Uhc Motif's Classics 
 
 XIX 
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 THOMAS CAKLYLE— I 
 
 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF 
 HERR TEUFELSDROCKH 
 
 IN THREE BOOKS 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON, NEVV^ YORK, TORONTO 
 
 AND MELBOURNE 
 
THOMAS CAELYLE 
 
 Born: Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, December 4, 1795 
 Died : Chelsea, Febraary 4, 1881 
 
 "Sartor Resartus" was first published in volume form in 
 London in JSSS. In ''The World's Classics" it was first 
 published in 1902, and reprinted in 1903, 1906, and 1909. 
 
 2J?etn S^ermad^tiiife, ixne ^errlid^ tneit unb ferett ! 
 
 Printed by Ballanttnb, Hanson <V Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 
 
 
 CHAP 
 
 . 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 Preliminary 
 
 
 1 
 
 II. 
 
 Editorial Difficulties . 
 
 
 
 G 
 
 III. 
 
 Reminiscences 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 IV. 
 
 Characteristic^ 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 V. 
 
 The World in 
 
 Clothes . 
 
 
 
 . 29 
 
 Yl. 
 
 Aprons 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 . r.o 
 
 VII. 
 
 Miscellaneous- 
 
 Historical 
 
 
 
 ^9 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The World out of Clothes 
 
 
 
 . 43 
 
 IX. 
 
 Adamitism . 
 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 X. 
 
 Pure Reason 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 54 
 
 XI. 
 
 Prospective . 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 00 
 
 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 
 I. 
 
 Genesis 
 
 • • « • J 
 
 09 
 
 II. 
 
 Idyllic 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 77 
 
 III. 
 
 Pedagogy . 
 
 
 , 
 
 . 86 
 
 IV. 
 
 Getting under 
 
 Way . 
 
 . 
 
 . 102 
 
 V. 
 
 Romance 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 . 114 
 
 VI. 
 
 Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh 
 
 . 
 
 127 
 
 
 
 M5l5o; 
 
 ^8 
 
 ?j 
 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Everlasting No . . . . 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Centre of Indifference . 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Everlasting Yea . . 
 
 X. 
 
 Pause 
 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 I. 
 
 Incident in Modem History . 
 
 11. 
 
 Church-Clothes . 
 
 
 
 III. 
 
 Symbols 
 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 Helotage 
 
 
 
 V. 
 
 The Phoenix 
 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 Old Clothes .... 
 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 Organic Filaments 
 
 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Natural Supernaturalism 
 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 Circumspective . 
 
 
 
 X. 
 
 The Dandiacal Body . 
 
 
 
 XI. 
 
 Tailors 
 
 
 
 XII. 
 
 Farewell .... 
 
 
 
 Appendix: Testimonies of Authors 
 
SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 BOOK FIRST 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PRELIMINARY 
 
 CoNSiDKRiNG our present advanced state of culture, and 
 how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and 
 borne about, with more or less eifect, 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 Rushlights 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 
 hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, 
 whether in the way of Philo'sophy 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 forever; 
 Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it 
 could 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 
 v/e know enout^h : wliat with the labours of our 
 
2 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius 
 of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many 
 a Royal Society, the Creation of a World is little more 
 mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling ; concern- 
 ing which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom 
 the question, How the apples were got in, presented diffi- 
 culties. Why mention our disquisitions 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 environment 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 de- 
 composed : our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears 
 there are not a few, have their Stewarts, 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 in- 
 cluded and screened, his whole Faculties work, his 
 whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, 
 now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker 
 has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure region, the 
 most have soared over it altogether heedless ; regard- 
 ing Clothes as a property, 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 cir- 
 cumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in 
 Clothes. Shakespeare 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 
 vety eyes. 
 
PRELIMINARY 3 
 
 But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, 
 learned, indefatigahle, deep-thinking Germany, comes 
 to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these re- 
 volutionary times, there should be one country where 
 abstract 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, struggling 
 multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to 
 hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his 
 Horet ihr Uerren luid /asset's 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 dili- 
 gence ; 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 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 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 
 
4 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 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 adven- 
 turous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on 
 some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous pro- 
 vince ; the hidden treasures of which he first dis- 
 covered, 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 habit- 
 able colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient 
 realm of Nothingness and Night ! Wise man was he 
 who counselled that Speculation should have free 
 course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two 
 points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it 
 listed. 
 
 Perhaps it is proof of the stunted 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 lan- 
 guage. 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 probable enough, this abstruse Inquiry 
 might, in spite of the results it leads to, have con- 
 tinued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor 
 of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a 
 man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps dis- 
 cursive 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 suggestion. By the 
 
PRELIMINARY 6 
 
 arrival^ namely, of a new Book from Professor Teufels- 
 (Irockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating- expressly 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 judicially 
 acceded to, or judicially denied, has not remained 
 without effect. 
 
 ' Die Kleider, ihr Werden und WirJcen (Clothes, their 
 ' Origin and Influence) : t^on Diog. Teufelsdrockh, 
 ' /. U. D. etc. Stillachiveigen und Co^"'*. Weissnichtwo , 
 ' 1831. 
 
 * Here,' says the Weissnichtwo' sche 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.' * -^ * * '^A work,' concludes the 
 well-nigh enthusiastic Reviewer, * interesting- alike to 
 ' the antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic 
 ' thinker ; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acute- 
 ' ness, and rugged independent Germanism and Philan- 
 ' thropy (derber Kemdeutschheit und Menschenliebe) ; 
 ' which will not, assuredly, pass current without oppo- 
 
 * sition 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 Pro- 
 fessor 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 indicated wish or hope of any kind, except 
 what may be implied in the concluding phrase : 
 MiJchte es (this remarkable Treatise) auch im Brittischen 
 Boden gedeihen ! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 If for a speculative man, ' whose seedfield/ In the 
 sublime words of the Poet, * is Time,' no conquest is 
 important 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 con- 
 tents, 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 
 deliberate 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 Individuality, an almost unexampled personal 
 character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the 
 Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as might 
 be possible, we resolved to master the significance. 
 But as man is emphatically 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 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. 
 
EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 7 
 
 Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first 
 thought naturally was to publish Article after Article 
 on this remarkable 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, all 
 party-divisions in the State could have been abolished. 
 Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant 
 union ; and all the Journals of tlie 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 Fraser's Magazine ? 
 A vehicle all strewed (tigui*atively 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 personality, was it not to 
 insure both of entire misapprehension.'* Now for 
 Biography, had it been otherwise admissible, there 
 were no adequate documents, no liope of obtaining 
 such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special 
 despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the 
 while, 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 per- 
 sonality of its Author more and more surprising, but, 
 in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, 
 more and more enigmatic ; whereby the old dis- 
 quietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent, — 
 when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from 
 
8 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 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 dilating largely 
 on the 'agitation and attention' which the Philo- 
 sophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German 
 Republic of Letters ; on the deep significance and 
 tendency of his Friend's Volume ; and then, at length, 
 with great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability 
 of conveying *^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 
 Thought ; and so forth ; — in conclusion, intimating 
 not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel dis- 
 posed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, 
 Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish 
 the requisHe Documents. 
 
 As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long 
 evaporating, but would crystallise, instantly when the 
 wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallisa- 
 tion commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole 
 is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this 
 ofi'er of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution 
 and discontinuity ; like united itself with like in definite 
 arrangement : and soon either in actual vision and 
 possession, 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 twopenny post, application to the famed 
 redoubtable Oliver Yorke was now made : an inter- 
 view, interviews with that singular man have taken 
 place ; with more of assurance 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 ofl^er of Documents we joy- 
 
EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 9 
 
 fully 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 we/e perhaps uninteresting 
 to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, 
 in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and 
 with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for 
 meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep 
 a free, open sense ; cleared from the mists of preju- 
 dice, 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 re- 
 main conjectural, and even insignificant : ^ it is a voice 
 publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes ; un- 
 doubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits : whoso hath ears, 
 let him hear. 
 
 On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to 
 give warning : namely, that he is animated M'ith a true 
 though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions 
 of our Ancestors ; and minded to defend these, accord- 
 ing to ability, at all hazards ; nay, it was partly with a 
 \'iew to such defence that he engaged in this under- 
 taking. 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 floodgats, in the logical wear. 
 
 For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any 
 personal connexion of ours with Teufelsdrockh, 
 Heuschrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes, can per- 
 vert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exag- 
 gerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those 
 private Compliments tliemselves. Grateful they may 
 
 ^ With us even be still communicates in some sort of mask, 
 or muffler ; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned 
 name ! — O.Y. 
 
10 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 well be ; as generous illusions of friendship ; as fair 
 mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and 
 suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies 
 and liarmonies 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 capacity, 
 we hope we are strangers to all the world ; have 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 quackery 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 here, — we thought it 
 good to premise. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 REMINISCENCES 
 
 To the Author's private circle the appearance of this 
 singular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little 
 less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For 
 oui*selves, at leasts 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 
 Philosophies, 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. If through the high, silent, medita- 
 tive Transcendentalism of our Friend we detected any 
 practical tendency whatever, it was at most Political, 
 and towards a certain prospective, and for the present 
 quite speculative, lladicalism ; as indeed some corre- 
 spondence, on his part, with Herr Oken of Jena was 
 now and then suspected ; though his special contribu- 
 tions to the /.y/,y could never be more than surmised at. 
 But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less anything 
 Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. 
 
 ^^ell do we recollect the last words he spoke in our 
 
 hearing ; which indeed, with the Night they Mere 
 
 uttered in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting his 
 
 huge tumbler of Giikguk,^ and for a moment lowering 
 
 1 Gukgnk is unhappily only an academical — beer. 
 
 11 
 
12 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full coffee-house (it was 
 Ziir Griinen Gans, 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 : Die Sache der Armen in 
 Gottes und Teufels Namen (The Cause of the Poor, in 
 
 Heaven's name and 's) ! One full shout, breaking 
 
 the leaden silence ; then a gurgle of innumerable 
 emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheer- 
 ing, returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of 
 the night : resuming their pipes ; in the highest 
 enthusiasm, amid volumes of tobacco-smoke ; triumph- 
 ant, cloud-capt without and within, the assembly 
 broke up, each to his thoughtful pillow. Bleibt dock 
 ein echter Spass- und Galgen-vogel, said several ; mean- 
 ing thereby that, one day, he would probably l)e 
 hanged for his democratic sentiments. Wo steckt dock 
 der Schalk ? added they, looking round : but Teufels- 
 drockh 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, over-lapping roof-wise 
 the gravest 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 still 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 sleep 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, fartlier than another ; thou hadst in, 
 petto thy remarkable Volume on Clothes. Nay, was 
 
REMINISCENCES 13 
 
 there not in that clear logically-founded Transcendent- 
 alism of thine ; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep- 
 seated Sansculottism, combined with a true princely 
 Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of 
 such speculation ? But great men are too often un- 
 known, or what is worse, misknown. Already, when 
 we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable 
 V'olume 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 ques- 
 tion ; the answer of which, however, is happily not our 
 concern, but his. To us it appeared, after repeated trial, 
 that in AVeissnichtwo, from the archives or memories 
 of the best-informed classes, no Biography of Teufels- 
 drockh 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, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, 
 curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied her- 
 self with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he 
 was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that 
 to question him even afar off on such particulars was a 
 thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, 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 Jqw. 
 
 To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a 
 Man as a Thing ; which Thing doubtless they were 
 accustomed 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 
 
14 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 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 nondescripts, more frequent in German Univer- 
 sities than elsewhere ; of whom, though you see them 
 alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a 
 History, no History seems to he discoverahle ; 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 objects in this phantasm world, 
 where so much other mystery is. 
 
 It was to be remarked that though, by title and 
 diploma. Professor der Allerley-Wissenschajl, 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 somewhat forth again from such 
 
 * Chaos might be, even slightly, facilitated.' That 
 actual Lectures sliould be held, and Public Classes for 
 the ^ Science of Things in General,' they doubtless con- 
 sidered premature ; on which ground too they had 
 only estjiblished 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 en- 
 lightened Government had seen into the \^^ant of the 
 Age {Zeithedilrfniss) ; how at length, instead of Denial 
 and Destruction, we were to have a science of Affirma- 
 tion and Reconstruction ; and Germany and Weiss- 
 nichtwo were where they should be, in the vanguard 
 
REMINISCENT ES 15 
 
 of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at 
 the new Professor, dropt opportunely enoug-h into the 
 nascent University ; so able to lecture, should occasion 
 call ; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, 
 should an enlightened Government consider that occa- 
 sion did not call. But such 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 popu- 
 larity, 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 Grilne Gans, Weissnichtwo saw little of 
 him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of 
 Gukguk, he sat reading Journals ; sometimes contem- 
 platively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, 
 without other visible employment : always, from his 
 mild ways, an agreeable 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 note- 
 worthy. 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 un- 
 worthy ; 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 en- 
 thusiastic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufels- 
 drockh opened himself perhaps more than to the most. 
 Pity only that we could not then half guess his import- 
 ance, and scrutinise him with due power of vision ! 
 
16 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 We enjoyed, what not three men in \^^eissnichtwo could 
 boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's 
 private domicile. It was the attic floor of the hia^hest 
 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. Moreover, 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 Schlaf- 
 gemach (bed-room) at the opposite end ; to say nothing 
 of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, duplicates, 
 and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the 
 speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh; 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 Trei' 
 ben), 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 victuals, down to 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, ex- 
 ' cept the Schlosskirche 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 liis household ; here, 
 ^ on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully 
 '^ along, begging alms: a thousand carriages, 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 
 ' Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin : From Eternity, on- 
 
REMINISCENCES 17 
 
 '^ \rards to Eternity ! These are Apparitions : what 
 ** else? 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 them. 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 Yesterday 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, wliich 
 ^' inweaves all Being- : watch well, or it will be past 
 " thee, and seen no more." 
 
 " Achj mein LieberT" 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 thousandfold 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 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 unimaginable 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 praying, 
 " — 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 d.iniask curtains ; 
 *' Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers 
 *' hunger-stricken into its lair of straw : in obscure 
 
 B 
 
18 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its voice-of- 
 ' destiny to liaggard hungry Villains ; while Coun- 
 ' cillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high 
 ' chess -game, whereof the pawns are Men. The 
 ' Lover whispers 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 tremulous 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 Rabenstein ? — their gallows must 
 ^ even now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred- 
 ^ thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie 
 ' round us, in horizontal positions ; their heads all in 
 'nightcaps, and full of the foolishest 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 
 ' ci'acked lips only her tears now moisten. — AJi-these 
 'heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a 
 Mittle carpentry and masonry between them ; — ^cram- 
 ' med in, like salted fish in their barrel ; — or welter- 
 ' ing, 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- 
 ' counterpane ! — But I, mein Werthei', sit above it 
 ' all ; I am alone with the Stars," 
 
 We looked in his face to see whether, in the utter- 
 ance of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling 
 might be ^-aced 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 calm- 
 ness and fixedness was visible. 
 
 These were the Professor's talkiwg seasons : most 
 
REMINISCENCES 19 
 
 commonly 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 himself away. It was a strange 
 apartment ; full of books and tattered papers, and 
 miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 
 ' united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on 
 tables, and below tables ; here fluttered a sheet of 
 manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap 
 hastily thrown aside ; ink-bottles alternated with 
 bread - crusts, coiFee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical 
 Literature, and Bliicher Boots. Old Liescheu (Lise- 
 kin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-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 Erdbehen (earthquakes), which Teufels- 
 drockh dreaded worse than the pestilence ; neverthe- 
 less, to such length he had been forced to comply. 
 Glad would he have been to sit here philosophising 
 forever, or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him 
 out of doors : but Lieschen was his right-arm, and 
 spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly 
 gainsayed. We can still i-emember the ancient 
 woman ; so silent that some thought her dumb ; deaf 
 also you would often have supposed her ; for Teufels- 
 drockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve or 
 give heed to ; and with him she seemed to communi- 
 cjite 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 coffee ever at 
 
20 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 the due moment ; and the speechless Lieschen her- 
 self 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 
 excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already 
 known, by name and expectation, to the readers of 
 these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heu- 
 schrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane- 
 necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps suf- 
 ficiently 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 
 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 Weissnichtwo. M''hat 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 
 Gemilth und Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch ohrw 
 Organ, ohne Schicksals-Gunst ; ist gegenw'drtig nher halb- 
 zerriittet, halh-erstarrt, " He has heart and talent, at 
 least has had such, vet without fit mode of utterance, 
 or favour of Fortune ; and so is now half-cracked, 
 haif-congealed." — What the Hofrath shall think of 
 
^\ 
 
 REMINISCENCES 21 
 
 this when he sees it, readers may wouder : 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 b}' habit. On the 
 other hand, it was curious to observe with what rever- 
 ent 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 moutli, 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 glaub' ich ; in either case, by way of heartiest 
 approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh M-as Dalai-Lama, 
 of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and 
 god-like indilFerence, 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 
 Teufelsdrockli, at the time of our acquaintance, and 
 most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, 
 perched-up in his high ^\^ahngasse watch-tower, 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 
 
22 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 middle sort you could only guess at ; of his wide sur- 
 tout ; the colour 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 enlightened curiosity, leaving 
 Kings and suchlike 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? 
 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? 
 To the soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, 
 namely, on the ' Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we 
 for the present gladly return. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this 
 W^ork 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 
 blindnass. 
 
