w :m^ ''O^iJu >.'4.'? ♦'■"'^ iU*^.- =^'. "f^ Jf--- ..■if.. gpsBj :^l v^:^ .v>S^ ..«, /f F^«^^ :^4CEist f> •* *' .*rj.> i^fW" * ^#. 2> ' ^ >> ^r^^ >,3>> -^■^ .«> ^^ ,:>>>> 3|j-%,<%S' '%''%' '%''''f^<;'§/'%>'^>-%^-^''4i'%-'T^' LIBRA! : .? CONGRESS, ■ - - V-g^G 1^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ^ -^^^2 ■— *te. "-rvii" ^^ _-^ ■''^ --^■' "■' 5> Vj -.V'"^ ^* ^'■-^^. - '^>V>> >>' SARTOR RESARTUS. 1( -v* SARTOR RESARTUS; THE LIFEAND OPINIONS OP HERR TEUFELSDROCKH IN THREE BOOKS. Mein Vermachtniss, wie berrlich weit imd breit ! Die Zeit ist mein Vermaclitniss, meiu Acker ist die Zei£. , THIRD AMERICAN, FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR. , - .V,v?.ry of Cor... f -'" J. -.; •, ■ ■ % BOSTON: ^^fW^.hi^^'' JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. PHILADELPHIA ; JAMES KAY, JUN. & BROTHER. 1840. rv CONTENTS. BOOK I. Chapter I. Preliminary , 1 II. Editorial Difficulties 7 III. Reminiscences 13 IV. Characteristics 27 V. The World in Clothes . 34 VI. Aprons 42 VII. Miscellaneous-historical 45 VIII. The World out of Clothes 50 IX. Adamitism 57 X. Pure Reason . . 63 XI. Prospective 70 BOOK II. Chapter I. Genesis 81 II. Idyllic 91 III. Pedagogy » 102 IV. Getting under Way 121 V. Romance 135 VI. Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh 151 VII. The everlasting No 163 VIII. Centre of Indifference 173 IX. The everlasting Yea . , 187 X. Pause 201 VI CONTENTS. ' BOOK III. Page Chapter I. Incident in Modern History 210 II. Church Clothes 217 III. Symbols 221 IV. Helotage 230 V. The Phoenix 235 VI. Old Clothes 242 VII. Organic Filaments 248 VIII. Natural Supernaturalism 259 IX. Circumspective 273 X. The Dandiacal Body 278 XI. Tailors 294 XII. Farewell .299 SARTOR RESARTUS. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY. Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards ; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur- matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, — it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hither- to little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect : Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Plane- tary System, on this scheme, will endure for ever ; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could 2 a SARTOR RESARTUS. not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept ; and water transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough : what with the labours of our Werners and Buttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that [now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World lis little more mysterious than the cooking of a Dump- ling ; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, Hoiv the Apples loere got in, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisi- tions on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring ? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent; a Theory of Value ; Philosophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of -Intoxicating Liquors'? Man's whole life and environ- ment have been laid open and elucidated ; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed : our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a hw, have their Stew- arts, Cousins, Royer Collards : every cellular, vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichats. How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science, — the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth ; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall ; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being ? For if, now and then, PRELIMINARY. 3 some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless ; regarding Clothes as a pro- perty, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal ; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakspeare says, we are creatures that look before and after : the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolu- tionary times, there should be one country where ab- stract Thought can still take shelter ; that while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, strug- gling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his Horet ihr Herren und lasseVs Euch sagen ; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence ; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey ; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of Finance, and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and 4 SARTOR RESARTUS. crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat- bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it, * By geometric scale, Doth take the size of pots of ale,' Still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen vigorously enough thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments ; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger- posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man ? It is written, * Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is. Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some outlying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province ; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed ; — thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night ? Wise man was he who coun- selled that Speculation should have free course, and look PRELIMINARY. 5 fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the com- pass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. Perhaps it is proof of the stinted condition in which pure Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English ; and how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a political or other immediately practical tendency on all English culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of Thought, — ^that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems i)robable enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the re- sults it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him ; and then, by quite foreign sug- gestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from 'Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating ex- pressly of this subject ; and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as 2* 6 SARTOR RESARTUS. judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not re- mained without effect. * Die Kleider, ihr Werden 2ind Wirken (Clothes, * their Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Tevfelsdrdckh, * J. U. D. etc. Stillsdaoeigen und Co^^^^- Weissnichtwo, * 1831 : * Here,' says the Weissnichtwo' soke Anzeiger, * comes * a Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-medi- * tated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only * in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing * from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen * and Company, with every external furtherance, it is of * such internal quality as to set Neglect at defiance.' * * * * 4 ^ work,' concludes the well nigh en- thusiastic Reviewer, ' interesting alike to the antiquary, * the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a master- * piece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged in- * dependent Germanism and Philanthropy {derhen * Kerndeutschheit und 3Ienschenliebe) ; which will not, * assuredly, pass current without opposition in high * places ; but must and will exalt the almost new name * of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in * our German Temple of Honour.' Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation Copy of his Book ; with compliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the present Editor to rehearse ; yet without indi- cated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be im- plied in the concluding phrase : Mochte es (this remark- able Treatise) atich im Brittischcn Boden gedeihen ? EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. CHAPTER II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. If for a speculative man, * whose seedfield,' in the sub- lime words of the Poet, ' is Time,' no conquest is impor- tant but that of new Ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's Calendar. It is indeed an * extensive Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very Sea of Thought ; neither calm nor clear, if you will ; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first delibe- rate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, was disclosed ; farther, what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new human Individu- ality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we re- solved to master the significance. But as man is em- phatically a Proselytising creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose : How might this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need thereof; how could the 8 SARTOR RESARTUS. Philosophy of Clothes and the Author of such Philosophy be brought home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our own English nation ? For if new-got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new Truth. Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was to publish Article after Article on this re- markable Volume, in such widely-circulating Critical Journals as the Editor might stand connected with, or by money or love procure access to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed and treated of might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant ? If, indeed, the whole parties of the State could have been abolished. Whig, Tory, and Radi- cal, embracing in discrepant union ; and the whole Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except Eraser's Magazine ? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo- Crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits ; nay, in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and inexorably shut ! Besides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without something of his person- ality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension ? Now for Biography, had it been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special de- spair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. if shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. So had it lasted for some months ; and now the Volume on Clothes, read and again read, ,was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enig- matic ; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent, — when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began di- lating largely on the ' agitation and attention' which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of Letters ; on the deep significance and ten- dency of his Friend's Volume ; and then, at length, with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of con- veying ' some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and through England to the distant West :' a Work on Professor Teufelsdrockh * were undoubtedly welcome to ' the Family, the National ^ or any other of those patriotic ' Libraries, at present the glory of British Literature ;' might work revolutions in Thouo^ht : and so forth : — in conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents. As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long eva- porating, but would not crystallise, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallisa- 10 SARTOR RE8ARTUS. tion commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity ; like united itself with like in definite ar- rangement : and soon either in actual vision and posses- sion, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the two- penny post, application to the famed redoubtable Oliver YoRKE was now made : an interview, interviews with that singular man have taken place ; with more of assur- ance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than we anticipated ; — for the rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to those same ' patriotic Libraries,^ the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent amazement; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our Sartor Resartus, which is properly a ' Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh,' hourly advancing. Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, m sim- plicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen, and talent for Medita- tion he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense ; cleared from the mists of Prejudice, above all from the paralysis of Cant ; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 11 even insignificant :* it is a Voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes ; undoubtedly a Spirit address- ing Spirits : whoso hath ears let him hear. On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give virarning : namely, that he is animated with a true though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors ; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at all hazards ; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the Logical wear. For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any per- sonal connexion of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heaschrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments them- selves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illu- sions of friendship ; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of the gods, when lapped in the symphonies and harmonies of Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser accompaniments, the present Editor revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure ! But what then ? Amicus Plato, magis arnica Veritas; Teufelsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. In our historical and critical ca- pacity, we hope, we are strangers to all the world ; have P * With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name ! — O. Y. 12 SARTOR RESARTUS. feud or favour with no one, — save indeed the Devil, with whom as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness we do at all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at an epoch when Puffery and Q,uackery have reached a height unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door-lintels, No cheating herCf — we thought it good to premise. REMINISCENCES. 13 CHAPTER III. REMINISCENCES. To the Author's private circle the appearance of this sincfular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few things have been more unex- pected. Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life : a man devoted to the higher Phi- losophies, indeed : yet more likely, if he published at all, to publish a Refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included under a common ban ; than to descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, was the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between us, Ifthrough the high, silent, meditative Transcenden- talism of our Friend we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a cer- tain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, Radicalism ; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected ; though his special contributions to the Isis could never be more than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less any thing Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. 3 14 SARTOR RESARTUS. Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hearing ; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of GuTcguk* and for a moment lowering his to- bacco-pipe, he stood up in full coffee-house (it was Zum Grunen Gcmse, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all the Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect, of the place assembled of an evening) ; and there, with low, soul- stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, proposed this toast : JDie Soche der Armen in Gottes und Teufels Namen (The Cause of the Poor in Heaven's name and 's) 1 One full shout, breaking the leaden silence ; then a gurgle of innumerable empty- ing bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, re- turned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night : resuming their pipes ; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke ; triumphant, cloudcapt with- out and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. Bleibt dock ein exhter Spass-und Galgen-vogel, said several ; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic sentiments. Wo steckt der Schalk ? added they, looking round : but Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest * Gukguk is unhappily onjy an academical — beer. REMINISCENCES. 15 face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes, too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so stiil and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite motion, the sleey of a spinning top? Thy little figure, there as in loose, ill-brushed, threadbare habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to ' think and smoke tobacco,' held in it a mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee ; thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than another ; thou hadst in petto thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear logically- founded Transcendentalism of thine ; still more, in thy meek, silent, deepseated Sansculottism, combined with a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible ru- diments of such speculation 1 But great men are too often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom ; and, silently, mysterious shuttles were putting in the woof! How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish bio- graphical data, in this case, may be a curious question ; the answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the best- informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdrockh was to be gathered ; not so much as a false one. He was a Stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birth- place, prospects, or pursuits, Curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct 16 SARTOR RESARTUS. replies. For himself, he was a man so still and alto- gether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy : hesides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without father or mother of any kind ; sometimes, with reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself like an eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or as we say, Wandering Jew. To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man as a Thing ; which thing doubtless they were ac- customed to see, and with satisfaction ; but no more thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their daily Allgemeine Zeitung^ or the domestic habits of the Sun. Both were there and welcome ; the world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of those originals and nonde- scripts, more frequent in German Universities than else- where ; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, no History seems to be discoverable ; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins : That they have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible ob- jects in this phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. REMINISCENCES. 17 It was to be remarked that though, by title and di- ploma, Professor der Allerley-Wissenschaft, or as we should say in English, * Professor of Things in General,' he had never delivered any Course ; perhaps never been incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. To all appearance, the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding their New University, imagined they had done enough, if in times like ours,' as the half-official Program expressed it, ' when all * things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into ' Chaos, a Professorship of this kind had been established ; ' whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying some- * what forth again from such Chaos might be, even slightly, ' facilitated.' That actual Lectures should be held, and Public Classes for the ' Science of Things in General,' they doubtless considered premature ; on which ground too they had only established the Professorship, nowise endowed it ; so that Teufelsdrockh, ' recommended by the highest Names,' had been promoted thereby to a Name merely. Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admiration of this new Professorship : how an enlightened Government had seen into the Want of the Age [Zeithe' durfniss) ; how at length, instead of Denial and Destruc- tion, we were to have a science of Affirmation and Re- construction ; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard of the world. Consider- able also was the wonder at the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the nascent University ; so able to lecture, should occasion call ; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Gov- ernment consider that occasion did not call. But such 3* 18 SARTOR RESARTUS. admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appear- ances at the Griinen Ganse, Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of Guk- guk, he sat reading Journals ; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment : always,. from his mild ways, an agree- able phenomenon there ; more especially when he opened his lips for speech ; on which occasions the whole Coffee- house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and river of the most memorable utterances ; such as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit audience : and the more memorable, as issuing from a head apparently not more interested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone head of some public Fountain, which through its brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy ; careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching conflagrations ; indeed, maintains the same earnest assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could not then half guess his importance, and scru- tinise him with due power of vision 1 We enjoyed, REMINISCENCES. J 9 what not three men in Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's private domi- cile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse ; and might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. More- over, with its windows, it looked towards all the four Orte, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, Airts : the Sitting-room itself commanded three ; another came to view in the Sc/ilqfgemach (Bed-room) at the opposite end : to say nothing of the Kitchen, which offered two, as it were, dvplicates , and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of Teuf- elsdrockh ; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City ; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving ( Thun und Treiben), were for the most part visible there. " I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we heard him say, " and witness their wax-laying ' and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking * by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music ' plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his vic- * tuals, down the low lane, where in her door-sill the * aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel * the afternoon sun, 1 see it all ; for, except the Schloss- * kirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers * arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow ' bagged up in pouches of leather : there, topladen., and ' with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and ' his household ; here, on timber leg, the lamed Soldier ' hops painfully along, begging alms : a thousand car- 20 SARTOR RESARTUS. *' riages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling in with ** Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, " inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with •' Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring •*' through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest " thou whence it is coming, whither it is going ? Aus der *' Eivigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin : From Eternity, on- " wards to Eternity ! These are Apparitions : what else 1 " Are they not Souls rendered visible; in Bodies, that " took shape and will lose it ; melting into air? Their " solid pavement is a Picture of the Sense ; they walk " on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them ** and before thenj. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow " Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels, and ** feather in its crown, is but of To-day, without a Yester- *' day or a To-morrow ; and had not rather its Ancestor ** alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island ? " Friend, thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of " History, which inweaves all Being : watch well, or it " will be past thee, and seen no more." *' Ach, mein Lieber ! " said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, *' it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes *' of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thou- " sand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient " reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he ** leads his Hunting Dogs over the Zenith in their leash "of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when " Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot-wheels ** of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant " streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted ** to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and Misery, to REMINISCENCES. 21 " prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad : that ** hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick ** Life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh, under that hideous " coverlet of vapours, and putrefactions, and unirnagina- " ble gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and "hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men " are dying there, men are being born ; men are pray- " ing, — on the other side of a brick partition, men are " cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. " The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, *' or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretchedness " cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken " into his lair of straw : in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir " languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry " Villains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and '* playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are *' Men. The Lover whisoers his mistress that the coach ** is ready ; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, " to fly with him over the borders : the Thief, still more *' silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in " wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay ** mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are *' full of light and music and high swelling hearts ; but, " in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tre- " mulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through " the darkness, which is around and within, for the light *' of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on " the morrow : comes no hammering from the Rahen- ^^ stein? — their gallows must even now be o' building. " Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals " without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position ; " their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest 22 SARTOR RESARTUS. " dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers " in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, with *' streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, " whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. — •* All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing " but a little carpentry and masonry between them ; — " crammed in, like salted fish, in their barrel ; — or wel- " tering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed " Vipers, each struggling to get its head above the *' others : such work goes on under that smoke-counter- " pane ! — But I, mein Werther, sit above it all ; I am *' alone with the Stars." We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be traced there ; but with the light we had, which indeed was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. These were the Professor's talking seasons : most com- monly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether silent, and smoked ; while the visitor had liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt ; or to look round for a space, and then take him- self away. It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all con- ceivable substances, ' united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables ; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handker- chief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside: ink-bottles al- ternated with bread crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Leischen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove- REMINISCENCES. 23 lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdrockh ; only some once in the month, she half- forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not Literary. These were her Erdbebungen (Earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence ; nevertheless, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising for ever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors : but Leischen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gainsayed. We can still remember the anciei|t woman ; so silent that some thought her dumb ; deaf also you would often have supposed her ; for Teufelsdrockh and Teufelsdrockh only would she serve or give heed to ; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs ; if it were not rather by some secret divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous old dame ! she scoured, and sorted, and swept in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear ; yet all was tight and right there: hot and black came the coflfee ever at the due moment; and the speechless Leischen herself looked out on you, from under her clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither : the only one we ever saw there, ourselves ex- cepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by 24 SARTOR RESARTUS. name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pa- cific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, ' they never appear without their umbrella.' Had we not known with what ' little wisdom' the world is governed ; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety and nine Public Men can for the most part be but mute train- bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking horses and willing or unwilling dupes, — it might have seemed wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weiss- nichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular Hofrath give ; in whose loose, zigzag figure ; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation, — you traced rather confusion worse confounded ; at most. Timidity and physical Cold ? Some indeed said withal, he was * the very Spirit of Love embodied :' blue earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness ; purse ever open, and so forth ; the whole of which, we shall now hope for many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless, friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin like few in these cases, was probably the best: Er hat Gemuth unci Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohne Organ, ohne SchicJcsals-gunst ; ist gegenwdrtig aber halb-zerruttet , halb-erstarrt, " He has heart *' and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit ** mode of utterance, or favour of Fortune ; and so is '* now half-cracked, half-congealed." — What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder : REMINISCENCES. 25 we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are careless. The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are en- abled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return ; for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically influential of the two, looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost : and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging, nasal Bravo ! Das gloub' ich ; in either case by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, ex- cept perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like Indiffer- ence, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, 4 26 SARTOR RESARTUS. perched up in his high Wahngasse watchtower, and often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness ; here, in all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on Clothes. Additional particulars : of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you could only guess at ; of his wide surtout : the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest ; so that an en- lightened curiosity, leaving Kings and such like to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more to the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till once the Documents arrive 1 His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons 1 To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions namely on the * Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the present gladly return. CHARACTERISTICS. ' 27 CHAPTER IV. CHARACTERISTICS. It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us ; that it is not, like all works of Genius, like the very Sun, which, though the highest published Creation, or work of Genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence, — a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double vision, and even utter blindness. Without committinor ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo'sche An- zeiger, we admitted that the Book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book ; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought ; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, v/herein the whole world of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. More specially it may now be declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made in- disputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude ; that, on the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popu- larity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the 28 SARTOR RESARTUS. manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but fatal to his success with our public. Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks out with a strange plainness ; calls many things by their mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and overhung : * a whole immensity of ' Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-moulu,' as he himself expresses it, 'cannot hide from me that * such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite * Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the * time meet together.' To Teufelsdrockh the highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable ; but nowise for her pearl-bracelets, and Malines laces : in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little less and little more than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock ; * each is an implement,' he says, * in its kind ; a tag * for hooking-together ; and, for the rest, was dug from * the earth, and hammered on a stithy before smith's * fingers.' Thus does the Professor look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom ; like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system of thought, that all these short-comings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise : if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Trans- cendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit ; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class CHARACTERISTICS. 29 it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can safely recommend the Work : nay, who knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teu- felsdrockh maintains, that ' within the most starched ' cravat there passes a windpipe and wesand, and under * the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,' — the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce through. In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a silent as it were unconscious strength, which, except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mvsterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion ; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of the matter ; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, and buries it. — On the other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and literature in most known tongues, from SanconiatJion to Dr. Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and l^almuds, and Korans with Cassini's Siamese Tables^ and Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, down to . Robinson Crusoe and the Belfast Town and Country Almanack, are familiar to him, — we shall say nothing : for unexampled as it is 4* 30 SARTOR RESARTUS, with US, to the Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned 1 In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigour, a true inspiration : his burning Thoughts step forth in fit burning Words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendour from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns ; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages ; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene ! On the whole. Professor Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sen- tences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs ; the remainder are in quite angular atti- tudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever, with this or the other tagrag hanging from them ; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator ; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends ; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when CHARACTERISTICS. 31 we hear it only as a monotonous hum ; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest. Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal Love burst forth from him, soft waiiings of infinite Pity ; he could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm ; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine ; shows such indiflference, malign coolness to- wards all that men strive after ; and ever with some half- visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness, — that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephis- topheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen : yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery suitors ; but rather the gravity as of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of an extinct volcano ; into whose black deeps you fear to gaze : those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire 1 32 SARTOR RESARTUS. Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdrockh ! Here, how- ever, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him laugh ; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life ; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the Seven Sleepers ! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast World- Mahlstrom of Humour, with its Heaven-kissing corus- cations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of Death ! The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously to- gether, the present Editor being privileged to listen ; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable * Extra-harangues ;' and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a Cast-metal King : gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beam- ing, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked ; and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's, — tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air, — loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was not right : however, Teufelsdrockh composed himself, and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable coun- tenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame ; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaim- ably bad. How much lies in Laughter : the cipher-key, 4 A CSARACTERISTICS. 