmystical only is our Professor, but whimsical; and involves himself, nowmore than ever, in eye-bewildering _chiaroscuro_. Successive glimpses,here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must endeavor tocombine for their own behoof.

  He says: "The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; its howl wentsilent within me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused inmy wild wanderings; and sat me down to wait, and consider; for it wasas if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounceutterly, and say: Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you nomore, 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 todie: 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 bybenignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolledgradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The firstpreliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (_Selbst-todtung_), hadbeen happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and itshands ungyved."

  Might we not also conjecture that the following passage refers to hisLocality, during this same "healing sleep;" that his Pilgrim-staff liescast aside here, on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose isalready 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 haveexpected! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangestDualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in thefore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woeand wail. We transcribe the piece entire.

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

  "Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in anger through theDistance: round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddyingvapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a madwitch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clearsunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vaporhad held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy greatfermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a World, ONature!--Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee GOD? Art not thouthe '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 livesand loves in me?

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

  "With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellowman: with aninfinite Love, an
infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thounot tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thoubear 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, myBrother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tearsfrom thy eyes!--Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in thissolitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddeningdiscord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of adumb 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 tome; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named himBrother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that '_Sanctuary ofSorrow_;' by strange, steep ways had I too been guided thither; and erelong its sacred gates would open, and the '_Divine Depth of Sorrow_' liedisclosed to me."

  The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had beenstrangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. "Avain interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at presentcalled Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, sincethe beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass fromidle Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end to. Themost, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enoughSuppression of this controversy; to a few some Solution of it isindispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out indifferent terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has becomeobsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to changehis Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would.The authentic _Church-Catechism_ of our present century has not yetfallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof I attempt toelucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of hisGreatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all hiscunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole FinanceMinisters and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake,in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannotaccomplish it, above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack also has a Soulquite 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 ofthem; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner isyour ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of bettervintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets toquarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himselfthe most maltreated of men.--Always there is a black spot in oursunshine: it is even, as I said, the _Shadow of Ourselves_.

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

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

  "I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hastbeen fretting and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, on accountof? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Becausethe THOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished,soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for? Foolish soul! What Act ofLegislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little whileago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born andpredestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing otherthan a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking aftersomewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is notgiven thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_."

  "_Es leuchtet mir ein_, I see a glimpse of it!" cries he elsewhere:"there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do withoutHappiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preachforth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest,in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through lifeand through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlikeonly has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspiredd Doctrine art thoualso honored to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold mercifulAfflictions, even till thou become contrite and learn it! Oh, thank thyDestiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst needof them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignantfever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease,and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art notengulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure;love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction issolved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him."

  And again: "Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with itsinjuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee: thou canst lovethe Earth while it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; forthis a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thouthat '_Worship of Sorrow_'? The Temple thereof, founded some eighteencenturies ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitationof doleful creatures: nevertheless, venture forward; in a low crypt,arched out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, andits sacred Lamp perennially burning."

  Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editorwill only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still morequestionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; naywherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitionson Religion, yet not without bursts of splendor; on the "perennialcontinuance of Inspiration;" on Prophecy; that there are "true Priests,as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:" with more of the like sort. Weselect some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago.

  "Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire," thus apostrophizes theProfessor: "shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seemsfinished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition,considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religionlooks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas,were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand otherquartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and sinceon the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But whatnext? Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion ina new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwisetoo like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind?Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then,and--thyself away.

  "Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God present,felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute outof me; or dispute into me? To the '_Worship of Sorrow_' ascribe whatorigin and genesis thou pleasest, _has_ not that Worship originated,and been generated; is it not _here_? Feel it in thy heart, and then saywhether it is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion,--for whichlatter whos
o will, let him worry and be worried."

  "Neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye tear out one another's eyes,struggling over 'Plenary Inspiration,' and such like: try rather to geta little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One BIBLE Iknow, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible;nay with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it: thereof all otherBibles are but Leaves,--say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weakerfaculty."

  Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let himtake the following perhaps more intelligible passage:--

  "To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecinewarfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hastthou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, thinkwell what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, itis simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share ofHappiness in the world, something from my share: which, by the Heavens,thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.'--Alas, and the whole lotto be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' forthe substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite;and the collective human species clutching at them!--Can we not, in allsuch cases, rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; takethat pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, butwhich thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I hadenough for thee!'--If Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ be, 'to a certainextent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so isthis. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely thePassive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it!

  "But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless tillit convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possibletill then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, avortex amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experiencedoes it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into asystem. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of anysort cannot be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, lethim who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and praysvehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept wellto heart, which to me was of invaluable service: '_Do the Duty whichlies nearest thee_,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Dutywill already have become clearer.

  "May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement iseven this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimlystruggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, andthrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the Lotharioin _Wilhelm Meister_, that your 'America is here or nowhere'? TheSituation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied byman. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual,wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work itout therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal isin thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but thestuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whethersuch stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic,be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, andcriest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create,know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'hereor nowhere,' couldst thou only see!

  "But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning ofCreation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are inbonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once overthe wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever tothe greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous andGod-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplestand least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely jumbledconflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deepsilent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with itseverlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we havea blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World.

  "I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World,or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullestinfinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis theutmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thyhand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is calledTo-day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work."