 VV^ithout committing ourselves to those enthusiastic 
 praises and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo sche 
 Anzeiger, 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, wherein 
 the whole world of Speculation miglit henceforth dig 
 to unknown depths. More especially it may now be 
 declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, 
 patience of research, philosophic and even poetic 
 vigour, are here made indisputably 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 popularity in 
 England we cannot promise him. Apart from the 
 choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the 
 manner of treating it betokens in the Author a 
 rusticity and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed 
 
 23 
 
24 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 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 immen- 
 ' sity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or- 
 ' molu,' 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 no- 
 wise for her pearl bracelets and Malines laces : in bis 
 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 pecu- 
 liarity, 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 
 Transcendental 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 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 Teufelsdrockh maintains, that * within the 
 
 * most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and 
 ' wecisaud, and under the thickliest embroidered waist- 
 
CHARACTERISTICS 25 
 
 ^ coat beats a heart,' — the force of that rapt earnest- 
 ness 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 Litera- 
 ture, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and often 
 with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious 
 Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of Man. 
 Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and 
 then, he severs asunder the confusion ; shears 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 maunder- 
 ing 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 Sanchoniathon 
 to Dr. Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and 7a/- 
 mads, 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 unex- 
 ampled as it is with us, to the Germans such univer- 
 ■geElrty of study passes without wonder, as a thing com- 
 mlendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and 
 there of course. A man that devotes his life to 
 learning, shall he not be learned ? 
 
 In respect of style our Author manifests the same 
 genial capability, marred too often by the same rude- 
 ness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse 
 with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, 
 we find consummate vigour, a true inspiration ; liis 
 burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like 
 so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and 
 S]t;lendour from Jove's liead ; a rich, idiomatic diction. 
 
26 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint 
 tricksy turns ; all the graces and terrors of a wild 
 Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alter- 
 nate in beautiful vicissitude. \\'^ere it not that sheer 
 sleeping and soporific passages ; circumlocutions, re- 
 petitions, touches even of pui-e doting jargon, so often 
 intervene ! On the whole. Professor Teufelsdrockh is 
 not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not 
 more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs ; 
 the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, but- 
 tressed-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 we hear it only as a monotonous hum ; of which 
 hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. 
 
 r 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 Pro- 
 fessor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love 
 burst forth from him, soft wailings 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 indiffer- 
 ence, malign coolness towards 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 
 
CHARACTERISTICS 27 
 
 shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to 
 whom this great terresstrial 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 ! 
 
 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 
 together, 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 Cai^t-metal King: gradually a 
 light kindTed in bur 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, uncon- 
 trollable ; 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 
 
28 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 composed himself, and sank into his old stillness ; on 
 his inscrutable countenance 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 irreclaimably bad. 
 How much lies in Laughter : the cipher-key, where- 
 with we decipher the whole man ! Some men 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 snitf and titter 
 and snigger from the throat outwards ; or at best, 
 produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they 
 were laughing through wool : of none such comes 
 good. The man who cannot laugh is not only lit for 
 treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; but his whole life is 
 already a treason 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 cer- 
 tain show 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-Descrip- 
 tive 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, wlierein all courses had been 
 confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oystei- 
 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. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 
 
 'As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws/ observes 
 our Professor, ^so could I write a Spirit of Clothes; 
 ' thus, with an Esprit des Lois, properly an Espnt 
 ' d^. G&utumes, we should have an Esprit de Costumes. 
 ' For neither in tailoring- nor in leg"islating 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 
 ' andTlie Cloth are the site and materials whereon 
 ' and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to 
 ' be built. Whether he flow g-racefully 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 stuff- 
 ' ings, and monstrous tuberosities ; or girth himself 
 ' into separate sections, and front the world an Ag- 
 ' glomeration 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 C'olour ! 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 
 ' 'i'emper and Heart. In all which, among nations 
 ' as among individuals, there is an incessant, indubit- 
 ' able, though infinitely complex working of Cause 
 ' and Eff"ect : every snip of the Scissors has been 
 
 29 
 
30 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' 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 enterbiin- 
 ' ment : nevertheless, for inferior Intelligences, like 
 ' men, such Philosophies have always seemed to me 
 ' uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your Montes- 
 ' quieu 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 
 ' anything ! — Much, therefore, if not the M'hole, of 
 ^ that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as hypo- 
 ' thetical, ineffectual, and even im))ertinent : 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 
 boundless extent of field ; at least, the boundaries too 
 often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being 
 indispensable, we shall here glance-over his First 
 Part only in the most cursory manner. This First 
 Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learn- 
 ing, and utmost patience and fairness : at the same 
 time, in its results and delineations, it is much more 
 likely to interest the Compilers of some Library of 
 General, Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Know- 
 ledge than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. 
 Was it this Part of the Book which Heuschrecke had 
 in view, when he reconniiended us to that joint-stock 
 vehicle of publication, ' at present the glory of British 
 Literature'.'^ 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 
 
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 31 
 
 of a mythological^ ^metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial 
 aud quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves 
 with g-iving an unconcerned approval. Still less have 
 we to do with * Lilis, Adam's hrst Mife, whom, accord- 
 * ing to the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore 
 ' him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, 
 ' aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,' — very needlessly, we 
 think. On this portion of the Work, with its pro- 
 found glances into the Adam-Kadmon , or Primeval 
 Element, here strangely brought into relation with 
 the Nifi 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 have filled perhaps not the worst 
 Hebraist in Britain with something like astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh 
 hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dis- 
 persion of Mankind over the whole habitable and 
 habilable globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, 
 Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient 
 and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he 
 strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Niirn- 
 bergers give an Orhis Pictus) an Orhis Vestitus ; or view 
 of the 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 wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three 
 journeys a day, could not carry oif. Sheepskin 
 cloaks and wampum belts ; phylacteries, stoles, albs ; 
 chlamydes, 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 nightoap is not forgotten. For most part, 
 too, we must admit that the Learning, heterogeneous 
 as it is, and tumbled-down quite pell-mell, is true 
 
32 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 concentrated and purified Learning', the drossy parts 
 smelted out and thrown aside. 
 
 Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes 
 touching- pictures of human life. Of this sort the 
 following 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 Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, 
 lurking for his bestial or human prey ; without im- 
 plements, without arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, 
 to which, that his sole possession and defence might 
 not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited 
 thongs ; thereby recovering- 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 tattooing 
 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-rose-bloom 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 thy- 
 self, from that same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Abo- 
 riginal Anthropophagus ! Out of the eater cometh 
 forth meat ; out of the strong cometh forth sweet- 
 ness. What changes are wrought, not by Time, )'et 
 
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 33 
 
 ' 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 l)e found flourishing as a 
 ' Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest !) 
 ' after a thousand years. 
 
 ' He who first shorteneil the labour of Copyists by 
 
 • device of Moi'able Types was disbanding hired Armies, 
 and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating 
 a whole new Democratic world : he had invented the 
 Art of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, 
 Sulphur, 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 
 simple 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 Pecunia, 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 Rothschilds 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 become ! Increased Security and plea- 
 surable Heat soon followed : but what of these } 
 Shame, divine Shame {Schnam, Modesty), as yet a 
 stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there 
 mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-en- 
 circled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave 
 us individuality, distinctions, social polity ; Clothes 
 have made Men of us ; they are threatening to make 
 Clothes-screens of us. 
 
84 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * But, on the whole/ continues our eloquent Pro- 
 
 * fessor, ' Man is a Tool-using Animal {Handthiereiides 
 
 * Thier). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he 
 
 * stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of 
 
 * some half-square 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 rag. Nevertheless 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 Are his unwearying 
 ' 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 of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition 
 of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that 
 Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best ? Man 
 is called a Laughing Animal : but do not the apes also 
 laugh, or 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 Cook- 
 ing Animal ; which, indeed, for rigorous scientific pur- 
 poses, 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, be- 
 yond 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 his Tools : those very Cale- 
 donians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to 
 it, such as no brute has or can have. 
 
 ' Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufels- 
 drockh in his abrupt way ; ' of which truth Clothes are 
 
THE WORLD IN CLOTHES 35 
 
 * but one example : and surely if we consider the in- 
 
 * terval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by 
 
 * man^ and those Liverpool Steani-carria^es, or the 
 ' British House of Commons, we shall note what prog- 
 ' revSS he has made. He digs up certain black stones 
 ' from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, 
 
 * Transport me and this luggage at the rate of five-and- 
 
 * thirty miles an hour: and they do it: he collects, 
 
 * apparently by lot, six-hundred and fifty-eight mis- 
 
 * cellaneous individuals, and says to them. Make this 
 
 * nation toil for us, bleed for us^ hunger and sorrow and 
 
 * sin for us ; and they do it.* 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 APRONS 
 
 One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole 
 \'olume is that on Aprons. What though stout old 
 Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, ' whose Apron, now in- 
 
 * deed 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 ? An idle wire-drawing spirit, 
 sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to con- 
 ventional 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 Niirnberg Workboxes and 
 
 * Toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on ; to the thick- 
 ' tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein 
 ' the Builder buikls, and at evening sticks his trowel ; 
 ' or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your 
 ' otherwise half-naked Vulcaiis hammer and smelt in 
 ' their smelt-furnace, — is there not range enough in 
 ' the fashion and uses of this Vestment.'^ How much 
 
 * has been concealed, how much has been defended in 
 ^ Aprons ! Nay, rightly considered, what is your 
 
 36 
 
APRONS 37 
 
 * whole Military and Police Establishment, charged at 
 ' uncalculated millions, 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 {Teufelsschmiede) 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 
 ' {Epi6copu6') of Souls, I notice, has tucked-in the 
 ' corner of it, as if his day's work were done : what 
 ' does he shadow forth thereby ? ' S:c. &c. 
 
 Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to 
 read such stuif as we shall now 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 important extensions, in England.' — 
 ^\'e 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 neces- 
 
 * sity 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 
 
 * Laystall ; 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 
 
38 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' mig-hty, billoAvy, storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they 
 ^ keep alive !' — Such pass;ig-es fill us, who love the man, 
 and partly esteem him, with a A-ery mixed feeling-. 
 Farther down we meet with this : ^ The Journalists 
 
 * are now the true Kings and Clergy : henceforth 
 ' Historians, 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 Combination 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 Satan s Invisible World Displayed ; 
 ' which, however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo 
 
 * Libraries, I have not yet succeeded in procuring- 
 ' {vermochte nicht aufzutreihen)' 
 
 Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. 
 Thus does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where 
 he had little business, confound the old authentic 
 Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imagi- 
 nary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik ; and so 
 stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder ia 
 Modern Literature ! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 
 
 IIappitsr is our Professor, and more purely scientific 
 and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ag^es in 
 Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth 
 Century ; the true era of extravag-ance 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, 
 llie whole too in brief authentic strokes, and touched 
 not seldom with that breath of genius which makes 
 even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, 
 graphical, and everyway interesting have we found 
 these Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a perti- 
 nent question for parties concerned. Whether or not 
 a good English Translation thereof might henceforth 
 be profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable 
 ^Vork On Ancient Armour? Take, by way of example, 
 the following sketch ; as authority for which Paulinus's 
 Zeitkurzende Lunt (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, 
 referred to : 
 
 ' Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the 
 ' Fifteenth Century, we might smile ; as perhaps those 
 * bygone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our 
 ' haberdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the 
 ' Virgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, 
 ' rises again ; thus the Present is not needlessly tram- 
 ' melled with the Past ; and only grows out of it, like 
 ' a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled with its 
 ' branches, but lie peaceablv underground. Nav it is 
 
 39' 
 
40 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, how 
 ' the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would tind 
 
 * his place quite tilled-up here, and no room for hin) ; 
 
 * 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 Prog-ress secured ; 
 
 * and in Clothes, as in all other external things what- 
 
 * soever, no fashion will continue. 
 
 ' 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 bepainted in modern Romance, till the whole 
 
 * has acquired somewhat of a sign-post character, — 1 
 
 * shall here say nothing : the civil and pacific classes, 
 ' less touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. 
 
 ' Rich men, I find, have Teusinke ' (a perhaps un- 
 trauslateable article); ^also a silver girdle, whereat 
 hang little bells ; so that when a man walks, it is 
 with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, 
 have a whole chime of bells (Glockenspiel) fastened 
 there ; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the 
 other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. 
 Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic- 
 arch intersections. The male world wears peaked 
 caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side 
 {schief) : their shoes are peaked in front, also to the 
 length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags ; 
 even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses : 
 some also clap bells on the peak. Further, according 
 to my authority, the men have breeches without seat 
 {ohne Ges'dsfi) : these they fasten peakwise to their 
 shirts; and the long round doublet must overlap tliem. 
 ^ Rich maidens, again. Hit 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, 
 sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for 
 steersman ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth 
 thick, which waver round them by way of hem ; the 
 
MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL 41 
 
 loug 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 
 afl'ord it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, 
 and, for hem, not one but two suflicient handbroad 
 welts ; all ending atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, 
 some twenty inches broad : these are their Ruff- 
 mantles {Kragenmujitel). 
 
 * 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 zusammengekleifitert), which 
 create protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes 
 vie with each other in the art of Decoration ; and as 
 usual the stronger carries it. * 
 
 Our Professor, whether he have humour himself or 
 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, inci- 
 dent to the wearers of such, ai-e noticed with due 
 fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he 
 spread in the mud under Queen 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 jilass, \\ ere 
 * wont to serve her.'* ' We can answer that Sir Walter 
 knew well what he was doing, and had tlie Maiden 
 Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would 
 have done the same. 
 
42 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Thus toa, treating of those euormous habiliments, 
 that were not only slashed and galooned, but artifi- 
 cially swollen-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 emitted several pecks of dry 
 wheat-dust : and stood there diminished to a spindle, 
 his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby 
 round him. WTiereupon the Professor publishes this 
 reflection : 
 
 ' By what strange chances do we live in History ? 
 
 * Erostratus by a torch ; Milo by a bullock ; Henry 
 ' Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his 
 ' limbs ; most Kings and Queens by being born under 
 
 * such and such a bed-tester ; Boileau Despreaux (ac- 
 ' cording 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 eff"ected eighteen inches long; through this the 
 ' mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and neck ; 
 ' 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.' 
 
 VV^ith which picture of a State of Nature, aifecting 
 by its singularity, and Old- Roman contempt of the 
 superfluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 
 
 If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, 
 Teufelsdrcickh, 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 un- 
 speakably important is it to know what course, of 
 survey and conquest, is the true one ; where the foot- 
 ing is firm substance and will bear us, where it is 
 hollow, or mere cloud, and may engulf us ! Teufels- 
 drockh undertakes no less than to expound the moral, 
 political, even religious Influences of Clothes ; he 
 undertakes to make manifest, in its thousandfold 
 bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's earthly in- 
 terests * 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 Clotli, as on a Faust's 
 ' Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and un- 
 ' clean beasts in the Apostle's Dream ; and without 
 * such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, 
 ' or m»unt 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 
 
 43 
 
44 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 unfolded, 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, pro- 
 ceeding 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 com- 
 plexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also 
 discernible- Often, also, we have to exclaim : Would 
 to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were 
 come ! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much 
 in the Author's individuality ; as if it were not Argu- 
 ment that had taught him, but Experience. At pre- 
 sent it is only in local glimpses, and by significant 
 fragments, picked often at wide-enough intervals from 
 the original Volume, and carefully collated, that we 
 can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this 
 Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more 
 invited to favour us with their most concentrated 
 attention : let these, after intense consideration, 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, per- 
 haps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have 
 canvas 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 your- 
 ^ self that unanswerable question : ^Viia am /; the_ 
 thing that can say '' I " {das Wesen dns sich Ich 
 ' nennt)} 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 integu- 
 
THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 45 
 
 ' merits (of Society and a Body), wherewith your Exist- 
 ' ence 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? Cogito, ergo .mm. 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 
 ' m all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of 
 'jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand- 
 ' voiced, harmonious Nature : but where is the cun- 
 ' uing eye and ear to whom that God-written Apoca- 
 ' lypse will yield articulate meaning? Me sit as in a 
 ' boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto ; bound- 
 
 * less, for the faintest star, the remotest 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 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 while fancying our- 
 ' selves most awake ! Which of your Philosophical 
 
 * Systems is other than a dream-theorem ; a net ({uo- 
 
 * tient, confidently given out, where divisor and divi- 
 *' dend are both unknown ? ^Vhat 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 
 
 * inexpressibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's 
 
46 
 
 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Being is still like the Sphinx's secret : a riddle that 
 he cannot 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 vacuum : how exceedingly false and calumnious ! 
 Again, Nothing can act but 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 1 stand on ? But ^ 
 that same Where, with its brother ^\^HEN, are from { 
 the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto ; say^ 
 rather, the Canvas (the warp and woof thereof) whereon ' 
 all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. Never- 
 theless, 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 Everywhere and Forever : 
 have not all nations conceived their God as Omni=_i 
 present and Eternal ; as existing in a universal Here, j- 
 an everlasting Now ? Think well, thou too wilt find 
 that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, so like- 
 wise 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 ^Forld, after all, were 
 but an air-image, our Me the only reality : and 
 Nature, with its thousandfold production and de- 
 struction, 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: 
 
THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES 47 
 
 * '* In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
 I walk and work, above, beneath. 
 Work and weave in endless motion ! 
 
 Birth and Death, 
 
 An infinite ocean ; 
 
 A seizing and giving 
 
 The fire of Living : 
 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply. 
 And weave for God the Grarment thou seest Him by." 
 
 ' Of twenty millious that have read and spouted this 
 
 * thunder-speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty 
 
 * units of us that have learned the meaning thereof? 
 