33 ( wherewith we decipher the whole man ! Some men ''' V wear an everlasting barren simper ; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice : the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards ; or at best, pro- duce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool : of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; but his whole life is already a treas on and a stratagem. Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst : an almost total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain shew of outward method ; but of true logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts ; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical- Speculative : but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation ; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnameable ; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavour. 34 SARTOR RESARTUS. CHAPTER V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. * As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Lmvs,' observes our Professor, * so could I write a Spirit of Clothes ; thus, ' witli an Esprit des Loix, properly an Esprit de Cou- ' tumes, we should have an Esprit de Costumes. For * neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed * by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by * mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes * and habilatory endeavours an Architectural Idea will * be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site * and materials whereon and whereby his beautified ' edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow ' gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals ; * tower up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles * and bell-girdles ; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram 'stuffings and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself * into separate sections, and front the world an Agglo- * meration of four limbs, — will depend on the nature of * such Architectural Idea : whether Grecian, Gothic, * Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or * Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in * Colour ! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming * scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in * choice of Colour : if the Cut betoken Intellect and * Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 35 * In all which, among nations as among individuals, ' there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely * complex working of Cause and Effect : every snip of ' the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by * ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences * of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. ' For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect * Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a * comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, * for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies * have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, * what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant * spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, * the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven ? — * Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not * why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and ' such a Law ; but even why / am here, to wear and * obey any thing ! — Much, therefore, if not the whole, * of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as * hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent : naked * Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite ' another than that omniscient style, are my humbler * and proper province.' Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh has nevertheless contrived to take in a well nigh bound- less extent of field ; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensa- ble, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost pa- tience and fairness : at the same time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Com- 36 SARTOR REBARTUS. pilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, * at present the glory of British Literature 1 ' If so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with * Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to * the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, ' in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, * and terrestial Devils,' — very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the work, with its profound glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here strangely brought into relation with the Nifl and Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be enough to say that its correctness of deduction, and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore has filled perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like astonishment. But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh has- tens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Mo- dern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Niirnbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Or bis Vestitus ; or view of the THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 37 costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we can triumphantly say : Fall to ! Here is Learning : an irregular Treasury, if you will ; but inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve waggons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts ; phylacteries, stoles, albs ; chlamides, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient). Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly before us, — even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not for- gotten. For most part too we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learn- ing, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the fol- lowing has surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. * Miserable indeed,' says he, * was the ' condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely * from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard * reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a * matted cloak ; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick * natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the * forest, living on wild fruits ; or, as the ancient Cale- * donian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his * bestial or human prey ; without implements, without ' arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his * sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had 5 38 SARTOR RESARTUS. attached a long cord of plaited thongs ; thereby recover- ing as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase ; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto : but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tat- tooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilised countries. * Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer ; loftiest Serene Highness ; nay thy own amber-locked, snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which indeed, symbolically taken, she is, — has descended, like thyself, from that same hair- mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus ! Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong Cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever- working Universe : it is a seed-grain that cannot die ; unnoticed to-day (says one) it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest !) after a thousand years. * He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 39 * whole new Democratic world : he had invented the Art * of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sul- * phur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle * through the ceiling : what will the last do? Achieve! ' the final undisputed prostration of Force under ' Thought, of Animal Courage under Spiritual. A sim- * pie invention it was in the old-world Grazier, — sick of ' lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it * bartered for corn or oil, — to take a piece of Leather, * and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an ' Ox (or Pecus) ; put it in his pocket, and call it ' Pecimia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, ' the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all * miracles have been out-miracled : for there are Roths- * chiids and English National Debts ; and whoso has * sixpence is Sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over * all men ; commands Cooks to feed him, Philosophers * to teach him, Kings to mount guard over him, — to the * length of sixpence. — Clothes too, which began in ' foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not be- ' come ! Increased Security, and pleasurable Heat soon * followed : but what of these ? Shame, divine Shame ' [Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthro- * pophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under * Clothes ; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy ' in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, ' social polity ; Clothes have made Men of us ; they are * threateninop to make Clothes-screens of us. ' But on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, * Man is a Tool-using Animal (Hanthierendes Thier). ^ Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a * basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square- 40 SARTOR RESARTUS. * foot, insecurely enough ; has to straddle out his legs, * lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds ! * Three quintals are a crushing load for him ; the Steer * of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste raff, Ne- ' vertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools : with * these the granite mountain melts into light dust before ' him ; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste ; * seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his un- * wearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without * Tools ; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he ' is all.' Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream i of Oratory with a remark that this Definition of the / Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal- j sort, considerably the precisestand best? Man is called \ a Laughing Animal : but do not the apes also laugh, or I attempt to do it ; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale- blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do ? Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow- nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water ? But on the other hand, show us the human being, of any period or climate, without ^is Tools : those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 41 Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or caft have. * Man is a Tool-using animal,' concludes Teufels- drockh in his abrupt way ; ' of which truth Clothes are * but one example : and surely if we consider the interval * between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and * those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House * of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. * He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the * Earth, and says to them. Transport me, and this lug- * gnge, at the rate of Jive-and-thirty miles an hour ; and ' they do it : he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred ' and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to ' them, Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us^ hunger, * and sorrow J and sin for us ; and they do it.' 5* V 42 SARTOR RESARTUS. CHAPTER VI. APRONS. One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on Apt^ons. What though stout old Gao the Persian Blacksmith, * whose Apron, now indeed ' hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which ' proved successful, is still the royal standard of that ' country ;' what though John Knox's Daughter, ' who * threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her * Husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should * lie and be a bishop ;' what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies, — figure here 1 An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following? ' Aprons are Defences ; against injury to cleanliness, * to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the * thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the Emblem and * beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred ' housewife, sitting at Nijrnberg Workboxes and Toy- * boxes, has gracefijlly fastened on ; to the thick-tanned * hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder * builds, and at evening sticks his trowel ; or to those * jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half- * naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their Smelt- ' furnace, — is there not range enough in the fashion and APRONS. 43 * uses of this Vestment ? How much has been con- * cealed, how much lias been defended in Aprons ! Nay, ' rightly considered, what is your whole Military and * Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated niil- * lions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, ' wherein Society works (uneasily enough) ; guarding ' itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's- ' smithy ( Teiffeh-schmiede) of a world ? But of all * Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the * Episcopal, or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness * of this Apron? The Overseer {Episcopus) of Souls, I no- ' tice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work * were done : what does he shadow forth thereby V &lc. &c. Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read such stuff as we shall rfbw quote ? * I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the ' Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for ' Typography ; therefore as an encouragement to modern ' Literature, and deserving of approval : nor is it without * satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm ' having in view to introduce the same fashion, with im- * portant^xtensions, in England.' — We who are on the spot hear of no such thing ; and indeed have reason to be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant as it is, — Teufelsdrockh continues : * If such supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to ' choke up the highways and public ^thoroughfares, new ' means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a * world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ Fire * as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. * However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an ' outlet. In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five * million quintals of Rags picked annually from the Lay- 44 SARTOR RESARTUS. * Stall ; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, ' printed on, and sold, — returned thither ; filling so many * hungry mouths by the way ? Thus is the Laystall, * especially with its Rags, or Clothes-rubbish, the grand * Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-Motion, from which * and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and * resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller * circles, through the mighty, billowy, stormtost Chaos of * Life, which they keep alive ! ' — Such passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. Farther down we met with this : ' The Journalists * are now the true Kings and Clergy : henceforth Histo- * rians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon * Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs ; but of Stamped * Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, * according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combina- * tion of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the * British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of ' all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and * procedure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, * in that language, under the title of Sat a7i's .Invisible * World Displayed ; which, however, by search in all * the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded * in procuring {vermochte nicht aufzufreiben).' Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdtockh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyte- rian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary His- torian of the Brittische Journalistik ; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Lite- rature ! MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 45 CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century ; the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which makes even old raiment alive. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and every way interesting \have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for parties concerned, Whether or rot a good English Translation thereof might henceforth bp profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work On Ancient Armour? Take, by way of example, th/ following sketch ; as authority for which Paulinus's Zeitkurzende Lust (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, r^J)erred to : * ")Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the * Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those * biWone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our ' h?/berdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the * \firgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises 46 SARTOR RESARTUS. ' again ; thus the Present is not needlessly trammelled * with the Past ; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, * whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but ' lie peaceably under ground. Nay it is very mournful, * yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and * Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled ' up here, and no room for him ; the very Napoleon, the * very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, ' and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the ' Law of Progress secured j and in Clothes, as in all ' other external things whatsoever, no fashion will con- * tinue. ' Of the military classes in those old times, whose * buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn- ' boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been be- * painted in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired * somewhat of a signpost character, — I shall here say * nothing : the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, * are wonderful enough for us. * Rich men, I find, have Teudnke' (a perhaps un- translateable article) ; ' also a silver girdle, whereat hang ' little bells ; so that when a man walks it is with con- ' tinual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a * whole chime of bells {Glockenspiel) fastened there'; * which especially, in sudden whirls, and the other a^- * cidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too * how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch inters€«3- * tions. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell-long, * which hang bobbing over the side (schief) : their slvoes ' are peaked in front, also to th.e length of an ell, stnd * laced on the side with tags ; even the wooden shWs * have their ell-long noses : some also clap bells on tljie MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 47 peak. Farther, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat {ohne Gesdss) : these they fasten peak wise to their shirts; and the iong round doublet must overlap them. ' Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped out behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four or five ells in length ; which trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras sail- ing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steers- man ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which waver round them by way of a hem ; the long flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent flames {Flammen)^ that is, sparkling hair-drops : but of their mother's headgear who shall speak ? Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient handbroad welts : all ending atop in a thick well-starched Ruff", some twenty inches broad : these are their RufT-mantles {Kragenmdntel). ' As yet, among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not ; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter {mit Teig zusammengekleistert)^ which create protu- berance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of Decoration j and as usual the stronger carries it.' Our Professor, whether he have Humour himself or 48 SARTOR RESARTUS. not, manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which the History of Dress offers so many, escape him ; more especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which bespread in the mud under Q,ueen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him ; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen * was red-painted on the nose, ' and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tirewomen, ' when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer ' look in any glass, were wont to serve her 1 ' We can answer that Sir Waiter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done the same. Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swol- len out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran, — our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously etnitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust : and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and fiabby round him. Whereupon the Pro- fessor publishes this reflection : * By what strange chances do we live in History! * Erostratus by a torch ; Miio by a bullock ; Henry Darn- * ley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs ; MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 49 * most Kings and dueens by being born under such and * such a bed-tester ; Boileau Despreaux (according to * Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey ; and this ill-starred ' individual by a rent in his breeches, — for no Memoirist * of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer * of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting : my Friends, ' yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.' — Has Teufelsdrockh to be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen manifest? ' The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, ' which * I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as * regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian ' wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is * provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and ' make it circular) : in the centre a slit is effected * eighteen inches long ; through this the mother-naked * Trooper introduces his head and neck j and so rides * shielded from all weather, and in battle from many * strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm) ; and not * only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.' With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the super- fluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. 6 50 SARTOR RESARTUS. \/ CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. If in the Descriptive-Historical Portion of this Volume, Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden (Origin and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished many a reader, much more will he in the Speculative- Philosophical Portion, which treats of their Wirken^ or Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure of his task ; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes commences : an untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos : in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably impor- tant is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, is the true one ; where the footing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, even religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thou- sandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly interests * are all hooked and buttoned together, * and held up, by Clothes.' He says in so many words, * Society is founded upon Cloth ; ' and again, ' Society * sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's * Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean * beasts in the Apostle's Dream ; and without such * Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 51 * mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no * more.' By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, of Meditation this grand Theorem is here un- folded, and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other ; but at best that of practical Reason, proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature : a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay, we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, too, must we exclaim : Would to Heaven those same Bio- graphical Documents were come ! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality ; as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At present it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked often at wide enough intervals from the original Volume, and carefully col- lated, that we can hope to impart some outline or fore- shadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favour us H'ith their most con- centrated attention : let these, after intense considera- tion, and not till then, pronounce. Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land ; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvass 52 SARTOR RES ART US. to sail thither ? — As exordium to the whole, stand here the following long citation : * With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufels- drockh, * there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question : Who am /; the thing that can say " I" {das Wesen das sich Ich ncnni) 1 The world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance ; and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the living and lifeless Integuments (of Society and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded, — the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, and silently commune with it, as one mysterious Presence with another. ' Who am I ; what is this Me ? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance ; — some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind 1 Cogito ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto ? The answer lies around, written in all co- lours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature : but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate mean- ing ? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto ; boundless, for the faintest star, the re- motest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-coloured visions flit round our sense ; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not ; except in rare half- waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 53 * before us, like a glorious Rainbow ; but the Sun that * made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that ' strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they ' were substances ; and sleep deepest wliile fancying our- ' selves most awake ! Which of your Philosophical * Systems is other than a dream theorem ; a net quotient, ' confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are * both unknown ? What are all your national Wars, * with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled * Revolutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? * This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on * Earth call Life ; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly ' wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they * only are wise who know that they know'nothing. ' Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so in- ' expressibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's Being * is still like the Sphinx's secret : a riddle that he can- ' not rede ; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, ' the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, * and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, * words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, ' the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar ; * wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. ' The whole is greater than the part: how exceedingly * true ! Nature abhors a vacuvm : how exceedingly * false and calumnious ! Again, Nothing can act hut * where it is : with all my heart ; only where is it ? Be * not the slave of Words : is not the Distant, the Dead, ' while I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it. Here, ' in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on ? * But that same Where, with its brother When, are ' from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto ; 6* 54 SAHTOtl RESARTtg. * say rather, the Canvass (the warp and woof thereof) ' whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. * Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain * of every climate and age, that the Where and When, * so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are * but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought ; that ' the Seer may discern them where they mount up out of * the celestial Everywheue and Forever : have not all ' nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eter- * nal ; as existing in a universal Here, an everlasting * Now ? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is * but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time ; * there is no Space and no Time : We are — we know * not what ; — light-sparkles floating in the aether of ' Deity ! ' So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were * but an air-image, our Me the only reality : and Nature, * with its thousandfold production and destruction, but * the reflex of our own inward Force, the " phantasy of * our Dream;" or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names * it, the living visible Garment of God : ' " In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 1 walk and work, above, beneath. Work and weave in endless motion ! Birth and Death, An infinite ocean ; A seizing and giving The fire of the Living : 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." ' Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this * thunder-speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty ' units of us that have learned the meaning thereof?' THE WORLD OUT OP CLOTHES. 55 ' It was in some such mood, when wearied and fore- done with these high speculations, that I first came upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell : strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is hig own sempster and weaver and spinner : nay his own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rainproof court- suit on his body ; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection ; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While I — good Heaven ! — have thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred breasts ; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more slowly ! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew ; day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed off into the Ashpit, into the Laystall ; till by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rag- grinder, get new material to grind down. O subter- brutish ! vile ! most vile ! For have not I too a com- pact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then ; or a tightly-articulated, homogeneous little Figure, automatic, nay alive ? 56 SARTOR RESARTUS. * Strange enough bow creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts ; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is and was always, a blockhead and dullard ; much rea- dier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver ; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by the nose : thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Per- haps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordi- nary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold- mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible : that he is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button them. * For my own part, these considerations, ofour Clothes- thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of hearts, it tailorises and demoralises us, fill me with a certain horror at myself and mankind ; almost as one feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet sea- son, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and pet- ticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrap- pages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, " a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;" yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries.' ADAMITISM. 57 CHAPTER IX ADAMITISM. Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular pas- sage, was inclined to exclaim : What, have we got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract ? A new Adamite, in this century, which flat- ters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both to Superstition and Enthusiasm ? Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms ; sucking thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been, without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls ? A terror to thyself and man- kind ! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short ? The village where thou livedst was all apprised of the fact ; and neighbour after neighbour kissed thy pudding cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever 58 SARTOR RESARTUS. name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished 1 In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for de- fence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as a con- sequence of Man's Fall ; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange Thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations of Climate ? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys ; half- buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls and niudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode that ' Horse I ride ;' and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy temples ; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl, — forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep, — and the storms heap themselves together into one huge Arctic whirlpool : thou flewest through the middle thereof, striking fire from the highway ; wild music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a * sailor of the air ;' the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and propitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been ; what had thy fleet quadruped been ? — Nature is good, but she is not the best : here truly was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced thee ; all short of this thou couldst defy. Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh forgotten what he said lately about ' Aboriginal Savages,' and their * condition miserable indeed?' Would he have all this unsaid ; and us betake ourselves again to the ADAMITISM. 59 * matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a * thick natural fell 1 ' Nowise, courteous reader ! The Professor knows full well what he is saying ; and both thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, ' so lailorise and demoralise us,' have they no redeeming value ; can they not be altered to serve better ; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite : and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him : nay perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omni- potent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouch- safed to any man. For example : * You see two individuals,' he writes, ' one dressed in * fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue : Red * says to Blue, *' Be hanged and anatomised ;" Blue * hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders !) * marches sorrowfully to the gallows ; is there noosed up, * vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him,, and fit * his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How ' is this ; or what make ye of your Nothing can act but * where it is? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no ' clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him : neither * are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and * Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding * Red, that he can tug them hither and thither ; but each * stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as * it is spoken, so is it done : the articulated Word sets all ,<'■ 60 SARTOR RESARTUS. * hands in Action ; and Rope and Improved-drop perform * their work. * Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold ; * First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible * bonds to All Men ; Secondly, that he wears Clothes, ' which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not * your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel ' skins, and a plush gown : whereby all mortals know that * he is a Judge ? — Society, which the more I think of it * astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. * Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous * ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing- ' rooms, Levees, Couchees ; and how the ushers and * macers and pursuivants are all in waiting ; how Duke * this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by * General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and ' miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to * the Anointed Presence ; and I strive, in my remote * privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity, — on * a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the — shall I * speak it 1 — the Clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps ; * and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed * Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand * straddling there, not a shirt on them ; and I know not * whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical * infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, * after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace * of those afflicted with the like.' Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to keep it secret ! Who is there now that can read the five columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper without a shudder ? Hypochondriac men, and all men ADAMITISM. 61 are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw : ' What would Majesty do, could such an accident * befall in reality ; should the buttons all simultaneously * start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as * here in Dream? Ach GottI How each skulks into * the nearest hiding-place ; their high State Tragedy * {Hmipt- und Staats- Action) becomes a Pickleherring- ' Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce ; the * tables (according to Horace), and with them, the whole * fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, * and Civilised Society, are dissolved, in wails and * howls.' Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Win- dlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords ? Imagi- nation, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches — infandum ! infandum! And yet why is the thing impossible? Was not every soul, or rather every body, of these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night ; * a forked Radish with a head fantastically carved ?' And why might he not, did our stern Fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no- fashion ; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold a Bed of Justice ? ' Solace of those afflicted with the like!' Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a * physical or psychical infirmity' before ? And now how many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which 7 62 SARTOR RESARTUS. we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded on by Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) in- curably infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists, or only the maddest ? * It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable Teufelsdrockh, * in how far the Scarecrow, as a * Clothed Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, * and English trial by jury : nay, perhaps, considering his * high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, * and Sovereign armed with the terrors of the Law ?), to a * certain royal Immunity and Inviolability ; which, how- * ever, misers and the meaner class of persons are not * always voluntarily disposed to grant him.' * * * * * O my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's * words) but as ** turkeys driven, with a slick and red * clout, to the market :" or if some drivers, as they do * in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the * rattle thereof terrifies the boldest ! ' PURE REASON. 63 CHAPTER X. PURE REASON. It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very darkest tinge ; acknowledging, for most part, in the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilised Life, which we make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and ' Bladders with dried Peas.' To linger among such speculations, longer than mere Science re- quires, a discerning public can have no wish. For our purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World is possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about * Kings wrestling naked on the green with Carmen,' and the Kings being thrown : ' dissect them with scalpels,' says Teufelsdrockh ; * the same viscera, tissues, livers, * lights, and other Life-tackle are there : examine their * spiritual mechanism ; the same great Need, great Greed, * and little Faculty ; nay ten to one but the Carman, who * understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, ' something of the laws of unstable and stable equili- * br||m, with other branches of waggon-science, and has * actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is * the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, * their so unspeakable difference ? From Clothes.' Much also we shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan 64 SARTOR RESARTUS. and My Lady, and how it would be every where * Hail fellow well met/ and Chaos were come again : all which to any one that has once fairly pictured out the grand mother-idea, Society in a State of Nakedness^ will spontaneously suggest itself Should some sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a World without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even Police, could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and view there the boundless Serbonian Bogs of Sans- culottism, stretching sour and pestilential : over which we have lightly flown ; where not only whole armies but whole nations might sink ! If indeed the following argument, in its brief rivetting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final : * Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like * the Kangaroo ? Or how, without Clothes, could we * possess the master-organ, soul's-seat, and true pineal ' gland of the Body Social : I mean, a Purse ?' Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teu- felsdrockh ; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love him. For though in looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse ; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the estimation of most readers, — there is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him ftpm all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdjockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism no less superlative ; whereby if on the one hand he de- PURE REASON. 65 grade man below most animals, except those jacketted Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the gods. * To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, * what is man ? * An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the * eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, * and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, ' there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh * (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; * whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with ' them in Union and Division ; and sees and fashions for * himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long * Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that * strange Garment ; amid Sounds and Colours and * Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over- * shrouded : yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. ' Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in ' the conflux of Eternities'? He feels ; power has been * given him to Know, to Believe ; nay does not the spirit 'of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even * here, though but for moments, look through 1 Well ' said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, " the true * Shekinah is Man :" where else is the God's-Pre- * SENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our * hearts, as in our fellow man ?' In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Pla- tonic Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood : and, through all the vapour and tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love ; — though, alas, the grim 7* 66 SARTOR RESARTUS. coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from view. Such tendency to Mysticism is every where traceable in this man ; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a common meaning, but has two meanings : thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne- Mantle, as well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy- Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility ; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the mani- festation of Spirit : were it never so honourable, can it be more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, 'unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright?' Under which point of view the following passage, so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems charac- teristic enouffh ; ' The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on ' Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become * transparent. ** The Philosopher," says the wisest of * this age, " must station himself in the middle :" how * true ! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest * has descended, and the Lowest has mounted up ; who * is the equal and kindly brother of all. " ' Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, * whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent * Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our Imagination ? * Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot * love ; since all was created by God 1 * Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a PURE REASON. 67 * Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper * and State-paper Clothes), into the Man himself; and * discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, * a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus ; yet * also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest * Tinker that sees with eyes !' For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals much in the feeling of Wonder ; insists on the ne- cessity and high worth of universal Wonder ; which he holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet as ours. ' Wonder,' says he, ' is * the basis of Worship : the reign of wonder is perennial, ' indestructible in Man ; only at certain stages (as the ' present), it is, for some short season, a reign in partibus * infideliumJ' That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter pro- cesses. ' Shall your Science,' exclaims he, ' proceed in the ' small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground * workshop of Logic alone ; and man's mind become an * Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and * mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and * Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the ' Meal ? And what is that Science, which the scientific * head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's ' in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin, to keep it alive, * could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — but one * other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for * which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too * noble an organ 1 / 1 mean that Thought without Re- 68 SARTOR RESARTUS. ' verence is barren, perhaps poisonous ; at best, dies like ' Cookery with the day that called it forth ; does not * live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spread- ' ing harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to * all Time.' In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer according to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that class of ' Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, ' and professed Enemies to Wonder ; who, in these days, * so numerously patrol as night-constables about the ' Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true * Old Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on * any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated ' Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full ' daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding * you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is * shining, and the street populous with mere justice- Moving men:' that whole class is inexpressibly weari- some to him. Hear with what uncommon animation he perorates : * The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitu- * ally wonder (and worship), were he President of innu- ' merable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Meca- ' nique Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome * of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, * in his single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles behind * which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look * through him, then he may be useful. * Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk * through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest ' Truth, or even by the Hand-lamp of what I call At- PURE REASON. 69 torney Logic; and "explain" all, " account" for all, or believe nothing of it 1 Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-per- vading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands ; to whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall, — he shall be a (delirious) Mystic ; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy Handlamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it? — Armer Teufel! Doth not thy Cow calve, doth not thy Bull gender 1 Thou thyself, wert thou not Born, wilt thou not Die? "Explain" me all this, or do one of two things : Retire into private places with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind Pedant.' 70 SARTOR RESARTUS. CHAPTER XI. raosPECTivE. The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect*, yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks as -of an Elysian brightness ; the highly ques- tionable purport and promise of which it is becoming more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth ? Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights he leads us to ; more piercing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a whole : * Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist : " If I take the * wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts * of the universe, God is there." Thou too, O cultivated * reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, ' knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any cor- * ner of the world where at least Force is not ? The * drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not PROSPECTIVE. 71 * where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away ; * already, on the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing * the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and ' not lie motionless ? Thinkest thou there is aught ' motionless ; without Force, and utterly dead ? I * As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: I ' That little fire which glows star-like across the dark- I * growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith I * bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy I * lost horse-shoe, — is it a detached, separated speck, cut f * off from the whole Universe ; or indissolubly joined to * the whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) * kindled at the Sun ; is fed by air that circulates from * before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, * with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stronger * Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and I * victories of Force brought about : it is a little ganglion, * or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. * Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on * the bosom of the All ; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron * smoke and influence reach quite through the All ; ' whose Dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and * sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force ; nay ' preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet * from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's * Force, commanding, and one day to be all-com? * manding. * Detached, separated ! I say there is no such separa- * tion : nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; * but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together ' with all ; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless * flood of Action, and lives through perpetual meta- 72 SARTOR RESARTUS. I * morphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, * there are Forces in it and around it, though working in ' inverse order ; else how could it rot ? Despise not the * rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from * which the Earth makes Corn. / Rightly viewed no * meanest object is insignificant j ' all objects are as * windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into * Infinitude itself.' -- "^ Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy- Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither will they sail with us? * AH visible things are Emblems ; what thou seest is * not there on its own account ; strictly taken, is not there * at all : Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent * some Idea, and body it forth. > Hence Clothes, as ' despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably sig- * nificant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, ' are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold * cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all * Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven * or hand-woven : must not the Imagination weave * Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible * creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like * Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful ; — the * rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and * (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the * outward eye 1 * Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, * clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, * if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole * terrestrial Life, but an Emblem ; a Clothing or visible ' Garment for that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a PROSPECTIVE. 73 * light-particle, down from Heaven ? Thus is he said ' also to be clothed with a Body. * Language is called the Garment of Thought : how^ * ever, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Gar- * nient, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination * wove this Flesh-Garment ; and does she not? Meta- * phors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you * except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), ' what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no ' longer recognised ; still fluid and florid, or now solid- ' grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements * are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Lan- ' guage, — then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues ' and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you * shall in vain seek for : is not your very Attention a * StrefcMng-to ? The difference lies here : some styles ' are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; * some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead- * looking ; while others again glow in the flush of health * and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own ' case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, * there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same * Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizen- * ing, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, * superfluous show-cloaks {Putz- Mantel), and tawdry * woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may ' gather whole hampers, — and burn them.' Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical ? However, that is not our chief grievance ; the Professor continues : * Why multiply instances ? It is written the Heavens 8 74 SARTOR RESARTUS. * and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture ; which * indeed they are : the Time-vesture of the Eternal. * Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit * to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, * put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this * one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly understood, * is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, ' and been : the whole External Universe and what it holds * is but Clothing ; and the essence of all Science lies in * the Philosophy op Clothes^ Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close- bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke ; which daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in his hand* By the kind- ness of a Scottish Hamburgh Merchant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, he must not men- tion ; but whose Ironourable courtesy, now and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget, — the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what breathless expectation glanced over ; and, alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. PROSPECTIVE. 