Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

by Thomas Carlyle

  CHAPTER VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM.

  It is in his stupendous Section, headed _Natural Supernaturalism_, thatthe Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such aswe have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractoryClothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasmsenough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," ofImperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did hecourageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious,world-embracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered roundhim, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutelygrapples, these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he haslooked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthlyhulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapt vision,the interior celestial Holy-of-Holies lies disclosed.

  Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attainsto Transcendentalism; this last leap, can we but clear it, takes ussafe into the promised land, where _Palingenesia_, in all senses, may beconsidered as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, withbetter right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous Sectionwe, after long painful meditation, have found not to be unintelligible;but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating.Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellectis in him, do his part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment,shall study to do ours:--

  "Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietlybegins the Professor; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile,the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To thatDutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carriedwith him an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked amiracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific,do not I work a miracle, and magical '_Open sesame_!_'_ every time Iplease to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable _Schlagbaum_, orshut Turnpike?

  "'But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?'ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws ofNature? To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no violationof these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now firstpenetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been,brought to bear on us with its Material Force.

  "Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what groundshall one, that can make Iron swim, come and declare that thereforehe can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, suchdeclaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of theFirst Century, was full of meaning.

  "'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?' criesan illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to moveby unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay I, too, mustbelieve that the God, whom ancient inspired men assert to be 'withoutvariableness or shadow of turning,' does indeed never change; thatNature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can beprevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterablerules. And now of you, too, I make the old inquiry: What those sameunalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, maypossibly be?

  "They stand written in our Works of Science, say you; in the accumulatedrecords of Man's Experience?--Was Man with his Experience present at theCreation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientificindividuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, andgauged everything there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel; thatthey read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All; and can say,This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise!These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are;have seen some hand breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that isinfinite, without bottom as without shore.

  "Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that certain Planets,with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate and ina course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him havesucceeded in detecting,--is to me as precious as to another. But is thiswhat thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;'this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteenthousand Suns per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons,and inert Balls, had been--looked at, nick-named, and marked in theZodiacal Way-bill; so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; theirHow, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane?

  "System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Natureremains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion; andall Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries andmeasured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our littlefraction of a Planet, is partially known to us: but who knows whatdeeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes)our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble,and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have becomefamiliar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodicCurrents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by allwhich the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from timeto time (unmiraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such aminnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurableAll; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course ofProvidence through AEons of AEons.

  "We speak of the Volume of Nature: and truly a Volume it is,--whoseAuthor and Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does man, so much aswell know the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and granddescriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through SolarSystems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volumewritten in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of whicheven Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line.As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive bravely;and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphicwriting, pick out, by dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgarCharacter, and therefrom put together this and the other economicRecipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than someboundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustibleDomestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner oneday evolve itself, the fewest dream.

  "Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all.Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers;and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; wherebyindeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in ourhouses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most,forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, fromthe first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; thatour very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenestsimply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, whatis Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; anever-renewed effort to _transcend_ the sphere of blind Custom, and sobecome Transcendental?

  "Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but ofall these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that theMiraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it isby this means we live; for man must work as well as wonder: and hereinis Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But sheis a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurslings, when,in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am Ito view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seenit twice, or two hundred, or two million times? There is no reason inNature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine,for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrialgift of Steam is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton might bespun, and money and money's worth realized.

  "Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the potency ofNames; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hidingGarments. Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology,we have now name
d Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflectingthat still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what areNerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific,altogether _infernal_ boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, throughthis fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we namethe Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether itwere formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisestSoul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire;out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively builttogether, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does ahabitable flowery Earth rind.

  "But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for manyother ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances,SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birthitself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blindit,--lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof,whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paintthemselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to stripthem off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and lookthrough.

  "Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himselfAnywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphedover Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, butall was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse ofWeissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a worldwe should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite sideof the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as hisfellow-craftsman made Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating!Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly ofthis latter. To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you wereAnywhere, straightway to be _There_! Next to clap on your other felt,and, simply by wishing that you were _Anywhen_, straightway to be_Then_! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from theFire-Creation of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historicallypresent in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul andSeneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face toface with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depthof that late Time!

  "Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Pastannihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or onlyfuture? Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, alreadyanswer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blindedsummonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yetdarkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down,the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both_are_. Pierce through the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believewhat thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as allThinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Spaceare not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universalHERE, so is it an everlasting Now.

  "And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY?--O Heaven! Is thewhite Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be leftbehind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfullyreceding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we havejourneyed on alone,--but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friendstill mysteriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, withGod!--know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or areperishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, andwhatever will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappilyseem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years,or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thoucanst not.

  "That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, once for all, we aresent into this Earth to live, should condition and determine our wholePractical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings,seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should,furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blindus to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. AdmitSpace and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if thouwilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then,with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightestGod-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth myhand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my handand therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither.Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles ofdistance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see that thetrue inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretchforth my hand at all; that I have free Force to clutch aught therewith?Innumerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hidingstupefactions, which Space practices on us.

  "Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti-magician,and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but theTime-annihilating Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselvesin a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, andfeats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not such a Hat; andman, poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself withoutone.

  "Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or Amphion, built thewalls of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, Who builtthese walls of Weissnichtwo; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, todance along from the _Steinbruch_ (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, withfrightful green-mantled pools); and shape themselves into Doric andIonic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble streets? Was it notthe still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by thedivine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? Our highest Orpheuswalked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowingin wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and,being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though nowwith thousand-fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all ourhearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, whichhappens in two hours; and does it cease to be wonderful if happening intwo million? Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; butwithout the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, nowork that man glories in ever done.

  "Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, fromthe near moving-cause to its far distant Mover: The stroke that cametransmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less astroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh,could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct fromthe Beginnings, to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thyheart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thouthat this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is invery deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, throughevery grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of apresent God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God,and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.

  "Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authenticGhost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but couldnot, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, andtapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eyeas well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of humanLife he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? Thegood Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish;well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by hisside. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress thethreescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we?Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; andthat fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, itis a simple scientific _fact_: we start out of Nothingness, takefigure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, isEternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there nottones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Songof beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in ourdiscordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); an
d glidebodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (_poltern_), and revel inour mad Dance of the Dead,--till the scent of the morning air summons usto our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where nowis Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fiercebattle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they allvanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, andhis Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than theveriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that madeNight hideous, flitted away?--Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand millionwalking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanishedfrom it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.

  "O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not onlycarry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts!These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood withits burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gatheredround our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essenceis to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse,fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: butwarrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more.Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! theEarth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sinkbeyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not followthem. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they arenot, their very ashes are not.

  "So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generationafter generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuingfrom Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force andFire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; onehunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madlydashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:--andthen the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away,and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like somewild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does thismysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeedinggrandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created,fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfullyacross the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth'smountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can theEarth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have realityand are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stampedin; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. Butwhence?--O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only thatit is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.

  'We _are such stuff_ As Dreams are made of, and our little Life Is rounded with a sleep!'"