 ' It was in some such mood, when wearied and for- 
 ' done with these high specuLations, that 1 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 his 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 riglit place, are not wanting. While 
 
 * I — good Heaven ! — have that(;hed 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 beasts ; 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 I Day after 
 
 * day, 1 must thatch myself anew ; day after day, this 
 
 * despicable thatch must lose some film of its thick- 
 
 * ness ; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, 
 
 * must be brushed-off^ into the Ashpit, into the Lay- 
 ' stall ; fill 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 .' 
 
48 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ^ vile ! most vile ! For have not I too a compact all- 
 ' enclosings Skin, whiter or dinper ? Am I a botched 
 ' mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then ; or a 
 ' tig-htly - articulated, homogeneous little Figure, 
 ' automatic, nay alive ? 
 
 ' Strange enough how 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 
 ' readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. 
 /* Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute 
 
 V'\ 'Jawgiver ; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him 
 ; by the nose ; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let 
 
 ^j^ but a Creation of the World happen twice, and it 
 ^ceases to be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or notice- 
 ' able. Perhaps not once in a lifetime does it occur 
 ' to your ordinary 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, of our 
 ' 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 season, you see grazing deliberately 
 ^ with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in 
 ' the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is some- 
 ' thing great in the moment when a man first strips 
 ' himself of adventitious wrappages ; 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.' 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ADAMITISM 
 
 Let no courteous reader take offeuce at the opinions 
 broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The 
 Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular 
 passage, was inclined to exclaim : W^hat, have we got 
 not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in 
 the abstract ? A new Adamite, in this century, which 
 flatters 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 ; suck- 
 ing thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the 
 hlankest manner, what hadst thou been without thy 
 blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A 
 terror to thyself and mankind ! Or hast thou for- 
 gotten 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 neigh- 
 bour 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 
 name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is 
 distinguished? In that one word lie included mys- 
 terious volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is 
 over, or altered, and thv clothes are not for triumph 
 
 ■ *9 D 
 
60 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 but for defence, hast thou always worn them perforce, 
 and as a consequence 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 mud-boots, thy very 
 fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, thou hast bestrode 
 that ' Horse 1 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 tiowl, — 
 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. With- 
 out 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 Teufels- 
 drockh forgotten what he said kitely about * Aboriginal 
 Savages,' and their ' condition miserable indeed ' .'' 
 Would he have all this unsaid ; and us betake our- 
 selves again to the ' matted cloak,' and go sheeted in 
 a * thick natural fell ' t 
 
 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 tailorise and demoralise us,' have they no re- 
 deeming value ; can they not be altered to serve 
 better ; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs.^ 
 The truth is, Teufelsdruckh, though a Sansculottist, 
 is no Adamite ; and much perhaps as he might wish 
 
X 
 
 ADAMITISM 51 
 
 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 omnipotent virtue of 
 C lothes, such as was never before vouchsafed 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 M'ith 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 hut 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 conmianding 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 W^ord sets 
 ' all 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, squir- 
 rel-skins, and a plush-gown ; %vhereby all mortals 
 know that he is a Ji iigb.'^ — Society, which the more 
 1 think of it astonishes me theThore, is founded upon 
 C;loth. 
 
 ' 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 
 
52 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' Colonel A by General B, and innumerable Bishops, 
 
 * Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, are ad- 
 ' vancin^ gallantlj' 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 en- 
 ' chanter's wand, the — shall I speak it ? — the Clothes. 
 ' fly-oiFthe 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 and psychical infirmity, in 
 ' which perhaps 1 am not singular, 1 have, after hesita- 
 
 * tion, thought right to publish, for the solace of those 
 ' afflicted with the like.' 
 
 W^ould 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 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 simultane- 
 ' ously start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very 
 ' Deed, as here in Dream .^ Ach Gott! How each 
 ' skulks into the nearest hiding-place ; their high 
 
 * State Tragedy (Haupt- und Staats-Action) becomes a 
 ' Pick leherring- Farce to weep at, which is the worst 
 
 * kind of Farce ; the tables (according to Horace), and 
 
 * with them, the whole fabric of Government, Legisla- 
 ' tion. Property, Police, and Civilised Society, are 
 ' dissolved, in wails and howls.' 
 
 Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of 
 Ulndlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords i^ 
 Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on. 
 itself, and will not forward with the picture. The 
 Woolsack, the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches — 
 infandum ! wfandum ! And yet why is the thing im- 
 
ADAMITISM 63 
 
 possible ? 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 fantasti- 
 cally 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 Teufels- 
 drockh, had man ever such a ' physical or psychical 
 infirmity' before? And now how many, perhaps, may 
 thy unparalleled confession (which we, even to the 
 sounder British world, and goaded-on by Critical and 
 Biographical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably in- 
 fect therewith ! Art thou the maliguest of Sans- 
 culottists, 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, consi- 
 ' dering 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 Invio- 
 ' lability ; which, however, 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 stick and red 
 
 * clout, to the market : " or if some drivers, as they 
 ' do in Norfolk, t<ike a dried bladder and put peas in 
 
 * it^ the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest ! ' 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PURK REASON 
 
 It must now be apparent enough that our Professoiv 
 as above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the 
 very darkest tinge ; acknowledging, for most part, iri 
 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 requires, 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 Teufels- 
 drockli ; ' 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 rim- 
 
 * ming of wheels, something of the laws of unstable 
 ' and stable equilibrium, with other branches of wagon- 
 ' science, and has actually put forth his hand and 
 ' operated on Nature, is the more cunningly gifted 
 ' of the two. V\''hence, then, their so unspeakable 
 
 * difference? From Clothes.' Much also we shall 
 omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My 
 Lady, and how it would be everywhere ' Hail fellow 
 well met,' and Chaos were come again : all which to 
 any one that has once fairly pictured-out the grau-^ 
 
 54 
 
PURE REASON^ 55 
 
 mother-idea, Socirtf/ in a State of Nakedness, will 
 spontaneously sui^^irest 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 orig-inal 
 Volume, and view there the boundless Serbonian Bog 
 of Sansculottism, stretchini? 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 riveting emphasis, be 
 not of itself incontrovertible and final : 
 
 ^Are we Opossums; have we natural Pouches, like 
 ' the Kangaroo? Or hov7, 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 
 Teufelsdrockh ; 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 indifl'erence, which must have sunk him in the 
 estimation of most readers, — there is that within which 
 unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and 
 present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculi- 
 arity of Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descen- 
 dentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less 
 superlative ; whereby if on the one hand he degrade 
 man below most animals, except those jacketed 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 bis like, ond 
 
66 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * dwells with them in Union and Division ; and sees 
 ' and fashions for himself a Universe^ with azure Starry 
 ' Spaces, and lon^ Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden 
 
 * is he under tliat strange Garment ; amid Sounds and 
 ' Colours and Forms, as it were, swatlied-in, and 
 ' inextricably over-shrouded : yet it is sky-woven, and 
 ^ worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the 
 
 * centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? 
 ' He feels ; })o\ver has been ^iven 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 ? Well said Saint Chry- 
 ' sostcm, with his lips of gold, ''the true Shekinah is 
 ' Man : " where else is the God's-Presence manifested 
 ' not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our 
 
 * fellow-man ? ' 
 
 In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high 
 Platonic 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 coppery clouds soon roll together again, and 
 hide it from view. 
 
 Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere 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 : tlius, if in the higliest Imperial Sceptre and 
 Charlemagne-Mantle, as well as in the poorest Ox- 
 goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Con- 
 temptibility ; there is in each sort Poetry also, and a 
 reverend AVorth. For Matter, were it never so des- 
 picable, is Spirit, the manifestation 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, ' unim- 
 aginable, formless, dark with excess of bright ' ? 
 
PURE REASON 67 
 
 Under which point of view the following- passage, so 
 strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems char- 
 acteristic enough : 
 
 *The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly 
 " on Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they 
 ^become traiupm-ent. *'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 ? 
 
 ' Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a 
 
 * Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank- 
 ' paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man him- 
 *self; and discern, it may be, in this or the other 
 ' Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Di- 
 
 * gestive-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 
 necessity 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 certiiin 
 ' stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a 
 ' reign in partibus infidelium.' That progress of Science, 
 which is to destroy AVonder, and in its stead substitute 
 Meiisuration and Numeration, finds small favour with 
 Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates these 
 two latter processes. 
 
 * 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 aa 
 
58 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' 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 handi- 
 
 * crafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul 
 f * in it) is too noble an organ ? I mean that Thought 
 
 ' without Reverence 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-spreading 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-loving men : ' that whole class is in- 
 expressibly wearisome to him. Hear with what un- 
 common animation he perorates : 
 
 ' The man who cannot wonder, who does not 
 
 ' habitually wonder (and worship), were he President 
 
 ' of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole 
 
 ' Mtcanique Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the 
 
 ' epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with 
 
 j ' 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. 
 
 r. 
 
PURE REASON 59 
 
 'Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt 
 
 * walk through thy world hy the sunshine of what 
 ' thou callest Trutli , or even by the hand-lamp of what 
 ' I call Attorney-Logic; and "explain" all, "^'account" 
 ' for all, or believe nothing of it ? Nay, thou wilt 
 ' attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathom- 
 ' able, all-pervading 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 hand-lamp, and shriek, 
 ' as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it? — 
 ' Armer Teufel! Doth not thy cow calve, doth not 
 
 * thy bull gender ? 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' 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 PROSPECTIVE 
 
 The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers^ as wc 
 predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new bound- 
 lesis expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical 
 aspect, yet not without azure loomings in the far dis- 
 tiuice, and streaks as of an Elysian brightness ; the 
 highly questionable 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 thyself, 
 
 * O cultivated reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, 
 
 * but a Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, 
 
 * knowest thou any corner of the world where at least 
 ' Force is not? The drop which thou shakest from 
 
 * thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow 
 
 * thou findest it swept away ; already on the wings of 
 
 * the North wind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. 
 
 * How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? 
 
PROSPECTIVE 61 
 
 Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without 
 Force, and utterly dead? 
 
 'As I rode throug-h the Schwarzwald, I said to 
 myself: That little fire which glows star-like across 
 the dark-growing (narhtende) moor, where the sooty 
 smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace 
 thy lost horse-shoe, — is it a detached, separated 
 speck, cut-ofF from the whole Universe ; or indis- 
 solubly 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 be- 
 yond the Dogstar ; therein, with Iron Force, and 
 C^oal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are 
 cunning affinities and battles and 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 ou 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-commanding. 
 
 ^ Detached, separated ! I say there is no such 
 separation : 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 
 metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and 
 lost, there are Forces in it and around it, though 
 working in inverse order; else how coTild it rot? 
 Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or 
 tlie litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly 
 viewed no meanest object is insignificant ; all objects 
 are as windows, through which the philosophic eye 
 looks into Infinitude itself.' 
 
 Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy- 
 Altar, wliat vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, 
 and whither will they sail with us? 
 
62 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * All 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 hody it forth. Hence 
 ' Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so un- 
 ' speakably significant. Clothes, from the King's 
 ' mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want only, 
 
 * but of a manifold cunning V^ictory over ^\^ant. 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 other- 
 ' wise) revealed such even to the outward eye ? 
 
 * 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 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- 
 ' Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that 
 
 * Imagination wove this Flesh-Garme«it ; and does 
 ' not she ? Metaphors are her stuff : examine Lan- 
 ' guage ; what, if you except some few primitive ele- 
 ' ments (of natural sound), vvhat 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, Language, — then are 
 
 * Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integu- 
 
 * ments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain 
 ' seek for : is not your very Attention a Stretching-to ? 
 ' The difference lies here : some styles are lean, adust, 
 ^ wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; some are even 
 ' quite i)allid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking ; while 
 
PROSPECTIVE 63 
 
 * others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous 
 ' self-growth^ sometimes (as in my own case) not with- 
 ' out an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are 
 ^ sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same 
 ^ Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively be- 
 ' dizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its 
 '^ false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks {Putz-MlJntel), 
 ^ and tawdry woollen rags : whereof lie that runs and 
 
 * reads may gather whole hampers, — and burn them.' 
 
 llian 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 and the Earth shall fade away like a 
 ' Vesture ; which indeed they are : the Time-vesture 
 ^ of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatso- 
 ' ever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Cloth- 
 
 * ing, 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 tliat 
 
 * 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 of 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 kindness of a Scottish Ham- 
 burg Merchant, whose name, known to the whole 
 mercantile world, he must not mention ; but whose 
 honoural»le courtesy, now and often before spon- 
 taneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger. 
 
64 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 he cannot soon forget, — the bulky ^reissnichtwo 
 Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreig^n 
 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. 
 
 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 {Gemi'dh), and equally speaks thereto, 
 can attain its significance till the Character itself is 
 known and seen ; ' till the Author's View of the World 
 ' ( Weltansicht), 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 speculative scientific Truth even known, you still, 
 ' in this inquiring 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 tlie 
 ~*^forged ones of Fiction, a complete picture and Gene- 
 ' tical History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavour 
 * lies before you. But why,' says the Hofrath, and 
 indeed say we, ' do 1 dilate on the uses of our Teufels- 
 ' drockh's Biography? The great Herr Minister von 
 ' Goethe has penetratingly remarked that '' Man is 
 ' properly the only object that interests man :" thus 1 
 ' too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole con- 
 ' versation is little or nothing else but Biography or 
 ' Auto- Biography ; ever humano-anecdotical {mensch- 
 ' lich-anekdotisch). Biography is by nature the most 
 
PROSPECTIVE 65 
 
 * universally profitable, universally pleasant of all 
 ' things : especially Biography of distinguished indi- 
 *' viduals. 
 
 ' By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Esteemed),' 
 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 portions and passages as you have already 
 ' mastered, and brought to paper, could not but 
 ' awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind they 
 ' issued from ; the perhaps unparalleled psychical 
 ' mechanism, which manufactured 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 prophetic 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-soiied ; 
 ' has parted with road - companions ; fallen among 
 ' thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered 
 ' with bugbites ; 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 sym- 
 ' pathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are 
 
QG SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' these nowhere forthcoming ? 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 to 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 Auto- 
 ' biography : at least the materials for such ; where- 
 ' from, if I misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw 
 ' fullest insight : and so the whole Philosophy and 
 * Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the won- 
 ' dering eyes of England, nay thence, through America, 
 ' through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, 
 ' finally conquer (einnehmen) great part of this ter- 
 ' restrial 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-schrijl ; and treat- 
 ing 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. 
 
 Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, 
 or, 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-theo- 
 logical Disquisition, ^Detached Thoughts on the 
 Steam - engine,' or, ' The continued Possibility of 
 Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not 
 unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets 
 stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent 
 waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest 
 without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate 
 
PROSPECTIVE 67 
 
 slips, like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long 
 purely Autobiographical delineations ; yet without 
 connexion, without recognisable coherence ; so unim- 
 portant, so superfluously minute, they almost remind 
 us of ' P.P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus does famine 
 of intelligence alternate with waste. Selection, 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 con- 
 founded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, ' On 
 receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie wash-bills, marked 
 hezahlt (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 collec- 
 tion 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 inter- 
 mixture will farther volatilise and discompose it ! As 
 we shall perhaps 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 Autobiography 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 delineation of it. 
 
 Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green 
 spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents 
 from their perplexed cursiv-schrift ; 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. 
 
68 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Never perhaps since our first Bridie-builders, Sin and 
 Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to 
 the Earth, did any Poutifex, 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 Where- 
 fore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be 
 swallowed up. 
 
 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 in- 
 flamed 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, ia 
 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. 
 
BOOK SECOND 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GENESIS 
 
 In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps ques- 
 tionable whether from birth and genealogy, how 
 closely scrutinised soever, much insight is to be 
 gained. Nevertheless, 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 circum- 
 stances 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 ; 
 childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though 
 now verging towards old age. Andreas had been 
 grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental School- 
 master under Frederick the Great ; Imt now, quitting 
 the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning- 
 
 hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce 
 
 m 
 
70 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without 
 ' dij2rnity. 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 School- 
 ' master), 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 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 subordina- 
 
 * tion ; 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, downright- 
 ' ness (Geradheit) ; that understood Biisching's Geo- 
 ' graphy, had been in the victory of Rossbach, and 
 ' left for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch? The 
 ' good Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over 
 ' him and hovered round him as only a true house- 
 ' mother can : assiduously she cooked and sewed and 
 ' scoured for him ; so that not only his old regi- 
 ' mental 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, evergreens and honeysuckles ; rising 
 ' many-coloured from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers 
 ' struggling-in through the very windows ; under its 
 
GENESIS 71 
 
 * long projecting' eaves nothing but garden-tools in 
 ' methodic piles (to screen them from rain), and seats 
 ' where, especially on summer nights, a King might 
 ' have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. Such 
 ' a Bauergut (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 Entepfuhl, 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 ; which without farther parley unfold- 
 ing, he deposited therefrom what seemed some 
 Basket, overhung with green Persian silk ; saying 
 only : Ihr liehen Leute, hier hringe ein unschdtzbares 
 Verleihen ; nehmt es in nller Aehf, .sorgfaltigst heniitzt 
 es : mit hoheni Lohn, oder wohl mit schweren Zinsen, 
 wird 's einst zuriickgefordert. '^ Good Christian people, 
 here lies for you 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, forever memorable tone, 
 the Stranger gracefully withdrew ; and before An- 
 dreas or his wife, gazing in expectant 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 still- 
 ness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the 
 Futterals could have fancied it all a trick of Imagina- 
 tion, or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only 
 that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Imagina- 
 tion nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still 
 stood visible and tangible on their little parlour- 
 
72 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' table. Towards this the astonished couple, now with 
 ' lit candle, hastily turned their attention. Lifting 
 ' the preen veil, to see what invaluable it hid, they 
 ' descried there, amid down and rich white wrappages, 
 ' no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the 
 ' softest sleep, a little red-coloured Infant ! Beside it, 
 
 * lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, 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 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 Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem 
 ' was : What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured 
 ' Infant } 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 himself 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 Herr Diogenes Teufels- 
 ' DROCKH, 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 communi- 
 cated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth 
 year, ' produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite 
 ' indelible impression. Who this reverend Personage,' 
 he says, ' that glided into the Orchard Cottage when 
 
GENESIS 73 
 
 ' 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 dis- 
 ' tresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of 
 ' longing (sehnsucktsvo/l), to that unknown Father, who 
 ' perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way in- 
 ' visible, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, 
 ' there to lie screened from many a woe. Thou be- 
 
 * loved 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 Ever- 
 ' lasting 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 I taken for thee this and the other 
 ' noble-looking Stranger ; and approached him wist- 
 ' fully, with infinite regard ; but he too had to repel 
 ' me, he too was not thou. 
 