75 Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, pro- ceeds to remind us of what we knew well already : that however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science originating in the Head ( Verstand) alone, no Life-Philosophy [Lebensphilosophie), such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Character {Gemuth), and equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself is known and seen ; ' till the Author's View of the World ( Weltan- * sicht), and how he actively and passively came by such ' view, are clear : in short till a Biography of him has * been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico- * poetically read,' Nay, adds he, * were the specula- ' tive scientific Truth even known, you still, in this in- * quiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, * and How ? — and rest not, till, if no better may be, * Fancy have shaped out an answer ; and either in the * authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of * Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the ' Man and his spiritual Endeavour lies before you. But ' why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, * do I dilate ^ on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The ' great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly re- * marked that " Man is properly the only object that * interests man :" thus I too have noted, that in Weiss- * nichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing * else but Biography or Autobiography ; ever humano- ' anecdotical {mensclilich-anecdotisch). Biography is by ' nature the most universally profitable, universally 76 SARTOR RESARTUS. * pleasant of all things : especially Biography of distin- ' guished individuals. * By this timej mein Verelirtester (my Most Es- ' teemed)/ continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh,or some trick of his, as we suspect, is well nigh unaccountable, ' by this time you are fairly plunged (vertieft) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy ; and looking round, as all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such por- tions and passages as you have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curio- sity touching the mind they issued from ; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactered such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat ? Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his ; looks he also wistfully into the long burial- aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels ; — good Heaven ! how did he comport himself when in Love ? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful pro- phetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells? » To all these natural questions the voice of public History is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller from a far Country ; more or less footsore and travel-soiled ; has parted with road-companions ; fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites ; PROSPECTIVE. 77 * nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him * pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole ' particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, * the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly 'jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an in- * visible interior Penman), are these nowhere forth- * coming 1 Perhaps quite lost : one other leaf of that ' mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, ' unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; * and rot, the sport of rainy winds ? * No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in no wise ! I * here, by the unexampled favour you stand in with our * Sage, send not a Biography only, but an Autobiogra- * phy : at least the materials for such ; wherefrom if I ' misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest in- * sight ; and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher ' of Clothes stands clear to the wondering eyes of Eng- ' land, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, 'and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (ez/i- ' nehmen) great part of this terrestrial Planet ! ' And now let the sympathising reader judge of our feeling when, in place of this same Autobiography with * fullest insight,' we find — Six considerable Paper-bags, carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China- ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra ; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce- legible cursiv'Schrift ; and treating of all imaginable things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the most enigmatic manner I Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, of, as he here speaking in the third person calls himself, * the Wanderer/ is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Dis* quisition, * Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, ' The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biogra- phical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omit- ted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. In- terspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delinea- tions, yet without connexion, without recognisable co- herence ; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind us of * P. P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does famine of intellicrence alternate with waste. Se- lection, order appears to be unknown to the Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio ; only perhaps in the Bag Capricorn, and those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration * On receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie washbills marked bezalilt (settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street- Advertisements of the various cities he has visited ; of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps the completest collection extant. So that if the Clothes Volume itself was too like a Chaos, we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will farther volatilise and discompose it ! As we shall per- haps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper- Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Au- PROSPECTIVE. 79 tpbiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned here : at most some sketchy, shadowy, fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with our delineatioQ of it. Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed cui'siv-sclirift ; collating them with the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did any J*ontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to be fished up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil beneath : nor is there any supernatural force to do it with ; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavouring to evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up. 80 SARTOR RESARTUS. Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the use of Health, or of Life, if not to do some work there- with? . And what work nobler than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic soil ; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are privileged to do ? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not such a prize worth some striving ? Forward with us, courageous reader ; be it towards failure or towards success ! The latter thou sharest with us, the former also is not all our own. ( 81 ) BOOK II. CHAPTER I. GENESIS. In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps question- able whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinised soever, much insight is to be gained. Never- theless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most notable moment ; so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction ; uncertain, we might almost say, whether of any : so that this Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is nowhere forthcoming. * In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the Bag Libra, on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, ' dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife ; child- ' less, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging 82 SARTOR RESARTUS. towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Ser- geant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Fre- derick the Great ; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincin- natus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours that would listen about the victory of Rossbach ; and how Fritz the Only {der Einzige) had once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass- word, " Schweig Du Hund (Peace hound !) " before any of his stafF-adjutants could answer. " Das nenn 'ich mir einen Konig, there is what I call a King," would Andreas exclaim : " but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes." * Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination ; for, as Andreas said, '* the womankind will not drill (^wer kann die Weiherchen dressiren) : " nevertheless she at heart loved him both for valour and wisdom ; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's- Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid : what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, courage, downrightness (Geradheit) ; that understood Biisching's Geography, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of Hoch- GENESIS. 83 * kirch ? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, * watched over him and hovered round him, as only a true housemother can : assiduously she cooked and sevi^ed and scoured for him ; so that not only his old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habitation and environment, where on pegs of honour they hung, looked ever trim and gay : a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, ever- greens and honeysuckles ; rising many-coloured from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the very windows ; under its long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats, where, especially on sum- mer nights, a King might have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such a Baiiergut (Copyhold) had Gretchen given her veteran ; whose sinewy arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. * Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow evening or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from terrestrial Enlepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant along the celestial Balance {Libra), it was that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered ; and, with grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle j which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with green Persian silk ; saying only : Ihr liehen Leute, hier bringe ein unschdtzbares Verleihen ; nehmt es in aller Acht, sorgfdltigst benutzt es : mit hohem Lohriy oder wohl mit schiverem Zinsen^ wird's einst zuruck- gef orderly " Good Christian people, here lies for you 84 SARTOR RESARTUS. an invaluable Loan ; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it : with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back." Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, for ever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully with- drew ; and before Andreas or his wife gazing in ex- pectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught of him be seen or heard ; he had vanished in the thickets, in the dusk ; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed : the Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Fut- terals could have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only that the green silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible and tangible on their little parlour-table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Haps- burg Regalia, but in the softest sleep, a little red- coloured Infant ! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Fried- richs, the exact amount of which was never publicly known ; also a Taufschein (baptismal certificate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was decipherable ; other document or indication none whatever. * To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such GENESIS. 85 figure as the Stranger ; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through the neighbouring Town in coach- and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for An- dreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was : What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured In- fant ? Amid amazements and curiosities, which had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on their endeavour : thus has that same mysterious Individual ever since had a status for him- self, in this visible Universe, some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground ; and now expanded in bulk, faculty, and knowledge of good and evil, he, as Herii Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, professes or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science of Things in General.' Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, ' produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite inde- * lible impression. Who this reverend Personage,' he says, * that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the * Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, 'glided out again, might be ? An inexpressible desire, * full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled * within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses ' and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing ' (sehnsuchtsvoU) , to that unknown Father, who per- 9 86 SARTOR RESARTUS. * haps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, * might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie ' screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, * dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable * curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the * crowd of the living ? Or art thou hidden by those far * thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of ' the Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye * and outstretched arms need not strive to reach ? * Alas ! I know not, and in vain vex myself to know. * More than once, heart-deluded, have 1 taken for thee ' this and the other noble-looking Stranger ; and ap- * proached him wistfully, with infinite regard : but he * too must repel me, he too was not thou. * And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Auto- biographer, with one of his sudden whirls, ' wherein is * my case peculiar ? Hadst thou, any more than I, a 'Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and * Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee into * Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, 'whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, * like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: ' thy true Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom * with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only * with the spiritual.' * The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar moralising, and embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; * still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufels- * drockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred : a * piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands * of others. On the Name I have many times medi- * tated and conjectured ; but neither in this lay there GENESIS. 87 * any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I * must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I ' searched through all the Herald's Books, in and with- * out the German Empire, and through all manner of * Subscriber-Lists [Prdnumerunten) ^ Militia -Rolls, and ' other Name-catalogues ; extraordinary names as we ' have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as * appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, ' what may the unchristian rather than Christian " Dio- ' genes" mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer in- * tend, by such designation, to shadow forth my future ' destiny, or his own present malign humour 1 Per- ' haps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred ' Parent, who like an Ostrich must leave thy ill-starred ' offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere * sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have * been a smooth one 1 Beset by Misfortune thou doubt- * less hast been ; or indeed by the worst figure of Misfor- ' tune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied how, in * thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at and slung at, ^ wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and ' bedevilled, by the Time-Spirit {Zeitgeist) in thyself * and others, till the good soul first given thee was seared ' into grim rage ; and thou hadst nothing for it but to * leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future, and * living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same ' Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well * named ! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now mo- ' destly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. ' For indeed as Walter Shandy often insisted, there * is much, nay almost all, in Names. The name is the * earliest Garment you wrap round the Earth-visiting 88 SARTOR RESARTUS. Me ; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names tliat have lasted nigh thirty cen- turies) than the very skin. And now from vi'ithout, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre ; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the in- visible seed-grain will grow to be an all over-shadowing tree ! Names ? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, than a right Naming. Adam's first task was giving names to natural Appearances : what is ours still but a continuation of the same ; be the Ap- pearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in Science) ; or (as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods ? — In a very plain sense the Proverb says, Call one a thief and he will steal; in an almost similar sense, may we not perhaps say, Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes.^ ' Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind Light ; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes ; listening, tasting, feeling ; in a word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might. Infinite was his progress ; thus in GENESIS. S9 ' some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of * —Speech ! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like * brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is ' formless, powerless ; yet by degrees organic elements ' and fibres shoot through the watery albumen ; and out * of vague Sensation, grows Thought, grows Fantasy ' and Force, and we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay * Poetries ^*^nd Religions ! * Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by * such dirisinutive had they in their fondness named him, ' travelled forward to those high consummations, by ' quicl^ yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain ' talk/ an,d moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, ' gave out that he was a grand-nephew ; the orphan of ' some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's * distant Prussian birth-land ; of whom, as of her indi- ' gent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at ' :^iitepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took ' to his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him ' noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to * himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He * already felt that time was precious ; that he had ^ other work cut out for him than whimpering.' Such, after utmost painful search and collation among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under^ currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him : but seems it not 9* 90 SARTOR RESARTUS. conceivable that, by the ' good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these Sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating-Library, some cul- tivated native of that district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole habitable globe, and Tombuctoo itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find out even the mysterous Basket-bearing stran- ger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride ? IDYLLIC. 