Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER III. SYMBOLS.

  Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing obscureutterances, if we here insert somewhat of our Professor's speculationson _Symbols_. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond ourcompass: nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of"Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;" and how "Man thereby, thoughbased, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless extenddown into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible,indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth." Let us, omitting thesehigh transcendental aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether fromthe Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems logical andpractical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence asit will assume. By way of proem, take the following not injudiciousremarks:--

  "The benignant efficacies of Concealment," cries our Professor, "whoshall speak or sing? SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raisedto them (were this an altar-building time) for universal worship.Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselvestogether; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, intothe daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not Williamthe Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the mostundiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what theywere creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, dothou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on the morrow, how muchclearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have thosemute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shutout! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art ofconcealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought,so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not thegreatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: _Sprechen ist silbern,Schweigen ist golden_ (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as Imight rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.

  "Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except inSilence: neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. Let not thy lefthand know what thy right hand doeth! Neither shalt thou prate even tothy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' Is not Shame (_Schaam_)the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? Like otherplants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, buried from theeye of the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay do but look at it privilythyself, the root withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends,when we view the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example,the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and huesof Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs themup by the roots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows usthe dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing Press withits Newspapers: _du Himmel_! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor'sGoose?

  "Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, and connectedwith still greater things, is the wondrous agency of _Symbols_. Ina Symbol there is concealment and yet revelation; here therefore, bySilence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance. Andif both the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, howexpressive will their union be! Thus in many a painted Device, or simpleSeal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us proclaimed with quitenew emphasis.

  "For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into thesmall prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. In theSymbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or lessdistinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite;the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible,and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guidedand commanded, made happy, made wretched: He everywhere finds himselfencompassed with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized: theUniverse is but one vast Symbol of God; nay if thou wilt have it, whatis man himself but a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical;a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that is in him; a'Gospel of Freedom,' which he, the 'Messias of Nature,' preaches, as hecan, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodimentof a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is, inthe transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real."

  "Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal contrast withthese high-soaring delineations, which we have here cut short on theverge of the inane, "Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too,of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if weconsider it, is that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights.Fantastic tricks enough man has played, in his time; has fancied himselfto be most things, down even to an animated heap of Glass: but to fancyhimself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, wasreserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe one hugeManger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other;and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil! spectres are appointed tohaunt him: one age he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priest-ridden,befooled; in all ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanismsmothers him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh chokedout of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains. InEarth and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism; has fear fornothing else, hope in nothing else: the world would indeed grind himto pieces; but cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunninglycompute these, and mechanize them to grind the other way?

  "Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchantment, you had butto bid him open his eyes and look. In which country, in which time, wasit hitherto that man's history, or the history of any man, went on bycalculated or calculable 'Motives'? What make ye of your Christianities,and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillaise Hymns, and Reigns ofTerror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been in _Love_?Did he never stand so much as a contested Election? Leave him to Time,and the medicating virtue of Nature."

  "Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not our Logical,Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I mightsay, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard tolead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sensebut the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in thedullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness(thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams infrom the circumambient Eternity, and colors with its own hues our littleislet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thoucanst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-givingretina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred livingsoldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, whichthey called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross,would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole HungarianNation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when KaiserJoseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciouslyobserved, in size and commercial value little differing from ahorse-shoe? It is in and through _Symbols_ that man, consciously orunconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover,are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth,and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyesfor it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?

  "Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have both an extrinsicand intrinsic value; oftenest the former only. What, for instance, wasin that clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensignin their _Bauernkrieg_ (Peasants' War)? Or in the Wallet-and-staff roundwhich the Netherland _Gueux_, glorying in that nickname of Beggars,heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip himself?Intrinsic significance these had none: only extrinsic; as the accidentalStandards of multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together; inwhich union itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical andborrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, stand, or stood,the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Banners everywhere; andgenerally all national or other sectarian Costumes and Customs: theyhave no intrinsic, necessary divin
eness, or even worth; but haveacquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these there glimmerssomething of a Divine Idea; as through military Banners themselves, theDivine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring; in some instances of Freedom, ofRight. Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, theCross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.

  "Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has intrinsic meaning,and is of itself _fit_ that men should unite round it. Let but theGodlike manifest itself to Sense, let but Eternity look, more or lessvisibly, through the Time-Figure (_Zeitbild_)! Then is it fit that menunite there; and worship together before such Symbol; and so from day today, and from age to age, superadd to it new divineness.

  "Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art: in them (if thou know aWork of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity lookingthrough Time; the Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsicvalue gradually superadd itself: thus certain _Iliads_, and the like,have, in three thousand years, attained quite new significance. Butnobler than all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god-inspired Men;for what other Work of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the Death ofthe Just, as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not discernsymbolic meaning? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory,resting over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read (ifthou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, and somegleam of the latter peering through.

  "Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or Poet has riseninto Prophet, and all men can recognize a present God, and worship theSame: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religiousSymbols, what we call _Religions_; as men stood in this stage of cultureor the other, and could worse or better body forth the Godlike: someSymbols with a transient intrinsic worth; many with only an extrinsic.If thou ask to what height man has carried it in this manner, lookon our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and hisBiography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thoughtnot yet reached: this is Christianity and Christendom; a Symbol of quiteperennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to beanew inquired into, and anew made manifest.

  "But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness of Symbols, solikewise in his progress he at length defaces, or even desecrates them;and Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos hasnot ceased to be true; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in thedistance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, likea receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to bereinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can so much asknow that it _was_ a Sun. So likewise a day comes when the RunicThor, with his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness; and many an AfricanMumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, evenCelestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their rise,their culmination, their decline.

  "Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal Sceptre is buta piece of gilt wood; that the Pyx has become a most foolish box, andtruly, as Ancient Pistol thought, 'of little price.' A right Conjurermight I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden tools thedivine 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 andHeart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his shallowsuperficial faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding,what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the Worldwill we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus-like, canshape new Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Suchtoo will not always be wanting; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, asthe average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise who canso much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently remove it.

  "When, as the last English Coronation [*] I was preparing," concludes thiswonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion ofEngland,' 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 littleassistance,' I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol well-nighsuperannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tattersand rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World)dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, ifyou shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps producesuffocation?"

  * That of George IV.--ED.