 ' And yetj 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 
 ' Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be in- 
 ' ferred : a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like 
 ' thousands of others. On the Name I have many 
 ' times meditated and conjectured ; but neither in this 
 ^ lay there any clue. That it was my unknown Father's 
 
74 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 name I must hesitate to believe. To no purpose 
 have I searched through all the Herald's Books, iu 
 and without the German Empire, and through all 
 manner of Subscriber-Lists {Priinumeranten), Militia- 
 Rolls, and other Name-catalogues ; extraordinary 
 names as we have in Germany, the name Teufels- 
 drockh, except as appended to my own person, no- 
 where occurs. Again, what may the unchristian 
 rather than Christian "Diogenes" mean? Did 
 that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by such de- 
 signation, to shadow-forth my future destiny, or his 
 own present malign humour.^ Perhaps the latter, 
 perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like an 
 Ostrich hadst to 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 ? Beset by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been ; 
 or indeed by the worst figure of Misfortune, by Mis- 
 conduct. 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 ! AV^hich Appeal and Protest, may I 
 now modestly add, was not perhaps quite lost in 
 air. 
 
 ' For indeed, as \Valter Shandy often insisted, there 
 is much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the 
 earliest Garment you wrap round the earth-visiting 
 Me ; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously 
 (for there are names that have lasted nigh thirty 
 centuries) than the very skin. And now from with- 
 out, 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 invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all 
 
GENESIS 76 
 
 ' overshadowing 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 con- 
 ^ tinuation of the same ; be the Appearances exotic- 
 ' vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, or starry move- 
 ' ments (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 AV'hy, 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, endeavour- 
 ' ing 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 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 albu- 
 ' men ; and out of vague Sensation grows Thought, 
 ' grows Fantasy and Force, and we have Philosophies, 
 ' Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions ! 
 
 ' Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for 
 ' by such diminutive had they in their fondness named 
 ' him, travelled forward to those high consummations, 
 ' by quick yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid 
 ' vain talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Fried- 
 * richs safe, gave-out that he was a grand-nephew ; the 
 
76 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' orphan of some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, 
 ' in Andreas's distant Prussian birthland ; of whom, 
 ' as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough 
 ' was known at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the 
 
 * Nurseling took to his spoon-meat, and throve. 1 
 ^ 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 whim- 
 ' pering.' 
 
 Such, after utmost painful search and collation 
 among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the 
 notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's gene- 
 alogy. 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 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 cultivated native of that 
 district might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, 
 since Books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole 
 habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is not safe from 
 British Literature, may not some Copy find out even 
 the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state 
 of extreme senility perhaps still exists ; and gently 
 force even him to disclose himself ; to claim openly a 
 SOD, in whom any father may feel pride ? 
 
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 {umgaukelt) 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 Eternity, 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 down-rushing of the universal 
 A\'^orld-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 forever 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, wilt have 
 to say in stem patience : " Rest? Rest? Shall I not 
 have all Eternity to rest in ? " Celestial 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 eyelids, 
 on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, 
 
 77 
 
78 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' sleep and waking are one : the fair Life-garden 
 ' rustles infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fra- 
 ' grauce, and the budding of Hope ; which budding, if 
 ' in youth, too frostnipt, it grow 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 his- 
 torical 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 outpost 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 Martins 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 sum- 
 ' m.er t\v ilights,' cries Teufelsdrockh, ' when the Sun, 
 ^ like a proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, 
 ^ turned his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, 
 
 * and all his fireclad body-guard (of Prismatic Colours); 
 ' and the tired brickmakers of this clay Earth might 
 ' steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars would 
 ' not tell of them ! ' 
 
 Then we have long details of the Weinlesen (Vintage), 
 the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth ; with a 
 whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children' s-games, differ- 
 ing 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 
 
IDYLLIC 79 
 
 even where is the use of such practical reflections as 
 the following-? * In all the sports of Children, were 
 it only in their wanton breakages and defacements, 
 you shall discern a creativ^e instinct {tichaffendcn 
 Trieb) : 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 pen-gun, 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 Cooperation, for 
 war or peace, as governor or governed : the little 
 Maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, takes 
 with preference to Dolls. ' 
 
 Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, con- 
 sidering 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 in- 
 
 * divisible, 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 significance ! ' 
 
 More g-raceful is the following little picture : ' On 
 ' fine evenings I was wont to carry-forth my supper 
 ' (bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. 
 ' On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which 1 could 
 
 * reach by climbing, or still more easily if Father 
 
 * Andreas would set-up the pruning-ladder, my por- 
 ' ringer was placed : there, many a sunset, have I, 
 
 * looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, 
 
 * not without relish, my evening meal. These hues of 
 ' gold and azure, that hush of World's expectation as 
 ' Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me ; never- 
 ' theless 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 {bedeut- 
 
BO SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ungsvoll) was it to hear, in early morning, the Swine- 
 herd'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 marching-in again, with short 
 squeak, almost in military order ; and each, topo- 
 graphically correct, trotting-oiF in succession to the 
 right or left, through its own lane, to its own dwell- 
 ing ; 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 sub- 
 missiveness to Man, — who, were he but a Swine- 
 herd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches more 
 resembling slate or discoloured-tiu 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 favourable influences 
 accompany him through life, especially through child- 
 hood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded 
 and continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the 
 whole difi^erence 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 digestion, and the like, has exuded and 
 evaporated, or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stag- 
 nant 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 ail-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 
 
IDYLLIC 81 
 
 * 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 char- 
 ' acteristic circumstances of their Education, what 
 ' furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified 
 ' it : to which duty, nowadays so pressing for many 
 ^ a German Autobiographer, I also zealously address 
 ' myself.' — Thou rogue ! Is it by short-clothes of 
 yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that an infant of 
 genius is educated.'* And yet, as usual, it ever re- 
 mains 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, Hearings, 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 .ports 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 gray austere yet hearty 
 patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another 
 Ulysses and *' much-enduring Man," Eagerly I 
 hung upon his tales, when listening neighbours en- 
 livened the hearth ; from these perils and these 
 travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim 
 world of Adventure expanded itself within me. In- 
 calculable 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 
 Eiitepfuhl stood in the middle of a Country, of a 
 World ; that there was such a thing as History, as 
 Biography ; to which 1 also, one day, by hand and 
 tongue, might contribute. 
 
 p 
 
82 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' In a like sense worked the Postwagen (Stage-coach), 
 which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and 
 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 ter- 
 restrial 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 re- 
 flection (so true also in spiritual things) : Any road, 
 this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of 
 the World! 
 
 'Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far 
 Africa, as 1 learned, threading their way over seas 
 and mountains, corporate cities and belligerent 
 nations, yearly found themselves, with the month of 
 May, snug-lodged in our Cottage Lobby } The hos- 
 pitable 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 incorpoi*ation, 
 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, complete it 
 again before nightfall ? 
 
 ' But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl 
 child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold 
 influences were concentrated and simultaneously 
 poured-down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. 
 Here, assembling from all the four winds, came the 
 elements of an unspeakable hurlyburly. Nutbrown 
 maids and nutbro.yn men, all clear-washed, loud- 
 laughing, bedizened and beribanded ; who came for 
 
IDYLLIC 83 
 
 dancing, for treating, and if possible, for happiness. 
 Topbooted Graziers from the North ; Swiss Brokers, 
 Italian Drovers, also topbooted, from the South ; 
 these with their subalterns in leather jerkins, leather 
 skull-caps, and long oxgoads ; shouting in half-articu- 
 late speech, amid the inarticulate barking and bellow- 
 ing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their 
 crockery in fair rows ; Niirnberg Pedlars, in booths 
 that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazaars ; Show- 
 men from the Lago Maggiore ; detachments 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 confounding 
 the confusion ; and high over all, vaulted, in ground- 
 and-lofty tumbling, a particoloured Merry-Andrew, 
 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 contribu- 
 tion, for even grim Winter brought its skating- 
 matches and shooting-matches, its snow-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 matters it whether such 
 Alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt 
 ones, so you have an eye to read it? For Gneschen, 
 eager to learn, the very act of looking 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 rainbow 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 reappeared, nay ever waxing 
 
84 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' broader and broader ; till in after-years it almost 
 ^ over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to 
 ' enj^ulf 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 understood 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, ingenuous 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 {Thatkraft) was 
 unfavourably hemmed-in ; of which misfortune how 
 many traces yet abide with me ! In an orderly 
 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 ; 
 everywhere 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 bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our 
 life is mingled and tempered. 
 
 ' In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was 
 beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. 
 Obedience is our universal duty and destiny ; wherein 
 wlioso 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 
 
IDYLLIC 85 
 
 ' 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, everyway un- 
 ' scientific : yet in that very strictness and domestic 
 ' solitude might there not lie the root of deeper 
 ' earnestness, of tlie 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 
 
 * altogether invaluable service : she taught me, less 
 
 * indeed by word than by act and daily reverent look 
 ^ and habitude, 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 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 Religious. How indestructibly 
 ' the Good grows, and propagates itself, ev^u 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 ! 
 
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 
 movement 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 Doc- 
 trine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. 
 For with Gneschen, 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 everyway excellent * Passivity ' 
 of his, which, with no free development of the an- 
 tagonist Activity, distinguished 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 
 
 8<i 
 
PEDAGOGY 87 
 
 without Activity of any kind, a No-man ; for the deep- 
 sighted, again, a man with Activity almost super- 
 abundant, 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 Euro- 
 pean ; above all, disadvantageous 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, 
 Teufelsdrockh 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 Schoolmaster, 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, pronounced 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, 1 with my own hands sewed into volumes. 
 ' By this means was the young head furnished with a 
 ' considerable miscellany of things and shadows of 
 ' things : History in authentic fragments lay mingled 
 ' with Fabulous 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 
 
88 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 manifest an inward vivacity that promised much ; 
 symptoms of a spirit sing'ularly 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 1 sat by the 
 Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flow- 
 ing, 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 Commentaries dry, — this little Kuhbach, 
 assiduous as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring 
 on across the wilderness, 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 atmospheric arteries, has 
 lasted and lasts simply with the world. Thou fool ! 
 Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mush- 
 room ; 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 of those 
 well-nigh unutterable meditations on the grandeur and 
 mystery of Time, and its relation to Eternity, which 
 play such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes } 
 
 Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Pro- 
 fessor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over 
 his childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still ; but 
 intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there 
 stagnating 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 Schxddthurm (Jail), 
 ' and the aproned or disaproned Burghers moving-in 
 
PEDAGOGY 89 
 
 to breakfast : a little dog, in mad terror, was rush- 
 ing past ; for some human imps had tied a tin-kettle 
 to its tail ; thus did the agonised creature, loud- 
 jingling, career through the whole length of the 
 Borough, 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 ! 
 
 * Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were 
 hidden in the distance : 1 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 were Boys,' he says, ^ mostly 
 rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, 
 which bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, 
 the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged 
 brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyran- 
 nise over the weak.' He admits, that though ^per- 
 haps in an unusual degree morally courageous,' he 
 succeeded ill in battle, and would fain have avoided 
 a result, as would appear, owing less to his small 
 personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was 
 incredibly nimble'), than to his ' virtuous principles : ' 
 if it was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, ' it was 
 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 Teufels- 
 drockh'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 thir- 
 
 * teeuth year^ was indeed not quite unmerited. Only 
 
90 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' 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 pump- 
 kins, reed-grass and ignoble shrubs ; and forced if it 
 would live, to struggle upwards only, and not out- 
 wards ; into a height quite sickly, and disproportioned 
 to its breadth ? 
 
 We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 
 ' mechanically ' taught ; Hebrew scarce even mechani- 
 cally ; much else which they called History, Cosmo- 
 graphy, 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 learn- 
 ^ ing many things ; ' and farther lighted on some small 
 store of curious reading, in Hans VVachtel 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 following Bag, 
 he shows 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 boy's ; or 
 ' of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account- 
 ^ books. Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Lau- 
 ^ guage, 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 anything ; 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 ; 
 
PEDAGOGY 91 
 
 TTiought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought? 
 How shall he give kindling, in whose own inward 
 man there is no live coal, but all is burnt-out to a 
 dead grammatical cinder ? The Hinterschlag Pro- 
 fessors knew syntax enough ; and of the human soul 
 thus much : that it had a faculty called Memory, and 
 could be acted-on through the muscular integument 
 by appliance of birch-rods. 
 
 ' Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be ; till 
 the Hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing ; 
 and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly 
 encouraged ; till communities and individuals dis- 
 cover, 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 Fieldmarshals 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, no- 
 where, far as i have travelled, did the Schoolmaster 
 make show of his iustructing-tool : nay, were he to 
 walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he there- 
 from expected honour, would there not, among the 
 idler class, perhaps a certain levity be excited } ' 
 In the third year of this Gymnasic period. Father 
 Andreas seems to have died : the young Scholar, 
 otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first 
 time clad outwardly 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 innumer- 
 ' able silent nations and generations, stood before 
 -' him ; the inexorable word. Never ! now first showed 
 
 * its meaning. iVIy 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 ex- 
 periences, planted down by Memory in my Imagiua- 
 
92 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 tion, 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 Cypress-tree ; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable 
 Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look 
 upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties 
 of tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its 
 loudest threatenings with a still smile. O 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-bearing 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 I' 
 
 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 
 genealogy 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 con- 
 cerns 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 Possession, but even of Remem- 
 ' brance. Sorrow and Wonder, here suddenly united, 
 ' could not but produce abundant fruit. Such a dis- 
 
 * closure, in such a season, struck its roots through 
 
 * my whole nature : ever till the years of mature man- 
 
 * hood, 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 corre- 
 
PEDAGOGY 93 
 
 ^ sponding civic depression, it naturally imparted : / 
 ' was like no other ; in which fixed-idea, leading some- 
 ' times to highest, and oftener to frightfullest results, 
 ^ may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, 
 ' which 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 
 itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the 
 way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can 
 now surprise our readers ; not even the total want of 
 dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical work. 
 So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and 
 must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In 
 Sagittarius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show 
 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 University, and the subse- 
 quent, years ; much more, to decipher therein any illus- 
 trative primordial elements of the 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 en- 
 dowment, who 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, 
 diligently, thirstily, yet never or seldom with his whole 
 heart, for the water nowise suits his palate ; discourage- 
 ments, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or 
 supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses 
 wanting ; for ' the good Gretchen, who in spite of 
 
94 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' advices from not disinterested relatives has sent him 
 ' hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but 
 ' too feeble hand.' Nevertheless 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 Diogenes Teufelsdrockh 
 waxed into manly stature ; and into so questionable 
 an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness, How he 
 specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no 
 more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible 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 upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall-in with 
 such matter as this : ' The University where I was 
 educated still stands vivid enough in my remem- 
 brance, and I know its name well ; which name, 
 however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and 
 persons, shall in nowise 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 : wherefore, 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; fur- 
 nislied it with a small, ill-chosen Library ; and then 
 turned loose into it eleven-hundred Christian strip- 
 lings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to 
 
PEDAGOGY 96 
 
 seven years : certain persons, under the title of Pro- 
 fessors, being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud 
 that it was a University, and exact considerable ad- 
 mission-fees, — you had, not indeed in mechanical 
 structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect 
 resemblance of our High Seminary. 1 say, imperfect; 
 for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so 
 neither was our result altogether the same : un- 
 happily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a 
 corrupt European city, full of smoke and sin ; more- 
 over, in the middle of a Public, which, without far 
 costlier apparatus than that of the Square 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. To- 
 wards anything like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, 
 little as yet has been done ; with a strange indiff'er- 
 ence, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for 
 minor Branches of Industry, have altogether over- 
 looked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch ; 
 as if our whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priest- 
 craft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts 
 and mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Pro- 
 ductive Industry at all ! Can any one, for example, 
 so much as say, VV hat moneys, in Literature and 
 Shoeblacking, are realised by actual Instruction and 
 actual jet Polish ; what by fictitious-persuasive Pro- 
 clamation of such ; specifying, in distinct items, the 
 distributions, circulations, disbursements, incomings 
 of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accu- 
 racy ? But to ask. How far, in all the several in- 
 finitely-complected departments of social business, in 
 government, education, in manual, commercial, in- 
 tellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is 
 supplied by true Ware ; how far by the mere Appear- 
 ance of true VV^are :— in other words. To what extent, 
 by what methods, with what effects, in various times 
 and countries, Deception takes the place of wages of 
 Performance : here truly is an Inquiry big with re- 
 
96 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 suits for the future time, but to which hitherto only 
 the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, 
 in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of VV^are to 
 Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a 
 Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, 
 Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is pro- 
 bably not far from the mark), — what almost pro- 
 digious saving may there not be anticipated, as the 
 Statistics of Imposture advances, and so the manu- 
 facturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into 
 clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually 
 declines, and at length becomes all but wholly un- 
 necessary ! 
 