91 CHAPTER II. IDYLLIC. * Happy season of Childhood ! ' exclaims Teufels- drockh : ' Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful * mother ; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral * radiance ; and for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft * swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes ' and slumbers, danced- round (umgdukelt) by sweetest * Dreams ! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its * roof still screens us ; with a Father we have as yet a * prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes * us Free. The young spirit has awakened out of Eter- * nity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet ' Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit * ocean ; years to the child are as ages : ah ! the secret * of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and * ceaseless downrushing of the universal World-fabric, * from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is * yet unknown ; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, * what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is for- ' ever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair * Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand ! A little ' while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very * dreams shall be mimic battles ; thou too, with old * Arnauld, must say in stern patience : " Rest ? Rest ? * Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in ?" Celestial 92 SARTOR RESARTUS. * Nepenthe ! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an ' Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou * hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eye- * lids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, * sleep and waking are one : the fair Life-garden rustles * infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and * the budding of Hope ; which budding, if in youth, too ' frostnipt, it grows to flowers, will in manhood yield no * fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which * the fewest can find the kernel.' In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as Poets are wont, look back on his childhood ; the histo- rical details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on, with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing * in trustful derangement' among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme out- post from below ; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and Universe ; and how ' the brave old Linden,' stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered up from the central Agora and Campus Martius of the Village, like its Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the wearied labourers reclined, and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and maidens often danced to flute-music. ' Glorious summer twilights,' cries Teuf- elsdrockh, ' when the Sun like a proud Conqueror and ' Imperial Taskmaster turned his back, with his gold- * purple emblazonry, and all his fire-clad bodyguard (of IDYLLIC. 93 * Prismatic Colours) ; and the tired brick makers of this ' clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few * meek Stars would not tell of them !' Then have we long details of the Weinlesen (Vintage), the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so fortii : with a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently by mere superficial shades from those of other countries. Concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under that * brave old Linden ?' Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the following ? * In all the ' sports of Children, were it only in their wanton break- * ages and defacements, you shall discern a creative * instinct [Schajfenden Trich) : the Mankin feels that he * is a born Man, that his vocation is to Work. The * choicest present you can make him is a Tool ; be it * knife or pengun, for construction or for destruction ; * either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious ' sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to * Co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or go- ' verned : the little Maid again, provident of her domestic * destiny, takes with preference to Dolls.' Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, consi- dering who it is that relates it : ' My first short-clothes * were of yellow serge ; or rather, I should say, my first ' short cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, * reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four * limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine * the architectural, how much less the moral signi- * ficance ! ' More graceful is the following little picture : * On fine 94 SARTOR RESARTUS. * evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper (bread- ' crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out of doors. On trie ' coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach by * climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would * set up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed : ' there, manv a sunset, have I, lookingr at the distant * western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my * evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush * of World's expectation as Day died, were still a He- * brew Speech for me ; nevertheless I was looking at the * fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their * gilding.' With ' the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry ' we shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby he acquired a * certain deeper sympathy with animated * Nature :' but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this : * Impressive enough {hedeuhingsvoU) was it to * hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's horn ; and * know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on * all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast ' on the Heath. Or to see them, at eventide, all march- * ing in again, with short squeak, almost in military ' order ; and each, topographically correct, trotting off in ' succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to * its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, ' now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the * night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the * form of Ham ; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned * beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humour of * character ; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissive- * ness to Man, — who were he but a Swineherd, in darned IDYLLIC. 95 * gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate ' or discoloured tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this ' lower world ? ' It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favorable influences ac- company him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded and con- tinue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole difference between an inspired Prophet and a double- barrelled Game-preserver : the inner man of the one has been fostered into generous development ; that of the other, crushed down perhaps by vigour of animal diges- tion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his stomach. * With which opinion,' cries Teufelsdrockh, * I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn * might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil * and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage- * seed into an oak. ' Nevertheless,' continues he, ' I too acknowledge the * all but omnipotence of early culture and nurture ; ' hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a * high-towering, wide-shadowing tree ; either a sick yellow * cabbage, or an edible, luxuriant, green one. Of a truth, ' it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, ' to note down with accuracy the characteristic circum- * stances of their Education, what furthered, what hin- ' dered, what in any way modified it : to which duty, * nowadays so pressing for many a German Auto- * biographer, I also zealously address myself.' — -Thou rogue ! Is it by short-clothes of yellow serge, and swine- 96 SARTOR RESARTUS. herd horns, that an infant of genius is educated ? And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he continues : * If among the ever- streaming currents of Sights, Plearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the number : ' Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and grey austere, yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses and ** Much-enduring Man." Eagerly I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth : from these perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim world of Adven- ture expanded itself within me. Incredible also was the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden tree : the whole of Immensity was yet new to me ; and had not these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years ? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a World ; that there was such a thing as History, as Biography ; to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might contribute. * In a like sense worked the Posttvagen (Stage-Coach), which slow-rolling under its mountains of men and IDYLLIC. 97 luggage, wended through our Village: northwards, truly, in the dead of night ; yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year, did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, like the heavenly one ; that it came on made highways, from far cities towards far cities ; weaving them like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was then that, independently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell^ I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things) : Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road J will lead you to the end of the World! ' Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa as I learned, threading their way over seas and moun- tains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, with the month of May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby ? The hospitable Father (for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket, plumb under their nest : there they built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred ; and all, I chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you the mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social police ? For if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your House fell, have I not seen five neighbourly Helpers appear next day ; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, com- plete it again before nightfall ? * But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold in- fluences were concentrated and simultaneously poured down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling 10 98 SARTOR RESARTUS. ' from all the four winds, came the elements of an un- * speakable hurly-burly. Nutbrown maids and nutbrown * men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and * be-ribanded ; who came for dancing, for treating, and * if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from ' the North ; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also top- * booted, from the South ; these with their subalterns in ' leather jerkins, leather scull-caps, and long ox-goads ; ' shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate * barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far ' Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows ; Niirnberg * Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz 'bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore ; detach- ' ments of the Wiener Schub (Offscourings of Vienna) ' vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad- * singers brayed. Auctioneers grew hoarse ; cheap New ' Wine (heuriger) flowed like water, still worse con- ' founding the confusion ; and high over all, vaulted, in ' ground-and-lofty tumbling, a parti-coloured Merry An- ' drew, like the genius of the place and of Life itself. ' Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence ; under * the deep heavenly Firmament ; waited on by the four * golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, * for even grim Winter, brought its skating-matches and * shooting-matches, its snovi^-storms and Christmas carols, ' — did the Child sit and learn. These things were the * Alphabet, whereby in after-time he was to syllable and * partly read the grand Volume of the World : what mat- ' ters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or * in smaU ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it ? * For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking IDYLLIC. 99 * thereon was a blessedness that gilded all : his existence * was a bright, soft element of Joy ; out of which, as in * Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself * forth, to teach by charming. * Nevertheless I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even ' then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come ' down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rain- * bow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay even in * childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a * thread, and often quite overshone ; yet always it reap- * peared, nay, ever waxing broader and broader ; till in * after-years it almost overshadowed my whole canopy, * and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the ' ring of Necessity, whereby we are all begirt; happy he * for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring * of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic * diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourne for our * whole being, it is there. * For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprentice- * ship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and ' lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us over * the workshop, and see others work, till we have under- * stood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. If ' good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good ' Activity together, were the thing wanted, then was my * early position favourable beyond the most. In all that * respects openness of Sense, affectionate Temper, ingen- * uous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more * could I have wished ? On the other side, however, * things went not so well. My Active Power ( Tliathraft) * was unfavourably hemmed in ; of which misfortune * how many traces yet abide with me ! In an orderly 100 SARTOR RESARTUS. * house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful * enough, your training is too stoical ; rather to bear and ' forbear than to make and do. I was forbid much : * wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce ; every * where a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me * down. Thus already Freewill often came in painful * collision with Necessity ; so that my tears flowed, and * at seasons the Child itself might taste that root of bit- * terness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is * mingled and tempered. * In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was be- * yond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. * Obedience is our universal duty and destiny ; wherein * whoso will not bend must break : too early and too * thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, * in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and * for most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. * Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, * nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my * upbringing ! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively * secluded, every way unscientific : yet in that very strict- ' ness and domestic solicitude might there not lie the root ' of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble * fruit must grow ? Above all, how unskilful soever, it * was loving, it was well meant, honest ; whereby every * deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such * I must ever love the good Gretchen, did me one aito- * gather invaluable service : she taught me, less indeed * by word than by act and daily reverent look and habi- * tude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. * Andreas, too, attended Church ; yet more like a parade- * duty, for which he in the other world expected pay IDYLLIC. 101 * with arrears, — as, I trust, he has received : but my * Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though * uncultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation Re- * ligious. How indestructibly the Good grows, and pro- * pagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of ' Evil ! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw * bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher * in Heaven : such things, especially in infancy, reach * inwards to the very core of your being ; mysteriously * does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility in the ' mysterious deeps ; and Reverence, the divinest in man, * springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of * Fear. Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that ' knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God in * Heaven and in Man ; or a duke's son that only knew * there were two and thirty quarters on the family- * coach ? ' To which last question we must answer : Beware, O Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride ! 10* 102 SARTOR RESARTUS. CHAPTER III. PEDAGOGY. Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms of kind Nature alone ; seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop ; but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary move- ment there. Hitherto accordingly his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract : perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gnes- chen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there) ; yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. The more impatient are we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capacity ; how when, to use his own words, ' he understands the tools a little, and can handle this or that,' he will proceed to handle it. Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of our Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost Hindoo character : nay, perhaps in that so well fostered and every-way excellent ' Passivity' of his, which, with no free development of the antagonist # PEDAGOGY. 103 Activity, distinguislied his childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in after-days, and still in these present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow- sighted Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Acti- vity of any kind, a No-man ; for the deep-sighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European : above all, disadvan- tageous in the hero of a Biography ! Now as heretofore it will behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his endeavour. Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class-books. On this portion of his History Teufels- drockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he * cannot remember ever to have learned ; ' so perhaps had it by nature. He says generally : ' of the insignificant * portion of my education, which depended on Schools, * there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what * others learn ; and kept it stored by in a corner of my * head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My School- ' master, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, * as others of that guild are, did little for me, except * discover that he could do little : he, good soul, pro- ' nounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions ; ' and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one * day to the University. Meanwhile, what printed thing * soever I could meet with I read. My very copper ' pocket-money I laid out on stall-literature : which, as * it accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. 