Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER V. THE PHOENIX.

  Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of themnumerous hints, and even direct utterances, scattered over theseWritings of his, we come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-forconclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society,properly so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only thegregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, holdus from Dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and personalwar! He says expressly: "For the last three centuries, above all for thelast three quarters of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue(as we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence of Society,has been smote at and perforated, needfully and needlessly; till nowit is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long pining, diabetic,consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanicsprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanize asyou may, beyond two days."

  "Call ye that a Society," cries he again, "where there is no longer anySocial Idea extant; not so much as the Idea of a common Home, but onlyof a common over-crowded Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardlessof his neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can get,and cries 'Mine!' and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse andcut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort,can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredibletradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking TavernDinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue butfor plate-licking: and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; buton all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: _Laissez faire_; Leave usalone of _your_ guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat youyour wages, and sleep!

  "Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye discern everywherethat saddest spectacle: The Poor perishing, like neglected, founderedDraught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly,of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length,without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor,as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacredSymbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even theexpense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallenspeechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into aPolice-Office, straitened to get its pay!"

  We might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belonging to practicalmen in England or elsewhere, which have descried these phenomena; oris it only from the mystic elevation of a German _Wahngasse_ thatsuch wonders are visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a"deceased or expiring Society" fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runsmay read. "What, for example," says he, "is the universally arrogatedVirtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days?For some half-century, it has been the thing you name 'Independence.'Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leechis anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern,and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possiblefreedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion,why parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?"

  But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state ofNature? "The Soul Politic having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, "whatcan follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoidputrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marchingwith its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile,where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most,the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men,Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimatelycarry their point, and dissever and destroy most existing Institutionsof Society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be doubtful.

  "Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armamentcome to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that willattract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curiousphasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rearof the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanizers are asect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: hasnot Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here amongourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, withinthe last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England,it has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and sunkto Journalists and the popular mass,--who sees not that, as hereby it nolonger preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no Preaching, but isin full universal Action, the doctrine everywhere known, andenthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in these times, fora certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without theircorresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires but to bestated in such scenes to make proselytes enough.--Admirably calculatedfor destroying, only not for rebuilding! It spreads like a sort ofDog-madness; till the whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe tothe Huntsmen, with or without their whips! They should have given thequadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of Knowledge and ofLife, while it was yet time."

  Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we are at this hourin a most critical condition; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament ofMechanizers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare! "The World,"says he, "as it needs must, is under a process of devastation andwaste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quickercombustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate thepast Forms of Society; replace them with what it may. For the present,it is contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once_divested_, these innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt;but the sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one huge Irishwatch-coat for the defence of the Body only!"--This, we think, is butJob's-news to the humane reader.

  "Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder it; who is therethat can clutch into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to the Spiritof the Time: Turn back, I command thee?--Wiser were it that we yieldedto the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the best."

  Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own inferences from whatstands written, conjecture that Teufelsdrockh, individually had yieldedto this same "Inevitable and Inexorable" heartily enough; and now satwaiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference,if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World wasa "huge Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of old Symbols" were rainingdown everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What withthose "unhunted Helots" of his; and the uneven _sic vos non vobis_pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern inexisting things; what with the so hateful "empty Masks," full of beetlesand spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, "with aghastly affectation of life,"--we feel entitled to conclude him evenwilling that much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were but donegently! Safe himself in that "Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he wouldconsent, with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, heldback, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot-shackles,and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth to do herwork;--to tread down old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broadhoof, till the whole were trodden down, that new and better might bebuilt! Remarkable in this point of view are the following sentences.

  "Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, which you call deadSociety, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled off, to assumea nobler; she herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairerand fairer development, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity.Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered together, there isSociety; or there it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendousstructures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards toHeaven and downwards to Gehenna: for always, under one or the otherfigure, it has two authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; thePulpit, namely, and the Gallows."

  Indeed, we already heard him speak of "Religion, in unnoticed nooks,weaving for herself new Vestures;"--Teufelsdrockh himse
lf being oneof the loom-treadles? Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strangeaphorism of Saint Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to besaid: "_L'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici dans lepasse, est devant nous_; The golden age, which a blind tradition hashitherto placed in the Past, is Before us."--But listen again:--

  "When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparksflying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon,have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like mothsconsumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards willget singed.

  "For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix-cremation will becompleted, you need not ask. The law of Perseverance is among thedeepest in man: by nature he hates change; seldom will he quit hisold house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I seenSolemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, tothe extent of three hundred years and more after all life and sacrednesshad evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time thePhoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on unseencontingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer Mankind, that after, saytwo centuries of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, thefire-creation should be accomplished, and we to find ourselves againin a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working,--were it notperhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?"

  Thus is Teufelsdrockh, content that old sick Society should bedeliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than spice-wood); in thefaith that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven-born young onewill rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty ofIndicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judiciousreader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than inanger, say or think: From a _Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professorin a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society,bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind),but books, tobacco and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to hisbenefactress; and less of a blind trust in the future which resemblesthat rather of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solidhouseholder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country.