 ' 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 coagulated water, or mere imagination 
 of meat ; whereby, till the real supply came up, they 
 might be kept together and quiet.'' Such perhaps 
 was the aim of Nature, who does nothing without 
 aim, in furnishing her favourite, Man, with this his 
 so omnipotent or rather omnipatient Talent of being 
 Gulled. 
 
 ' How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; 
 nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These 
 Professors in tlie 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 persons. Which Reputation, like 
 a strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the 
 general current, bade fair, with only a little annual 
 
PEDAGOGY 97 
 
 repainting on their part, to hold long together, and 
 of its own accord assiduously grind for them. Happy 
 that it was so, for the Millers ! They themselves 
 needed not to work ; their attempts at working, at 
 what they called Educating, now when I look back 
 on it, 511 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 fur- , 
 nished with much talk about Progress of the Species, p 
 Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like ; so that all 
 were quickly enough blown out into a state of windy 
 argumentativeness ; whereby the better sort had /* 
 soon to end in sick, impotent 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 long-drawn systole 
 and long-drawn 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 hiber- 
 nating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca 
 University, or Sybaris City, or other superstitious 
 or voluptuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber- 
 through, in stupid dreams, and only awaken when 
 tke loud-roaring hailstorms have all done their work, 
 and to our prayers and martyrdoms the new Spring 
 has been vouchsafed.' 
 
 That in the environment, here mysteriously enough 
 
98 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 shadowed forth, Teufekdrockh must have felt ill at 
 ease, cannot be doubtful. *The hungry younj;^/ he 
 says, ' looked up to their spiritual Nurses ; and, for 
 ' food, were bidden eat tlie east-wind. What vain 
 
 * jargon of controversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and 
 ' mechanical Manipulation falsely named Science, was 
 ' current there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than 
 
 * the most. Among eleven-hundred Christian youths, 
 ' there will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. 
 
 * By collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain 
 ' polish was communicated ; by instinct and happy 
 ' accident, I took less to rioting {renommiren), than 
 
 * to thinking and reading, which latter also I was 
 
 * free to do. Nay from the chaos of that Library, I 
 ' succeeded in fishing-up more books perhaps than 
 
 * had been known to the very keepers thereof. The 
 
 * foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid : I 
 
 * learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in 
 
 * almost all cultivated languages, on almost all sub- 
 ' jects and sciences ; farther, as man is ever the prime 
 
 * object to man, already it was my favourite employ- 
 P ment to read character in speculation, and from the 
 f Writing to construe the Writer. A certain ground- 
 plan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion 
 itself in me ; wondrous enough, now when I look 
 back on it ; for my whole Universe, physical and 
 spiritual, was as yet a Machine ! However, such a 
 conscious, recognised groundplan, the truest 1 had, 
 was beginning to be there, and by additional experi- 
 ments might be corrected and indefinitely extended.' 
 
 Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler 
 wealth ; thus in the destitution of the wild desert 
 does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the 
 highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Never- 
 theless a desert this was, waste, and howling with 
 savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of 
 his * fever-paroxysms of Doubt;' his Inquiries concern- 
 ing Miracles, and the Evidences of religious Faith ; and 
 how * in the silent night-watches, still darker in his 
 
 * heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself 
 
PEDAGOGY 99 
 
 * before the All-seeiug", and with audible prayers cried 
 ' vehemently for Light, for deliverance fron) Death 
 ' and the Grave. Not till after long years, and un- 
 ' speakable agonies, did the believing heart surrender; 
 ' sink into spell-bound sleep, under the nightmare, 
 ' Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream^ mistake 
 ' God's fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades 
 ' and extinct Pandemonium. But through such Pur- 
 ' gatory pain,' continues he, ' it is appointed us to 
 ^ pass ; first must the dead Letter of Religion own 
 ^ itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the 
 ' living Spirit of Religion, freed from this its charnel- 
 ^ house, is_to arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and 
 
 * witlTnew healing under its wings.' 
 
 To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, 
 if we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want 
 of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of \ 
 money, want of hope ; and all this in the fervid season 
 of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless 
 in desires, yet here so poor in means, — do we not see 
 a strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from 
 without and from within ; the fire of genius struggling- 
 up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with 
 more of bitter vapour than of clear flame } 
 
 From various fragments of Letters and other docu- 
 mentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, 
 isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether 
 escaped notice : certain established men are aware of 
 his existence ; and, if stretching-out no helpful hand, 
 have at least their eyes on him. He appears, though 
 in dreary enough humour, to be addressing himself to 
 the Profession of Law ; — whereof, indeed, the world 
 has since seen him a public graduate. But omitting 
 these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical 
 relation, let us present rather the following small 
 thread of Moral relation ; and therewith, the reader 
 for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude 
 our dim arras-picture of these University years. 
 
 ' Here also it was that I formed ac(juaintance with 
 ' Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written. 
 
100 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Herr Toughgut ; a young person of quality (von 
 Adel), from the interior parts of England. He 
 stood connected, by blood and hospitality, with the 
 Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter of Germany ; 
 to which noble Family I likewise was, by his means, 
 with all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had 
 a fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated ; with con- 
 siderable humour of character : and, bating his total 
 ignorance, for he knew nothing except Boxing and 
 a little Grammar, showed less of that aristocratic 
 impassivity, and silent fury, than for most part 
 belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I owe 
 my first practical knowledge of the English and their 
 ways ; perhaps also something of the partiality with 
 which I have ever since regarded that singular 
 people. Towgood was not without an eye, could 
 he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the 
 presence of the Zahdarm Family, he had travelled 
 hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his 
 studies ; he, whose studies had as yet been those of 
 infancy, hither to a University where so much as the 
 notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, 
 no longer existed ! Often we would condole over 
 the hard destiny of the Young in this era : how, 
 after all our toil, we were to be turned-out into the 
 world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with few 
 other attributes of manhood ; no existing thing that 
 we were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so 
 much as Believe. " How has our head on the out- 
 side a polished Hat," would Towgood exclaim, " and 
 in the inside A'^acancy, or a froth of Vocables and 
 Attorney- Logic ! At a small cost men are educated^ 
 to make leather into shoes ; but at a great cost, what 
 am I educated to make .'* By Heaven, Brother ! 
 what I have already eaten and worn, as 1 came thus 
 far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incur- 
 ables." — " Man, indeed," I would answer, " has a 
 Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, 
 were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis- 
 education^ make not bad worse ; waste not the time 
 
PEDAGOGY 101 
 
 yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have 
 yielded us no ligs. Frisch zu, Bruder ! Here are 
 Books_, and we have brains to read them ; here is a 
 whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes 
 to look on them : Frisch zu!" 
 
 ' Often also our talk was gay ; not without brilliancy, 
 and even fire. We looked-out on Life, with its 
 strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins 
 dance, and men are beheaded and quartered : motley, 
 not unterrific was the aspect ; but we looked on it 
 like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps 
 my most genial hours. Towards this young warm- 
 hearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Tow- 
 good I was even near experiencing the now obsolete 
 sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that 
 1 was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could 
 have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, 
 and been his brother once and always. By degrees, 
 however, I understood the new time, and its wants. 
 H man's Soul is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, 
 and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stomach, what 
 else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an 
 Eating together.'' Thus we, instead of Friends, are 
 ^Dinner-guests ; and here as elsewhere have cast away 
 * chimeras.' 
 
 So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, 
 this little incipient romance. What henceforth be- 
 comes of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut.'' He 
 has dived-under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and 
 swims we see not where. Does any reader ' in the 
 interior parts of England ' know of such a man } 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GETTING UNDER WAY 
 
 ' Thus nevertheless/ writes our Autobiographer, ap- 
 parently as quitting College, ' was there realised 
 Somewhat ; namely^, I^, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh : a 
 visible Temporary Figure (Zeitbild), occupying some 
 cubic feet of Space, and containing within it Forces 
 both physical and spiritual ; hopes, passions, thoughts; 
 the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less per- 
 fection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capa- 
 bilities there were in me to give battle, in some small 
 degree, against the great Empire of Darkness : does 
 not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, 
 extinguish many a thistle and puddle ; and so leave 
 a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay 
 your very Daymoth has capabilities in tliis kind ; and 
 ever organises something (into its own Body, if no 
 otherwise), which was before Inorganic ; and of mute 
 dead air makes living music, though only of the 
 faintest, by humming. 
 
 * How much more, one whose capabilities are 
 spiritual ; who has learned, or begun learning, the 
 grand thaumaturgic art of Thought ! Thaumaturgic 
 1 name it ; for hitherto all Miracles have been 
 wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will 
 be wrought ; whereof we, even in these days, witness 
 some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, 
 and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall 
 forbear mention : but cainiot the dullest hear Steam- 
 engines clanking around him ? Has he not seen the 
 Scottish Brassmith's Idea (and this but a mechanical 
 
 102 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY 103 
 
 ' one) travelling- on fire-wings round the Cape, and 
 ' across two Oceans ; and stronger than any other 
 ' Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly 
 ' fetching and carrying : at home, not only weaving" 
 ' Cloth ; but rapidly enough overturning the whole 
 ' old system of Society ; and, for Feudalism and 
 ' Preservation of the Game, preparing us, by indirect 
 ' but sure methods. Industrialism and the Govern- 
 ' ment of the Wisest ? Truly a Thinking Man is the 
 ' worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have ; every 
 ' time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, 
 'there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire; 
 ' and new Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, 
 ' if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff 
 * him. 
 
 ' With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of 
 ' the Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, 
 ' that though born to the amplest Sovereignty, in this 
 ' way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace and 
 ' War against the Time-Prince {Zeitfilrst) , or Devil, 
 ' and all his Dominions, your coronation-ceremony 
 ' costs such trouble, your sceptre is so diflUcult to get 
 ' at, or even to get eye on ! ' 
 
 By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufels- 
 drockh mean no more than that young men find 
 obstacles in what we call ' getting under way ' } ' Not 
 what I Have,' continues he, ' but what I Do is my 
 Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward Talent, 
 a certain outward Environment of Fortune ; to each, 
 by wisest combination of these two, a certain maxi- 
 mum of Capability. But the hardest problem were 
 ever this first : To find by study of yourself, and of 
 the ground you stand on, what your combined in- 
 ward and outward Capability specially is. For, alas, 
 our young soul is all budding with Capabilities, and 
 we see not yet which is the main and true one. 
 Always too the new man is in a new time, under new 
 conditions ; his course can be the facsimile of no 
 prior one, but is by its nature original. And then 
 how seldom will the outward Capability fit the in- 
 
104 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ward : though talented wonderfully enough, we are 
 poor_, unfriended;, dyspeptical, bashful ; nay what is 
 worse than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole 
 imbroglio of Capabilities, we go stupidly groping 
 about, to grope which is ours, and often clutch the 
 wrong one : in this mad work must several years of 
 our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by 
 practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a 
 seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, 
 and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappoint- 
 ment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from 
 side to side : till at length, as exasperated striplings 
 of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last eater- 
 prise, that of getting buried. 
 
 ' Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, , 
 would be the general fate ; were it not that one V 
 thing saves us : our Hunger. For on this groumT, j" 
 as the prompt nature of Hunger is well known, must_/_ 
 a prompt choice be made : hence have we, with wise 
 foresight. Indentures and Apprenticeships for our 
 irrational young ; whereby, in due season, the vague 
 universality of a Man shall find himself ready-moulded 
 into a specific Craftsman ; and so thenceforth work, 
 with much or with little waste of Capability as it may 
 be ; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. 
 Nay even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual 
 artist too is born blind, and does not, like certain 
 other creatures, receive sight in nine days, but far 
 later, sometimes never, — is it not well that there 
 should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies 
 (Brodzwecke), preappointed us? Here, circling like 
 the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is 
 no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round 
 and round, still fancying that it is forward and for- 
 ward ; and realise much : for himself victual ; for the 
 world an additional horse's power in the grand corn- 
 mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too 
 had such a leading-string been provided ; only that 
 it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, 
 till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY 106 
 
 * Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, 
 ' which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I 
 ' would and could. Almost had I deceased {fust war 
 
 * ich umgekommen), so obstinately did it continue shut.' 
 
 We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit 
 of much that was to befall our Autobiographer ; the 
 historical embodiment of which, as it painfully takes 
 shape in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous 
 details, through this Bag Pisces, and those that follow. 
 A young man of high talent, and high though still 
 temper, like a young mettled colt, ' breaks-off his neck- 
 halter,' and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, 
 into the wide world ; which, alas, he finds all rigor- 
 ously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye ; 
 but to him they are forbidden pasture : either pining 
 in progressive starvation, he must stand ; or, in mad 
 exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping against 
 sheer stone-walls, which he cannot leap over, which 
 only lacerate and lame him ; till at last, after thousand 
 attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, clears 
 his way ; not indeed into luxuriant and luxurious 
 clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness where exist- 
 ence is still possible, and Freedom, though waited-ou 
 by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, 
 Teufelsdrockh having thrown-up his legal Profession, 
 finds himself without landmark of outward guidance ; 
 whereby his previous want of decided Belief, or in- 
 ward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity 
 urges him on ; Time will not stop, neither can he, a 
 Son of Time ; wild passions without solacement, wild 
 faculties without employment, ever vex and agitate 
 him. He too must enact that stern Monodrama, No 
 Object and no Rest ; must front its successive destinies,' 
 ^ork through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom 
 tvhat moral he can. 
 
 Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his ' neck- 
 halter' sat nowise easy on him; that he was in some 
 degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young 
 man's civic position, in this Nameless capital, as he 
 emerges from its Nameless University, we can disceru 
 
106 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 well that it was far from enviable. His first Law- 
 Examination he has come through triumphantly ; and 
 can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not 
 have frightened him ; but though he is hereby ' an 
 Auscnltator of respectability,' what avails it? There is 
 next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a 
 youth without connexions, is the process of Expecta- 
 tion very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his dis- 
 position much cheered from without. ^ My fellow 
 
 * Auscultators,' he says, ' were Auscultators : they 
 ^ dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words ; 
 ' other vitality showed they almost none. Small specu- 
 ' lation in those eyes, that they did glare withal ! 
 ' Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for 
 ' aught human or divine, save only for the faintest 
 
 * scent of coming Preferment,' In which words, indicat- 
 ing a total estrangement on the part of Feufelsdrockh, 
 may there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from 
 wounded vanity } Doubtless these prosaic Ausculta- 
 tors may have sniifed at him, with his strange ways ; 
 and tried to hate, and what was much more impossible, 
 to despise him. Friendly communion, in any case, 
 there could not be : already has the young Teufels- 
 drockh left the other young geese ; and swims apart, 
 though as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet 
 or gosling. 
 
 Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was 
 performed ill, at best unpleasantly. ' Great practical 
 method and expertness' he may brag of; but is there 
 not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, 
 only the deeper-seated } So shy a man can never have 
 been popular. AV^e figure to ourselves, how in those 
 days he may have played strange freaks with his inde- 
 pendence, and so forth : do not his own words betoken 
 as much .^^ 'Like a very young person, 1 imagined it 
 
 * was with Work alone, and not also with Folly and 
 
 * Sin, in myself and others, that 1 had been appointed 
 ' to struggle.' Be this as it may, his progress from the 
 passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessor- 
 ship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, those 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY 107 
 
 same established men, once partially inclined to patro- 
 nise him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and 
 give him up as 'a man of genius : ' against which pro- 
 cedure he, in these Papers, loudly protests. ^As if,' 
 says he, ' the higher did not presuppose the lower ; as 
 ' if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk 
 ' post if he resolved on it ! But the world is an old 
 ' woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold 
 ' coin ; whereby being often cheated, she will thence- 
 ' forth trust nothing but the common copper.' 
 
 How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a 
 terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to 
 keep himself from flying skyward without return, is not 
 too clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen 
 seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from 
 the Earth : other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsi- 
 mony, nowhere flows for him ; so that ' the prompt 
 nature of Hunger being well known,' we are not with- 
 out our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never so 
 many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is 
 small ; neither, to use his own words, ' does the young 
 ' Adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any literary 
 ' gift ; but at best earns bread-and-water wages, by his 
 ' wide faculty of Translation. Nevertheless,' continues 
 he, ' that I subsisted is clear, for you find me even now 
 ' alive.' Which fact, however, except upon the prin- 
 ciple of our true-hearted, kind old Proverb, that ^there 
 is always life for a living one,' we must profess our- 
 selves unable to explain. 
 
 Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Docu- 
 ments, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that 
 he was not without money; but, like an independent 
 Hearth -holder, if not Householder, paid his way. Here 
 also occur, among many others, two little mutilated 
 Notes, which perhaps throw light on his condition. 
 The first has now no date, or writer's name, but a 
 huge Blot; and runs to this eft'ect : ' The (Inkblot), tied- 
 ' down by previous promise, cannot, except by best 
 ' wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on 
 ' the Assessorship in question ; and sees himself under 
 
108 SARTOR RESARTOS 
 
 ' the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, 
 ' what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in 
 ' opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far 
 ' higher triumphs are yet waiting.' The other is on 
 gilt paper ; and interests us like a sort of epistolary 
 mummy now dead, yet which once lived and bene- 
 ficently worked. We give it in the original : ' Herr 
 ' Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau Grdfinn, auf Donner- 
 ' stag, zum iEsxHEXiscHEN Thee schoiistens eingeladen.' 
 Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof 
 there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically 
 enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid Esthetic 
 Tea! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual handgrips 
 with Destiny herself, may have comported himself 
 among these Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both 
 sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chicken- 
 weed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive 
 silence, and abstinence : otherwise if the lion, in such 
 case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, 
 but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau 
 Grafinn dates from the Z'dhdarm House, she can be no 
 other than the Countess and mistress of the same ; 
 whose intellectual tendencies, and good-will to Teu- 
 felsdrockh, whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, 
 or on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That 
 some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a time, 
 to connect our Autobiographer, though perhaps feebly 
 enough, with this noble House, we have elsewhere 
 express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected patron- 
 age, it was in vain ; enough for him if he here obtained 
 occasional glimpses of the great world, from which 
 we at one time fancied him to have been always ex- 
 cluded. ^The Zahdarms,' says he, ^ lived in the soft, 
 
 * sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy ; whereto Litera- 
 
 * ture and Art, attracted and attached from without, 
 ' were to serve as the handsomest fringing. It was 
 ' to the Giiddigen Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter 
 ' improvement was due : assiduously she gathered, 
 ' dextrously she fitted-on, what fringing was to be 
 ' had ; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY 109 
 
 Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb ; or 
 promising to be such? ^With his ExceUenz (the 
 
 * Count),' continues he, ^ I have more than once had 
 ' the honour to converse ; chiefly on general affairs, 
 ' and the aspect of the worlds which he, though now 
 ' past middle life, viewed in no unfavourable light ; 
 
 * finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism 
 ' {die auszurottende Joumalistik), little to desiderate 
 ' therein. On some points, as his ExceUenz was not 
 ' uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. 
 ' Besides, his occupation being that of Owning Land, 
 ' there might be faculties enough, which, as super- 
 ' fluous for such use, were little developed in him.' 
 
 That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was 
 nowise so faultless, and many things besides ' the 
 Outrooting of Journalism ' might have seemed im- 
 provements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing 
 but a barren Auscultatorship from without, and so 
 many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, 
 his position was no easy one. ' The Universe,' he says, 
 ' was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so 
 ' little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. In red 
 ' streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the 
 ' blackness of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfur- 
 ' nished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange con- 
 ' tradiction lay in me ; and I as yet knew not the 
 j ' solution of it ; knew not that spiritual music can 
 ' ' spring only from discords set in harmony ; that but 
 ' for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only 
 ' possible by battle. ' 
 
 ' 1 have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he 
 elsewhere, ' by not unphilanthropic persons, that it 
 ' were a real increase of human happiness, could all 
 ' young men from the age of nineteen be covered 
 ' under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible ; and 
 ' there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, 
 ' till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of 
 ' twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as 
 ' considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need 
 ' scarcely say that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it 
 
110 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * is plausibly ur^ed that, as youn^ ladies (Madchen) 
 
 * are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in 
 
 * those years ; so youn^ gentlemen (Bilbchen) do then 
 ' attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks 
 
 * (Gecken) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with 
 ' such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence ; so 
 
 * obstinate, obstreperous, vain-glorious ; in all senses, 
 ' so froward and so forward. No mortal's endeavour 
 
 * or attainment will, in the smallest, content the as 
 ' yet unendeavouring, unattaining young gentleman ; 
 
 * but he could make it all infinitely better, were it 
 
 * worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most manage- 
 
 * able matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three : 
 
 * multiply your second and third term together, divide 
 ' the product by the first, and your quotient will be, 
 
 * the answer, — which you are but an ass if you cannot^ 
 
 * come at. The booby has not yet found-out, by any 
 
 * trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed 
 ' fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net 
 ' integer quotient so much as to be thought of.' 
 
 In which passage does not there lie an implied con- 
 fession that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward 
 obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend 
 with ; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still 
 afflictive derangement of head.'' Alas, on the former 
 side alone, his case was hard enough. ^ It continues 
 
 * ever true,' says he, ^ that Saturn, or Chronos, or what 
 
 * we call Ti.ME, devours all his Children : only by in- 
 i* cessant Running, by incessant Working, may yoiT 
 '* (for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him ; and 
 
 * you too he devours at last, ('an any Sovereign, or 
 
 * Holy Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still ; 
 ' even in thought, shake themselves free of Time .'* 
 
 * Our whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and 
 
 * built of Time ; it is wholly a Movement, a Time- 
 
 * impulse ; Time is the author of it, the material of iL 
 
 * Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to 
 
 * work, — in the right direction. Are not our Bodies 
 
 * and our Souls in continual movement, whether we 
 
 * will or not ; in a continual m aste, requiring a con- 
 
GETIING UNDER WAY 111 
 
 * tinual Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole 
 ' outward and inward Wants were but satisfaction for 
 
 * a space of Time ; thus, whatso we have done, is done, 
 ' and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do 
 ' anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and 
 
 * imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous 
 
 * dim Time-Element, that only in lucid moments can 
 ' so much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be 
 ' revealed to us I Me, however, as a Son of Time, 
 
 * unhappier than some others, was Time threatening 
 ' to eat quite prematurely ; for, strive as I might, 
 ' there was no good Running, so obstructed was the 
 ' path, so gyved were the feet.' That is to say, we 
 presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, 
 that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, 
 like other men's, '^to work, — in the right direction,' 
 and that no work was to be had ; whereby he became 
 wretched enough. As was natural : with haggard 
 Scarcity threatening him in the distance ; and so vehe- 
 ment a soul languishing in restless inaction, and 
 forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras's sword by rust. 
 
 To eat into itself, for lack 
 
 Of something else to hew and hack ! 
 
 But on the whole, that same 'excellent Passivity,' 
 as it has all along done, is here again vigorously 
 flourishing ; in which circumstance may we not trace 
 the beginnings of much that now characterises our 
 Professor ; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin 
 <»f the Clothes-Philosophy itself.^ Already the attitude 
 lie has assumed towards the World is too defensive ; 
 not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude of 
 attack. ' So far hitherto,' he says, ' as I had mingled 
 
 * with mankind, 1 was notable, if for anything, for a 
 ' certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often 
 
 * rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen 
 
 * ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men 
 ' with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery 
 
 * of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a 
 ' sense for the Godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was 
 
112 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' I blamed^ and by half-strangers hated, for my so- 
 ' called Hardness (Hdrte), my IndifFerentism towards 
 ' men ; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, 
 ' as my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, the 
 ' panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, 
 ' wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so 
 ' my own poor Person mig^ht live safe there, and in 
 ' ali friendliness, being- no longer exasperated by 
 ' wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the 
 ^ language of the Devil ; for which reason I have long 
 ' since as good as renounced it. But how many in- 
 ' dividuals did I, in those days, provoke into some 
 ' degree of hostility thereby ! An ironic man, with 
 ' his sly stillness, and ambuscading ways, more espe- 
 ' cially an ironic young man, from whom it is least 
 ' expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have 
 ' we not seen persons of weight and name coming 
 ' forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a 
 ' one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, 
 ' start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), and thence fall shat- 
 ' tered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not 
 ' without indignation, when he proved electric and a 
 ' torpedo ! ' 
 
 Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper 
 make way for himself in Life ; where the first problem, 
 as Teufelsdrockh too admits, is ' to unite yourself with 
 some one and with somewhat (sich anzuschliessen) ' ? 
 Division, not union, is written on most part of his 
 procedure. Let us add too that, in no great length of 
 time, the only important connexion he had ever suc- 
 ceeded in forming, his connexion with the Zahdarm 
 Family, seems to have been paralysed, for all practical 
 uses, by the death of the ' not uncholeric ' old Count. 
 This fact stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a cer- 
 tain Discourse on Epitaphs, huddled into the present 
 Bag, among so much else ; of which Essay the learning 
 and curious penetration are more to be approved of 
 than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary 
 inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical 
 rather than Lyrical. ' By request of that worthy 
 
GETTING UNDER WAY 113 
 
 * Nobleman's survivors,' says he, ' I undertook to com- 
 ' pose his Epitaph ; and not unmindful of my own 
 ' rules, produced the following ; which however, for 
 ' an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet fully 
 ' visible to myself, still remains unengraven ; ' — where- 
 in, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity 
 that will surprise an English reader : 
 
 HlC JACET 
 
 PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 
 
 ZAEHDARMI COMES, 
 
 EX IMPERII CONGILIO, 
 
 VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRl 
 
 EQUES. 
 
 QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 
 
 QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES 
 
 PLUMBO CONPBCIT : 
 
 VARII CIBI 
 
 CEXTUMPONDIA MILLIES CEXTEXA MILLIA, 
 
 PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDBSVE, 
 
 HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVBNS, 
 
 IN STERCUS 
 
 PALAM CONVERTIT. 
 
 NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 
 OPERA SEQUUNTUR. 
 
 SI MONUMENTUM QU^.RIS, 
 FIMETUM ADSPICE. 
 
 PUIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sub dttto] ; POSTRBMUM [subdute]. 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ROMANCE 
 
 ' For long years/ writes Teufelsdrockh, 'had the poor 
 ^ Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, pain- 
 ' fully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before 
 ' ever the question once struck him with entire force : 
 ' For what? — Beym Himmel! For Food and Warmth ! 
 ' And are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the 
 ' whole wide Universe, discoverable ? — Come of it what 
 ' might, I resolved to try/ 
 
 Thus then are we to see him in a new independent 
 capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. 
 Teufelsdrbckh is now a man without Profession. Quit- 
 ting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, 
 where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was pain- 
 ful enough, he desperately steers off, on a course of 
 his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy 
 Teufelsdrockh ! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor 
 Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sail- 
 ing in prescribed track, for fixed objects ; above all, in 
 combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all man- 
 ner of loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid 
 the other? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas; and 
 for thyself find that shorter North-west Passage to thy 
 fair Spice-country of a Nowhere ? — A solitary rover, on 
 such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with 
 adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain 
 Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset ; and as 
 it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 
 
 ' If in youth,* writes he once, ' the Universe is majes- 
 * tically unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing 
 
 114 
 
ROMANCE 115 
 
 * itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does this 
 ( ' Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in 
 
 * the Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange 
 >' * life of ours, it has been so appointed. On the whole, 
 
 ' as I have often said, a Person (Persdnlichkeit) is ever 
 ' holy to us ; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism 
 ' connects my Me with all Tlwes in bonds of Love : but 
 ' it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, 
 ' that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative 
 
 * and Positive, iirst burns-out into a flame. Is the 
 ' pitifuUest mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us.'* 
 ' Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one 
 
 * with him ; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admi- 
 ' ration, even by fear ; or failing all these, unite ourselves 
 ' to him ? But how much more, in this case of the 
 ' Like-Uulike ! Here is conceded us the higher mystic 
 ^ possibility of such a union, the highest in our Earth ; 
 ' thus, in the conducting medium of Fantasy, flames- 
 ' forth that ^re-development of the universal Spiritual 
 ' Electricity, which, as unfolded between man and 
 ' woman, we first emphatically denominate Love. 
 
 ' In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, 
 
 * there already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, 
 ' cheered by some fairest Eve ; nor, in the stately 
 " vistas, and flowerage and foliage of that Garden, is a 
 ' Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst 
 ' thereof, wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the 
 ' lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it 
 ' from all footsteps of men ; and grant him, the ima- 
 ' ginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. 
 ' Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still 
 ' an impassable celestial barrier ; and the sacred air- 
 
 ' cities of Hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-. 
 ' hamlets of Reality ; and man, by his nature, is yet 
 ' infinite and free ! 
 
 ' As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teufelsdrockh, 
 evidently meaning himself, ' in his secluded way of 
 ' life, and with his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery 
 ' that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating fr.r- 
 ' nace, his feeling towards the Queens of this Earth 
 
llfi SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 was, and indeed is, altoG;-ether unspeakable. A visible 
 Divinity dwelt in them ; to our young Friend all 
 women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but 
 saw them flitting- past, in their many-coloured angel- 
 plumage ; or hovering mute and inaccessible on the 
 outskirts of Esthetic Tea : all of air they were, all 
 Soul and Form ; so lovely, like mysterious priest- 
 esses, in whose hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, 
 whereby man might mount into very Heaven. That 
 he, our poor Friend, should ever win for him- 
 self one of these Gracefuls (Holden) — Ach Gott! 
 how could he hope it ; should he not have died under 
 it 1 There was a certain delirious vertigo in the 
 thought. 
 
 * Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons 
 and Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, 
 nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-born, 
 who visibly and audibly hovered round him whereso- 
 ever he went ; and they had that religious worship in 
 his thought, though as yet it was by their mere 
 earthly and trivial name that he named them. But 
 now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air- 
 maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, 
 should cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying 
 thereby, " Thou too mayest love and be loved ; " and 
 so kindle him, — good Heaven, what a volcanic, earth- 
 quake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably 
 kindled ! ' 
 
 Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst- 
 forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the 
 inner man of Herr Diogenes ; as indeed how could it 
 fail ? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we 
 might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of 
 Irritability ; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and 
 sulphurous Humour enough ; the whole lying in such 
 hot neighbourhood, close by ^a reverberating furnace 
 of Fantasy' : have we not here the components of driest 
 Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, 
 to blaze-up.'' Neither, in this our Life-element, are 
 sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, 
 
ROMANCE 117 
 
 whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving 
 * the outskirts of Esthetic Tea,' flit nigher ; and, by 
 electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable fire- 
 work. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and 
 flamed-ofF rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of 
 splendour, each growing naturally from the other, 
 through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love ; 
 till the whole were safely burnt-out ; and the young 
 soul relieved with little damage ! Happy, if it did not 
 rather prove a Conflagration and mad Explosion ; pain- 
 fully lacerating the heart itself ; nay perhaps bursting 
 the heart in pieces (which were Death) ; or at best, 
 bursting the thin walls of your ' reverberating furnace,' 
 so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked among the 
 contiguous combustibles (which were Madness) : till of 
 the so fair and manifold internal world of our Diogenes, 
 there remained Nothing, or only the ^crater of an 
 extinct volcano I ' 
 
 From multifarious Documents in this Bag Capri- 
 carnus, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, 
 it becomes manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and 
 cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantic- 
 ally in Love : here therefore may our old doubts 
 whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. 
 He loved once ; not wisely but too well. And once 
 ouIyTTor as your Cougreve needs a new case or wrap- 
 page for every new rocket, so each human heart can 
 properly exhibit but one Love, if even one ; the ' First 
 Love which is infinite' can be followed by no second 
 like'unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, the 
 Editor of these Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdrockh 
 as a man not only who would never wed, but who would 
 never even flirt ; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and 
 St. Martins Summer of incipient Dotage, would crown 
 with no new myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women 
 are henceforth Pieces of Art ; of Celestial Art, indeed ; 
 which celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, 
 but has lost thought of purchasing. 
 
 Psychological readers are not without curiosity to 
 see how Teufelsdrockh, in this for him unexampled 
 
118 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties 
 of successive configuration, splendour and colour, his 
 Firework blazes-off. Small, as usual, is the satisfac- 
 tion that such can meet with here. From amid these 
 confused masses of Kulog-y and Elesry, with their mad 
 Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying- madly scattered 
 among- all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so much 
 as the fair one's name can be deciphered. For, without 
 doubt, the title Blumine, whereby she is here desig- 
 nated, and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, 
 must be fictitious. AVas her real name Flora, then? 
 But what was her surname, or had she none? Of what 
 station in Life was she ; of what parentage, fortune, 
 aspect ? Specially, by what Preestablished Harmony of 
 occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet one 
 another in so wide a world ; how did they behave in 
 such meeting? To all which questions, not unessen- 
 tial in a Biog-raphic work, mere Conjecture must for 
 most part return answer. ' It was appointed,' says our 
 Philosopher, ' that the high celestial orbit of Blumine 
 ' should intersect the low sublunary one of our For- 
 ' lorn ; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should 
 ' fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into 
 ^ this nether sphere of Shadows ; and finding himself 
 ' mistaken, make noise enough.' 
 
 We seem to gather that she was young", hazel-eyed, 
 beautiful, and some one's Cousin ; highborn, and of 
 hig-h spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; 
 living-, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of 
 moneyed relatives. But how came ^the Wanderer' 
 into her circle? ^Vas it by the humid vehicle of 
 JEsthetic Tea, or by the arid one of mere Business? 
 Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood ; or of the 
 Gnadige Frau, who, as an ornamental Artist, might 
 sometimes like to promote flirtation, especially for 
 young cynical Nondescripts ? To all appearance, it 
 was chiefly by Accident, and the grace of Nature. 
 
 ^Thou fair Waldschloss,' writes our Autobiographer, 
 ' what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved 
 ' Auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last 
 
ROMANCE 119 
 
 Relatio ex Actis he would ever write, but must have 
 paused to wonder ! Noble Mansion ! There stoodest 
 thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbra- 
 geous lawns, in thy serene solitude ; stately, massive, 
 all of granite ; glittering in the western sunbeams, 
 like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious 
 metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the 
 slope of thy guardian Hills ; of the greenest was 
 their sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of 
 crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and 
 its shadow. To the unconscious Wayfarer thou wert 
 also as an Ammon's Temple, in the Libyan Waste ; 
 where, for joy and woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay 
 written. VV^ell might he pause and gaze ; in that 
 glance of his were prophecy and nameless fore- 
 bodings.' 
 