104 SARTOR RESARTUS. * By this means was the young head furnished with a * considerable miscellany of things and shadows ofthings : * History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabu- ' lous chimeras, wherein also was reality ; and the whole ' not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably ' nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic' That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well we now know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with all his outward stillness, there may have been manifest an inward vivacity that promised much ; symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the following ? * It struck me much as I * sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched * it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet ' had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather * and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of History. * Yes, probably, on the morning when Joshua forded * Jordan : even as at the mid-day when Caesar, doubtless * with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his Com- * mentaries dry, — this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, * Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilder- * ness, as yet unnamed, unseen : here, too, as in the ' Euphrates and the Ganges, is a Vein or Veinlet of the ' grand World-circulation of Waters, which, with its at- * mospheric Arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with » the World. Thou fool ! Nature alone is antique, and * the oldest Art a mushroom ; that idle crag thou sittest * on is six thousand years of age.' In which little thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning i PEDAGOGY. 105 of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the gran- deur and mystery of Time, and its relation to Eternity, which play such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes 1 Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still ; but in- tersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stag- nating into sour marshes of discontent. ' With my first view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, ' my evil days began. Well do I still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when trotting full of hope, by the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking Eight) and Schuldthurm (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast : a little dog, in mad terror, was rushing past ; for some human imps had tied a tin kettle to its tail ; thus did the ago- nised creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the Burough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to chase him on ; which, the faster he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more foolishly ! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous Den ; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and epitome 1 * Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in the distance : I was among strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me ; the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.' His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him ; * They 106 SARTOR RESARTUS. * were Boys,' he says, * mostly rude Boys, and obeyed ' the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deerherd * fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to ' death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all * hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits that though * perhaps in an unusual degree morally courageous/ he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided it ; a result as would appear, owing less to his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons, he was ' incredibly nimble'), than to his ' virtuous princi- ' pies :' ' if it was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, ' it * vi^as only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as ' fought ; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this ' important element of school-history, the war-element, * had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent * Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. ' He wept * often ; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed * Der Weinende (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards * his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only * at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire- * eyed rage, and, with a Stormfulness (Ungestum) under * which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights * of Man, or at least of Mankin.' In all which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reedgrass, and ignoble shrubs; and forced, if it would live, to strug- gle upwards only, and not outwards ; into a height quite sickly, and disproportioned to its breadth? We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were ' mechanically' taught; Hebrewscarce even mechanically ; much else which they called History, Cosmography, PEDAGOGY. 107 Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So that, except inasmuch as nature was still busy ; and he himself ' went about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's workshops, there learning many things ; ' and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he lodged, — his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, throughout the whole of this Bag Scorpio, where we now are, and often in the follow- ing Bag, he shews himself unusually animated on the matter of Education, and not without some touch of what we might presume to be anger. * My Teachers,' says he, ' were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man's nature or of boys ; or of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be manufactured, at Niirnberg, out of wood and leather, foster the growth of any thing ; much more of Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots littered with etymological compost), but like a Spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought 1 How shall he give kiadling, in whose own inward man there is no live coajj but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical cinder 1 The Hinterschlag Professors knew Syntax enough ; and of the human soul thus much : that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted on 108 SARTOR RESARTUS. * through the muscular integument by appliance of birch * rods. * Alas, so is it every where, so will it ever be ; till * the Hodman is discharged, or reduced to Hod bearing ; * and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly en- * couraged : till communities and individuals discover, * not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a * generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with * blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder ; that * with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, there ' should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it * possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But * as yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even * parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have * travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his in- * structing-tool : nay, were he to walk abroad with birch * girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would * not, among the idler class, a certain levity be excited ? ' In the third year of this Gymnasic period. Father An- dreas seems to have died : the young Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad out- wardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. * The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies * under our feet, had yawned open ; the pale kingdoms * of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and * generations stood before him ; the inexorable word, * Never ! now first showed its meaning. My mother * wept, and her sorrow got vent ; but in my heart there * lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation. * Nevertheless, the unworn Spirit is strong ; Life is so * healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death : * these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in PEDAGOGY. 109 my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress forest, sad but beautiful ; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth : — as in manhood also it does, and will do ; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cy- press tree ; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fort- tress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties, of tyran- nous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still smile. 4^ ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearino- Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood, — yet a little while, and we shall all meet there, and our Mother's bosom will screen us all ; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more ! ' Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a laboured Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral ; of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant) ; with long historical inquiries into the gene- alogy of the Futteral family, here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler : the whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add that now was the time when Mother Gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred : or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way already known to us. * Thus was * I doubly orphaned,' says he ; ' bereft not only of Pos- * session, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Won- U 110 SARTOR RESARTUS. * der, here suddenly united, could not but produce abun- * dant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck ' its roots through my whole nature : ever till the years ' of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, * was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night- * dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a * corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted : * I was like no other; in which fixed-idea, leading * sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfulest results, * may there not lie the first spring of Tendencies, that in ' my Life have become remarkable enough ? As in * birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my * fellows are perhaps not numerous.' In the Bag Sagittarius, as we at length discover, Teufelsdrockh has become a University man ; though how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose it- self with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now sur- prise our readers ; not even the total want of dates, almost without a parallel in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In Sagitta- rius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to shew himself even more than usually Sibylline : fragments of all sorts ; scraps of regular Memoir, College Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast ; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To combine any picture of these Uni- versity, and the subsequent, years ; much more, to de- cipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the PEDAGOGY. ' 111 Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may imagine. So much we can see ; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket : a youth of no common endow- ment, that has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in ' dead vocables,' and set down as he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, dili- gently, thirstily, yet nowise with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his palate ; discouragements, entan- glements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting ; for * the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from notdis- * interested relatives has sent him hither, must after a * time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand.' Never- theless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, some of which are prismatic. Thus with the aid of Time, and of what Time brings, has the stripling Dio- genes Teufelsdrockh waxed into manly stature ; and into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eager- ness How he specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit answer. Certain of the intel- ligible and partially significant fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a Paperbag, and presented with the usual preparation. As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen ; as if, from the name Sagittarius, he had thought himself called 112 SARTOR RESARTUS. upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with such nmatter as this : * The University where I was educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I know its name well ; which name, however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in no wise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible : however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit : nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute hunger. * It is written. When the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch : vi^herefore, in such circum- stances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply — sit still ? Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary, walled in a square enclosure ; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundred Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years ; certain persons, under the title of Professors, being sta- tioned at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a Uni- versity, and exact considerable admission fees, — you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, imperfect ; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same : unhappily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke and sin ; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far costlier apparatus, than that of the Square PEDAGOGY. 113 Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. * Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are ;" and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards any thing like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has been done : with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under tables for minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch ; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, King- craft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all ! Can any one, for example, so much as say, What monies, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish ; what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circula- tions, disbursements, incoming of said monies, with the smallest approach to accuracy l But to ask. How far, in all the several infinitely complected departments of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true Ware ; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware : — in other words, To what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and countries. Deception takes the place and wages of Performance : here truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the pre- sent, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hun- dred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Rus- 11* 114 SARTOR RESARTUS. * sian Autocrat, or English Game-preserver, is probably * not far from the mark), — what almost prodigious saving * may there not be anticipated, as the Statistics of Impos- * ture advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams * (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinc- ' tion therefrom) gradually declines, and at length be- * comes all but wholly unnecessary ! ' This for the coming golden ages. What I had to ' remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several * provinces, as in Education, Polity, Religion, where so * much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as * yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, ' anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst * blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken ; * I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but 'exhausted; and that the whole army is about to * mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat, * — then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, * pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on co- ' agulated water, or mere imagination of meat ; whereby, ' till the real supply came up, they might be kept toge- * ther, and quiet 1 Such perhaps was the aim of Nature, * who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her fa- * vourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather ' omni-patient Talent of being Gulled. * How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; * nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These Pro- * fessors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by * a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and then, * too with no great effort, by quite another class of per- * sons. Which Reputation, like a strong brisk-going ' undershot-wheel, sunk into the general current, bade PEDAGOGY. 115 * fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, ' to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously ' grind for them. Happy that it was so for the Mil- Mers ! They themselves needed not to work; their ' attempts at working, at what they cabled Educating, * now when I look back on it, fill me with a certain mute ' admiration. * Besides all this we boasted ourselves a Rational ' University ; in the highest degree, hostile to Mysticism ; ' thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much ' talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Pr^eju- * dice, and the like ; so that all were quickly enough 'blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; ' whereby the better sort must soon end in sick, impo- * tent Scepticism ; the worser sort explode (crepiren) in * finished Self-conceit and to all spiritual intents become * dead.— But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our * era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is * there not a better coming, nay come ? As in longdrawn * Systole and longdrawn Diastole, must the period of ' Faith alternate with the period of Denial ; must the * vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, ' Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed * by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter * dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole ' earthly being, endeavour, and destiny shaped for him ' by Time : only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the * ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. ' And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the * nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have ' been born, and to be awake, and work ; and for the * duller a felicity, if like hibernating animals, safe-lodged I |() HAUTOll IIKHAIITIIH. * in HONK! S:ilaiiiuiicii IJiiiviirsity, or SybnriH ^'ily, or ' otimr Hii|)(;rHlili<)UH or voliipliionH ('iiHlNi of liidolctico, ' tlicy can Mlinnl)f;r lliroii/^h, in Hl,ii|)i(] drcniriH, iiikI only ' uvviikf;n when ilic loiid-ronrin^ liiiilKtorrriM luivc all dono * their work, and to our prayorM otid ninrtyrdoiriH tho now ' Spriii)^ liuH lurn voucJisarcd.' Thai, in IIk; cnvironuK;!!!, hero niyHtoriouMly <;nough Hhiulow(!d forlh, ToulolsdriK'/kh tnuHt hav<5 (oil ill at ohho, cannol. Ik; donhlful. ' 'Tin; hiiii'fry yonnjr,' ho Hays, * looktid up to thiMr Hpirilual Nui.soh ; and, for food, wore ' hidden eat the (mihI, wind. What, vain jargon of coti- ' lr(»versi:\l MetaphyHic, I'ityinolo^y, and mechanical * IVlanipidatif)!! ralH(dy named Scioficn, waH current * there, I indeed learned, helirr porhapH than the most. * Among ohiVi-n hundred ('hriHlian yontliH, there will not ' 1)0 wanting Horru?