 But now let us conjecture that the so presentient 
 Auscultator has handed-in his Relatio ex Actis; been 
 invited to a glass of Rhine-wine ; and so, instead of 
 returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town- 
 home, is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where sit the 
 choicest party of dames and cavaliers : if not engaged 
 in ^Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, 
 and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of ^ harps and 
 pure voices making the stillness live.' Scarcely, it 
 would seem, is the Gardenhouse inferior in respecta- 
 bility to the noble Mansion itself. ^Embow.rbd amid 
 ' rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odours of 
 ' thousand flowers, here sat that brave company ; in 
 ' front, from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over 
 ' blossom and bush, ovex- grove and velvet green, 
 * stretching, undulating onwards to the remote Moun- 
 ' tain peaks : so bright, so mild, and everywhere the 
 ' melody of birds and happy creatures : it was all as if 
 ' man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the bosom- 
 ' vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the 
 ' W^auderer advanced thither with such forecasting 
 ' heart {ahndungsvoll), by the side of his gay host? 
 ' Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard 
 ' bosom ought to be shut ; that here, once more. Fate 
 
120 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 had it in view to try him ; to mock him^ and see 
 whether there were Humour in him? 
 
 ' Next moment he hnds himself presented to the 
 party ; and especially by name to — Blumiue I Peculiar 
 among all dames and damosels glanced Blumine, there 
 in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. 
 Noblest maiden ! whom he bent to, in body and in 
 soul ; yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence 
 filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. 
 
 ^ Blumiue's was a name well known to him ; far 
 and wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, 
 her graces, her caprices : from all which vague 
 colourings of Rumour, from the censures no less 
 than from the praises, had our friend painted for 
 himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and 
 blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting 
 than your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in 
 whose placid veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. 
 Herself also he had seen in public places ; that light 
 yet so stately form ; those dark tresses, shading a face 
 where smiles and sunlight played over earnest deeps : 
 but all this he had seen only as a magic vision, for 
 him inaccessible, almost without reality. Her sphere 
 was too far from his ; how should she ever think of 
 him ; O Heaven ! how should they so much as once 
 meet together? And now that Rose-goddess sits in 
 the saa.t circle with him ; the light of Jier eyes has 
 smiled on him ; if he speak, she will hear it ! Nay, 
 who knows, since the heavenly Sun looks into lowest 
 valleys, but Blumine herself might have aforetime 
 noted the so unnotable ; perhaps, from his very gain- 
 sayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, 
 gathered favour for him? Was the attraction, the 
 agitation mutual, then ; pole and pole trembling 
 towards contact, when once brought into neighbour- 
 hood? Say rather, heart swelling in presence of 
 the Queen of Hearts ; like the Sea swelling when 
 once near its Moon ! With the Wanderer it was 
 even so : as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as 
 at the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul js^ 
 
ROMANCE 121 
 
 roused fr om its deepest recesses ; and all that was 
 
 painful and that was blissful there^ dim images, vague 
 feelmgi of a 'whole Past and a whole Future, are 
 heaving in unquiet eddies within him. 
 * Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still 
 Friend shrunk forcibly together ; and shrouded-up 
 his tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in 
 a safe cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming 
 Stolidity. How was it, then, that here, when 
 trembling to the core of his heart, he did not sink 
 into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness 
 and clearness.'* It was his guiding Genius {Damon) 
 that inspired him ; he must go forth and meet his 
 Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered it, or be 
 forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your 
 anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first 
 feels herself able to transcend it ; that she rises above 
 it, in fiery victory ; and borne on new-found wings of 
 victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so 
 irresistibly. Always must the AV'anderer remember, 
 with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this 
 case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the 
 stream of conversation ; which thenceforth, to speak 
 with an apparent not a real vanity, he may say that 
 he continued to lead. Surely, in those hours, a 
 certain inspiration was imparted him, such inspira- 
 tion as is still possible in our late era. The self- 
 secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, 
 glowing words ; his soul is as one sea of light, the 
 peculiar home of Truth and Intellect ; wherein also 
 Fantasy bodies-forth form after form, radiant with 
 all prismatic hues.' 
 
 It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there 
 talked one * Philistine ' ; who even now, to the general 
 weariness, was dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism 
 {Philistriosit'dten) ; little witting what hero was here 
 entering to demolish him I We omit the series of 
 Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not unhappy 
 in their way, whereby the monster, ^persuaded into 
 silence,' seems soon after to have withdrawn for the 
 
122 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ight. ^Of which dialectic marauder/ writes our 
 ero, 'the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit 
 by most : but what were all applauses to the glad 
 smile, threatening every moment to become a laugh, 
 wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? He 
 ventured to address her, she answered with attention : 
 nay what if there were a slight tremor in that silver 
 voice ; what if the red glow of evening were hiding 
 a transient blush ! 
 
 'The conversation took a higher tone, one fine 
 thought called forth another : it was one of those 
 rare seasons, when the soul expands with full free- 
 dom, and man feels himself brought near to man. 
 Gaily in light, graceful abandonment, the friendly 
 talk played round that circle ; for the burden was 
 rolled from every heart ; the barriers of Ceremony, 
 which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted 
 as into vapour ; and the poor claims of Me and Thee, 
 no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly 
 into one another; and lifie lay all harmonious, 
 many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the 
 sovereign and owner of which were Love only. Such 
 music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environ- 
 ment of place and time. And yet as the light grew 
 more aerial on the mountain-tops, and the shadows 
 fell longer over the valley, some faint tone of sad- 
 ness may have breathed through the heart ; and, in 
 whispers more or less audible, reminded every^one that 
 as this bright day was drawing towards its close, so 
 likewise must the Day of Man's Existence decline into 
 dust and darkness ; and with all its sick toilings, and 
 joyful and mournful noises, sink in the still Eternity. 
 
 ' To our Friend the hours seemed moments ; holy 
 was he and happy : the words from those sweetest 
 lips came over him like dew on thirsty grass ; all 
 better feelings in his soul seemed to whisper. It is 
 good for us to be here. At parting, the Blumine's 
 hand was in his : in the balmy twilight, with the 
 kind stars above them, he spoke something of meet- 
 ing again, which was not contradicted ; he pressed 
 
ROMANCE 123 
 
 ' gently those small soft fingers, and it seemed as if 
 ' they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn.' 
 
 Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration 
 thou art smit : the Queen of Hearts would see a ' man 
 of genius ' also sigh for her ; and there, by art-magic, 
 in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell- 
 bound thee. ^ Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says 
 he elsewhere ; ' yet has it many points in common 
 ' therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite 
 ^ in the Finite, of the Idea made Real ; which discern- 
 ^ ing again may be either true or false, either seraphic 
 ' or demoniac. Inspiration or Insanity. But in the 
 ' former case too, as in common Madness, it is Fan- 
 ' tasy that superadds itself to sight ; on the so petty 
 ' domain of the Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, 
 ' whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fan- 
 ' tasy I might call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate 
 \'. of man : his sensuous life is but the small temporary 
 
 * stage {Zeithilhne) , whereon thick-streaming influences 
 ' from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, 
 
 ^ / and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense can support 
 
 ''^T^^ 'herself handsomely, in most countries, for some 
 
 /^-' 'eiglTEeenpence a day ; but for Fantasy planets and 
 
 »/* solar-systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus 
 
 ' conquering the world, yet drinking no better red 
 
 ' wine than he had before.' Alas ! witness also your 
 
 Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper Heaven, and 
 
 verging towards Insanity, for prize of a ' high-souled 
 
 Brunette,' as if the earth held but one and not several 
 
 of these ! 
 
 He says that, in Town, they met again : ' day after 
 ' day, like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone 
 ' on him. Ah ! a little while ago, and he was yet in 
 ' all darkness : him what Graceful (Holde) would ever 
 ' love .'* Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had 
 ' never learned to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in 
 ' proud timidity, within his own fastnesses ; solitary 
 ' from men, yet baited by niglit-spectres enough, he 
 
 * saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to 
 ' renounce the fairest hopes of existence. And now. 
 
124 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 O now I *'She looks on thee," cried he : '^she the 
 fairest, noblest ; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou 
 art not despised ? The Heaven' s-Messen^er ! All 
 Heaven's blessings be hers ! " Thus did soft melodies 
 flow through his heart ; tones of an infinite gratitude ; 
 sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for 
 him also unutterable joys had been provided. 
 ^In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent 
 glances, laughter, tears, and often with the inarti- 
 culate mystic speech of Music : such was the element 
 they now lived in ; in such a many-tinted, radiant 
 Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient Light-bringers 
 must our Friend be blandished, and the new Apoca- 
 lypse of Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine I 
 And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a 
 very Light-ray incarnate ! Was there so much as a 
 fault, a '^ caprice," he could have dispensed with .'' 
 Was she not to him in very deed a Alorning-Star ; 
 did not her presence bring with.it airs from Heaven ? 
 As from iEolian Harps in the breath of dawn, as 
 from the Memnon's Statue struck by the rosy finger 
 of Aurora, unearthly music was around him, and 
 lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt 
 fled away to the distance ; Lif^ bloomed-up with 
 happiness and hope. The past, then, was all a 
 haggard dream ; he had been ki the Garden of Eden, 
 then, and could not discern it ! But lo now ! the 
 black walls of his prison melt away ; the captive is 
 alive, is free. If he loved his Disenchantress .^ Ach 
 Gott ! His whole heart and soul and life were hers, 
 but never had he named it Love : existence was all a 
 Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought' 
 Nevertheless, into a I'h ought, nay into an Action, 
 t must be shaped ; for neither Disenchanter nor Dis- 
 enchantress, mere ' Children of 'J'ime,' can abide by 
 Feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, 
 how in her soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found de- 
 termination, even on best of Necessity, to cut asunder 
 these so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised 
 at the ' Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been. 
 
ROMANCE 125 
 
 ' in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the re~ 
 ' ligion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly 
 ' approved of.' We, even at such distance, can ex- 
 plain it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher 
 answer this one question : What figure, at that period, 
 was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished 
 society.'^ Could she have driven so much as a brass- 
 bound Gig, or even a simple iron-spring one? Thou 
 foolish ^absolved Auscultator,' before whom lies no 
 prospect of capital, will any yet known 'religion of 
 young hearts ' keep the human kitchen warm ? Pshaw ! 
 thy divine Blumine, when she ' resigned herself to wed 
 some richer,' shows more philosophy^ though but 'a 
 woman of genius,' than thou, a pretended man. 
 
 Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love- 
 mania, and with what royal splendour it waxes, and 
 rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its 
 dominant state ; much less the horrors of its almost 
 instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic 
 masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these 
 Bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be 
 organised ? Besides, of what profit were it ? We view, 
 with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start 
 from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the 
 liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star : but 
 what is there to look longer on, when once, by natural 
 elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded ? A hap- 
 less air-navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, 
 sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the 
 jaws of the Devil ! Suflice it to know that Teufels- 
 drockh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, 
 by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a 
 quick perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feeling 
 reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, 
 paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, 
 for his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, 
 underwent such agonies and frenzies, what must 
 Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire-heart, and for a 
 nonpareil Blumine ! We glance merely at the final 
 scene : 
 
126 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed 
 
 * and dusky-red ; the fair creature was silent_, absent, 
 
 * she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a 
 
 * Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, announc- 
 ' ing that the Doomsday had dawned ! She said, in a 
 ' tremulous voice, ITiey were to meet no more/ The 
 thunderstruck Air-sailor is not wanting to himself in 
 this dread hour ; but what avails it ? We omit the 
 passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, 
 since all was vain, and not even an explanation was 
 conceded him ; and hasten to the catastrophe. ' " Fare- 
 ' well, then. Madam ! " said he, not without sternness, 
 
 * for his stung pride helped him. She put her hand in 
 
 * his, she looked in his face, tears started to her eyes ; 
 ' in wild audacity he clasped her to his bosom ; their 
 
 * lips were joined, their two souls, like two dew-drops, 
 
 * rushed into one, — for the first time, and for the last !' 
 Thus was Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. And 
 then.'* Why, then — * thick curtains of Night rushed 
 ' over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom ; 
 
 * and through the ruins as of a shivered Universe was 
 ' he falling, falling, towards the Abyss.' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 
 
 We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, 
 matters must often be expected to take a course of their 
 own ; that in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there 
 might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, 
 such as the Psychologist had seldom noted ; in short, 
 that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in 
 the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict 
 his demeanour. 
 
 To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is 
 now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh, preci- 
 pitated through ^a shivered Universe' in this extra- 
 ordinary way, has only one of three things which he can 
 next do : Establish hinxself in Bedlam ; begin writing 
 Satanic Poetry ; or blow-out his brains. In the pro- 
 gress towards any of which consummations, do not 
 such readers anticipate extravagance enough ; breast- 
 beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings 
 of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, break- 
 ages of furniture, if not arson itself.'* 
 
 Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He 
 quietly lifts his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), ' old business 
 being soon wound-up ; ' and begins a perambulation and 
 circumambulation of the terraqueous Globe ! Curious 
 it is, indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such 
 intensity of feeling, above all, with these unconscionable 
 habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines that 
 wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external 
 procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereavement, in this 
 matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real 
 
 127 
 
128 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which fi^ht 
 doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature 
 is nowise dissolved thereby ; but rather is compressed 
 closer. For once, as we might say, a Blumine by 
 magic appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, 
 and its hidden things rush-out tumultuous, boundless, 
 like genii enfranchised from their glass phial : but no 
 sooner are your magic appliances withdrawn, than the 
 strange casket of a heart springs-to again ; and per- 
 haps there is now no key extant that will open it ; for 
 a Teufelsdrockh, as we remarked, will not love a second 
 time. Singular Diogenes ! No sooner has that heart- 
 rending occurrence fairly taken piace, than he affects to 
 regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing 
 more to be said. ' One highest hope, seemingly legible 
 
 * in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of 
 ' Death-shadows into celestial Life : but a gleam of 
 ' Tophet passed over the face of his Angel ; he was 
 ' rapt away in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of 
 ' Demons. It was a Calenture,' adds he, '^ whereby the 
 
 * Youth saw green Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean- 
 ' waters : a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for he saw 
 ' it.' But what things soever passed in him, when he 
 ceased to see it ; what ragiiigs and despairings soever 
 Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the good- 
 ness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence. 
 ^Ve know it well ; the first mad paroxysm past, our 
 brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, 
 and buttoned himself together ; he was meek, silent, 
 or spoke of the weather and the Journals : only by a 
 transient knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep 
 flash of those eyes, glancing one knew not whether with 
 tear-dew or with fierce fire, — might you have guessed 
 what a Gehenna was within ; that a whole Satanic School 
 were spouting, though inaudibly, there. To consume 
 your own choler, as some chimneys consume their own 
 smoke ; to keep a whole Satanic School spouting, if it 
 must spout, inaudibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, 
 nor one of the commonest in these times. 
 
 Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 129 
 
 the strang-e measure he fell upon^ there was not a touch 
 of latent Insanity ; whereof indeed the actual condition 
 of these Documents in Capricorrnis and Aquarius is no 
 bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome 
 enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable 
 aim ; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance ; he 
 wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had 
 fallen on him, and he were ' made like unto a wheel.' 
 Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags 
 aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of pre- 
 paration, for example, we come upon the following 
 lip : ^ A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the 
 Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert 
 road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among 
 its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all dimi- 
 nished to a toybox, the fair Town, where so many 
 souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their 
 multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a 
 starward-pointing finger ; the canopy of blue smoke 
 seems like a sort of Life-breath : for always, of its own 
 unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on 
 with^love ; thus does the little Dwellingplace of men, 
 in itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us 
 an individual, almost a person. But what thousand 
 other thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to 
 ourselves been the arena of joyous or mournful ex- 
 periences ; if perhaps the cradle we were rocked in 
 still stands there, if our Loving ones still dwell there, 
 if our Buried ones there slumber!' Does Teufels- 
 drcickh, as the wounded eagle is said to make for its own 
 eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all hunted 
 outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direction 
 of their birthland, — fly first, in this extremity, towards 
 his native Entepfuhl ; but reflecting that there no 
 help awaits him, take only one wistful look from the 
 distance, and then wend elsewhither } 
 
 Little happier seems to be his next flight : into the 
 wilds of Nature ; as if in her mother-bosom he would 
 seek healing. So at least we incline to interpret the 
 following Notice, separated from the former by some 
 
 I 
 
130 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing 
 noteworthy : 
 
 * Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are 
 Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace 
 as here. The rocks are of that sort called Primitive 
 by the mineralogists, which always arrange them- 
 selves in masses of a rugged, gigantic character ; 
 which ruggedness, however, is here tempered by 
 a singular airiness of form, and softness of environ- 
 ment : in a climate favourable to vegetation, the 
 gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up 
 through a garment of foliage or verdure ; and white, 
 bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster round the ever- 
 lasting granite. In tine vicissitude, Beauty alternates 
 with Grandeur : you ride through stony hollows, 
 along strait passes, traversed by torrents, overhung 
 by high walls of rock ; now winding amid broken 
 shaggy chasms, and huge fragments ; now suddenly 
 emerging into some emerald valley, where the 
 streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has 
 again found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace 
 had established herself in the bosom of Strength. 
 
 ' To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can 
 the Son of Time not pretend : still less if some 
 Spectre haunt him from the Past ; and the Future 
 is wholly a Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Rea- 
 sonably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: 
 Are not the gates of this world's Happiness inexor- 
 ably shut against thee ; hast thou a hope that is not 
 mad.'' Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, 
 or in the original Greek if that suit thee better : 
 '' Whoso can look on Death will start at no 
 shadows." 
 
 * From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention 
 called outwards ; for now the Valley closes-in 
 abruptly, intersected by a huge mountain mass, the 
 stony water-worn ascent of which is not to be ac- 
 complished on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds 
 himself again lifted into the evening sunset light ; 
 and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, some 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 131 
 
 moments there. An upland irregular expanse of 
 wold, where valleys in complex branchings are 
 suddenly or slowly arranging their descent towards 
 every quarter of the sky. The mountain-ranges are 
 beneath your feet, and folded together : only the 
 loftier summits look down here and there as on a 
 second plain ; lakes also lie clear and earnest in 
 their solitude. No trace of man now visible ; unless 
 indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible 
 link of Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the 
 inaccessible, to unite Province with Province. But 
 sunwards, lo you ! how it towers sheer up, a world 
 of Mountains, the diadem and centre of the moun- 
 tain region ! A hundred and a hundred savage 
 peaks, in the last light of Day ; all glowing, of gold 
 and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness ; 
 there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on 
 the night when Noah's Deluge first dried ! Beau- 
 tiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our 
 Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses 
 with wonder, almost with longing desire ; never till 
 this hour had he known Nature, that she Has One, 
 that she was his Mother and divine. And as the 
 ruddy glow was fading into clearness in the sky, 
 and the Sun had now departed, a murmur of Eternity 
 and Immensity, of Death and of Life, stole through 
 his soul ; and he felt as if Death and Life were one, 
 as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the 
 Earth had its throne in that splendour, and his own 
 sj)irit were therewith holding communion. 
 ^The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. 
 Emerging from the hidden Nortliward, to sink soon 
 into the hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche- 
 and-four ; it was open ; servants and postillions wore 
 wedding-favours : that happy pair, then, had fourul 
 each other, it was their marriage evening ! Few 
 moments brought them near: Du Jlinimel! It was 
 
 Herr Towgood and Blumine ! AV'ith slight un- 
 
 recognising salutation they passed me; plunged 
 down amid the neighbouring thickets, onwards, to 
 
132 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' Heaven, and to Ens^land ; and I, in my friend 
 * Richtei*'s words, 1 remained alone, behind them, with 
 ' the Night.' 
 
 AV^ere it not cruel in these circumstances, here might 
 be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long 
 ago from the great Clothes- Volume, where it stands 
 with quite other intent : ' Some time before Small- 
 pox was extirpated,' says the Professor, ' there came 
 a new malady of the spiritual sort on Europe : I mean 
 the epidemic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets 
 of old date, being privileged with Senses, had also 
 enjoyed external Nature ; but chiefly as we enjoy the 
 crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us ; 
 that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental 
 commentary : never, as I compute, till after the 
 Sorrows of Werter, was there man found who would 
 say: Come let us make a Description ! Having drunk 
 the liquor, come let us eat the glass ! Of which 
 endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek.' Too 
 true ! 
 
 We reckon it more important to remark that the 
 Professor's Wanderings, so tar as his stoical and cynical 
 envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first 
 take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That 
 Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have 
 withered-up M'hat little remnant of a purpose may 
 ha^'e still lurked in him : Life has become wholly 
 a dark labyrinth ; wherein, through long years, our 
 Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about 
 at random, and naturally with more haste than 
 progress. 
 
 Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, 
 even from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage 
 of his ; the simplest record of which, were clear record 
 possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, 
 unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country 
 to country, from condition to condition ; vanishing 
 and re-appearing, no man can calculate how or where. 
 Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and 
 apparently through all circles of society. If in any 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 133 
 
 scene^ perhaps difficult to fix g-eographically, he settles 
 for a time^ and forms connexions, be sure he will snap 
 them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as 
 Private Scholar {Privati si render), living by the grace 
 of God in some European capital, you may next find 
 him as Hadjee in the neighbourhood of Mecca. It 
 is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick- 
 changing ; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and 
 highways, had transported himself by some wishing- 
 carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, too, imparted 
 emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that 
 collection of Street-Advertisements) ; with only some 
 touch of direct historical notice sparingly interspersed : 
 little light-islets in the world of haze ! So that, from 
 this point, the Professor is more of an enigma than 
 ever. In figurative language, we might say he be- 
 comes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualised, vaporised. 
 Fact unparalleled in Biography : The river of his 
 History, which we have traced from its tiniest foun- 
 tains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing 
 current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that 
 terrific Lover's Leap ; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, 
 flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray ! Low 
 down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes ; 
 yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at 
 all, into a general stream. To cast a glance into 
 certain of those pools and plashes, and trace whither 
 they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit 
 of our endeavour. 
 
 For which end doubtless those direct historical 
 Notices, where they can be met with, are the best. 
 Nevertheless, of tliis sort too there occurs much, 
 which, with our present light, it were questionable to 
 emit. Teufelsdrockh, vibrating everywhere between 
 the highest and the lowest levels, comes into contact 
 with public History itself. For example, those con- 
 versations and relations with illustrious Persons, as 
 Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, 
 are they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character 
 than of a biographic,'' The Editor, appreciating the 
 
134 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Racredness of crowned heads, nay perhaps suspectinor 
 the possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will 
 eschevy this province for the present; a new time may 
 brinjs^ new insisfht and a different duty. 
 
 If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Pur- 
 pose, for there was none, yet with what immediate 
 outlooks ; at all events, in what mood of mind, the 
 Professor undertook and prosecuted this world- 
 pilgrimage, — the answer is more distinct than favour- 
 able. ' A nameless Unrest,' says he, ' urged me 
 forward ; to which the outward motion was some 
 momentary lying solace. Whither should I go.'' 
 My Loadstars were blotted out ; in that canopy of 
 grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I ; the 
 ground burnt under me ; there was no rest for the 
 sole of my foot. I was alone, alone ! Ever too 
 the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for 
 itself : towards these, one after the other, must I 
 fruitlessly wander. A feeling I had, that for my 
 fever-thirst there was and must be somewhere a 
 healing Fountain. To many fondly imagined Foun- 
 tains, the Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim ; 
 to great Men, to great Cities, to great Events : but 
 found there no healing. In strange countries, as 
 in the well-known ; in savage deserts, as in the 
 press of corrupt civilisation, it was ever the same : 
 how could your VVanderer escape from — hia mvn 
 Shadow? Nevertheless still Forward ! 1 felt as if 
 in great haste ; to do I saw not what. From the 
 depths of my own heart, it called to me. Forwards ! 
 The winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded 
 to me. Forwards ! Ach Gott, I was even, once for 
 all, a Son of Time.' 
 From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic 
 School was still active enough } He says elsewhere : 
 ^The Enchiridion of Epictetns I had ever with me, often 
 ' as my sole rational companion ; and regret to mention 
 ' that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.' Thou 
 foolish Teufelsdrockh ! How could it else? Hadst 
 thou not Greek enough to understand thus much ; 
 
SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH 136 
 
 The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though 
 ^tTwere the noblest ? —- 
 
 ' How I lived ? ' writes he once : ' Friend, hast thou 
 considered the " rug-ged all-nourishing Earth," as 
 Sophocles well names her ; how she feeds the sparrow 
 on the house-top, much more her darling, man? 
 While thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a pro- 
 bability of victual. My breakfast of tea has been 
 cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, 
 who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I 
 have roasted wild-eggs in the sand of Sahara; I 
 have awakened in Paris Estrapades and Vienna 
 Malzleins, with no prospect of breakfast beyond 
 elemental liquid. That I had my Living to seek 
 saved me from Dying, — by suicide. In our busy 
 Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for 
 Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, re- 
 ligious, educational, commercial departments } In 
 Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes ? Living ! 
 Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive 
 Soul ; how, as with its little finger, it can create 
 provision enough for the body (of a Philosopher) ; 
 and then, as with both hands, create quite other than 
 provision ; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.' 
 Poor Teufelsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger always 
 parallel to him ; and a whole Infernal Chase in his 
 rear ; so that the countenance of Hunger is com- 
 paratively a fi'iend's ! Thus must he, in the temper 
 of ancient Cain, or of the modern V\ andering Jew, — 
 save only that he feels himself not guilty and but 
 suffering the pains of guilt, — wend to and fro with 
 aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface 
 of the Earth (by footprints), write his Sorrows of Teufels- 
 drockh ; even as the great Goethe, in passionate words, 
 had to write his Sorrows of Werter, before the spirit 
 freed herself, and he could become a Man. Vain truly 
 is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape ' from 
 his own Shadow ' ! Nevertheless, in these sick days, 
 when the Born of Heaven first descries himself (about 
 the age of twenty) in a world such as ours, richer than 
 
136 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 usual in two things, in Truths grown obsolete, and 
 Trades grown obsolete, — what can the fool think but 
 that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not 
 speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and despair? 
 Whereby it happens that, for your nobler minds, the 
 publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the 
 other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For what 
 is it properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before 
 you begin honestly Fighting him? Your Byron pub- 
 lishes his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse and in prose, 
 and copiously otherwise : your Bonaparte represents 
 his Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an ail-too stupendous 
 style; with music of cannon- volleys, and murder- 
 shrieks of a world ; his stage-lights are the fires of 
 Conflagration ; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp 
 of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities. — 
 Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can 
 write such matter, since it must be written, on the 
 insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only ; and also 
 survive the writing thereof! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE EVERLASTING NO 
 
 UxVDER the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our 
 Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his 
 spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and grow- 
 ing : for how can the ' Son of Time,' in any case, stand 
 still ? We behold him, through those dim years, in a 
 state of crisis, of transition : his mad Pilgrimings, and 
 general solution into aimless Discontinuity, what is all 
 this but a mad Fermentation ; wherefrom, the fiercer 
 it is, the clearer product will one day evolve itself? 
 
 Such transitions are ever full of pain : thus the 
 Eagle when he moults is sickly ; and, to attain his new 
 beak, must harshly dash-off the old one upon rocks. 
 ^Vhat Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual 
 acts and motions, may aifect, it is clear that there is a 
 hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within ; corus- 
 cations of which flash out : as, indeed, how could there 
 be other? Have we not seen him disappointed, be- 
 mocked of Destiny, through long years ? All that the 
 young heart might desire and pray for has been denied ; 
 nay, as in the last woi-st instance, ofl'ered and then 
 snatched away. Ever an ' excellent Passivity ' ; but of 
 useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as 
 Food to Hunger, nothing granted : till at length, in 
 this wild Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself 
 an Activity, though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his 
 cup of bitterness, which had been filling drop by drop, 
 ever since that first * ruddy morning' in the Hinter- 
 schlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip ; and then with 
 that poison-drop, of the Towgood-and-Blumine busi- 
 
 137 
 
138 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ness, it runs over, and even hisses over in a delude of 
 foam. 
 
 He himself says once, with more justice than origin- 
 ality : ^ Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, 
 ' he has no other possession but Hope ; this world of 
 ' his is emphatically the Place of Hope.' What, then, 
 was our Professor's possession? We see him, for the 
 present, quite shiit-out from Hope ; looking not into 
 the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a dim 
 copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and tor- 
 nado. 
 
 Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than 
 we yet dream of ! For, as he wanders wearisomely 
 through this world, he has now lost all tidings of 
 another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of 
 religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, 
 he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irre- 
 ligious : ' Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,' says he ; 
 ' shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you 
 ' have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.' To such 
 readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, 
 on man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction 
 to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and 
 practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach ; 
 who understand, therefore, in our Friend's words, 
 ' that, for man's well-being. Faith is properly the one 
 ' thing needful ; how, with it. Martyrs, otherwise 
 ' weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the 
 ' cross ; and without it. Worldlings puke-up their 
 ' sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury : * 
 to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, 
 the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of every- 
 thing. Unhappy young man ! All wounds, the crush 
 of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friend- 
 ship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial 
 heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth 
 been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild 
 way : " Is there no God, then ; but at best an absentee 
 ' God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the 
 ' outside of his Universe, and seeing it go } Has the 
 
THE EVERLASTING NO 139 
 
 ' word Duty no meaning' ; is what we call Duty no 
 ' divine Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly 
 ^ Fantasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations 
 
 * from the Gallows and from Doctor Graham's Celestial- 
 
 * Bed ? Happiness of an approving Conscience ! Did 
 ' not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since 
 
 * named Saint, feel that he was " the chief of sinners " ; 
 
 * and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit (Wohlgemuth), 
 ' spend much of his time in fiddling? Foolish Word- 
 ' monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill 
 ' hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, 
 ' and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks 
 ' of Pleasure, — I tell thee. Nay ! To the unregenerate 
 ' Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest 
 f aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious 
 ' of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of 
 'suffering only, but of injustice. ^V''hat then? Is 
 ' the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some 
 ' Passion ; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the 
 ' direction others p7'qfit by? I know not: only this 
 ' 1 know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true 
 
 * aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and 
 ' sound Digestion man may front much. But what, 
 ' in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors of 
 ' Conscience to the diseases of the Liver ! Not on 
 ' Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our strong- 
 ' hold : there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, 
 ' let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at 
 
 * eJise on the fat things he has provided for his Elect 1 ' 
 
 Thus has the bewildered ^^^anderer to stand, as so 
 many have done, shouting question after question into 
 the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but 
 an Echo. It is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world 
 of his ; wherein is heard only the howling of wild- 
 beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men ; 
 and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire 
 by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. To such 
 length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. ' But 
 ' what boots it (was thufs)?' cries he : 'it is but the 
 ' common lot in this era. Not having come to spiritual 
 
140 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * majority prior to the Siecle de Louis Quinze, and not 
 ' being laorn purely a Loghead {Dummkopf), thou 
 ' hadst no other outlook. The whole world is, like 
 ' thee, sold to Unbelief ; their old Temples of the 
 ' Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof, 
 ' crumble down ; and men ask now : ^Vhere is the 
 ^ Godhead ; our eyes never saw him ? ' 
 
 Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, 
 to call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as 
 we all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more 
 decisively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant of 
 God, than even now when doubting God's existence. 
 ' One circumstance I note,' says he : ' after all the 
 ' nameless woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is 
 ' not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought 
 ' me, 1 nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate 
 ^ no jot of my allegiance to her. " Truth ! " 1 cried, 
 ' "though the Heavens crush me for following her: 
 ' no Falsehood ! though a whole celestial Lubberland 
 ' were the price of Apostasy." In conduct it was the 
 ^ same. Had a divine Messenger from the clouds, or 
 ' miraculous Handwriting on the wall, convincingly 
 ' proclaimed to me This thou shalt do, with what pas- 
 ' sionate readiness, as I often thought, would I have 
 ' done it, had it been leaping into the infernal Fire. 
 ' Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical 
 ' Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthal- 
 ' mia and hallucination they had brought on, was the 
 ' Infinite nature of Duty still dimly present to me : 
 
 * living without God in the world, of God's light I was 
 ' not utterly bereft ; if my as yet sealed eyes, with 
 ' their unspeakable longing, could nowhere see Him, 
 ' nevertheless in my heart He was present, and His 
 
 * heaven- written Law still stood legible and sacred 
 ' there.' 
 
 Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and tem- 
 poral and spiritual destitutions, what must the Wau- 
 derer, in his silent soul, have endured ! *The painfullest 
 
 * feeling,' writes he, *is that of your own Feebleness 
 ' ( Unkraft) ; ever, as the English Milton says, to be 
 
THE EVERLASTING NO 141 
 
 weak is the true misery. And yet of your Strength 
 there is and can be no clear feeling, save by what 
 vou have prospered in, by what you have done. 
 Between vague wavering Capability and fixed in- 
 dubitable Performance, what a diiference ! A certain 
 inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us ; 
 which only our Works can render articulate and 
 decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror 
 wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. 
 Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, 
 Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially 
 possible one. Know what thou canst work at. 
 ^But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I 
 been, the net-result of my W^orkings amounted as 
 yet simply to — Nothing. How then could I believe 
 in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to 
 see it in ? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now 
 perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me in- 
 soluble : Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain 
 Worth, such even as the most have not ; or art thou 
 the completest Dullard of these modern times .'' Alas, 
 the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how 
 could I believe.^ Had not my first, last Faith in 
 myself, when even to me the Heavens seemed laid 
 open, and I dared to love, been ail-too cruelly belied? 
 The speculative Mystery of Life grew ever more 
 mysterious to me : neither in the practical Mystery 
 had I made the slightest progress, but been every- 
 where buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast out. 
 A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infini- 
 tude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, 
 whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible 
 yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided 
 me from all living : was there, in the wide world, 
 any true bosom I could press trustfully to mine? 
 O Heaven, No, there was none ! I kept a lock upon 
 my lips : why should I speak much with that shift- 
 ing variety of so-called Friends, in whose withered, 
 vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but an 
 incredible tradition.'* In such cases, your resource 
 
142 SARTOR RESARTLS 
 
 is to talk little, and that little mostly from tlie News- 
 papers. Now when I look back_, it was a strange 
 isolation I then lived in. The men and women 
 around me, even speaking with me, Avere but Figures; 
 1 had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, 
 that they were not merely automatic. In the midst 
 of their crowded streets and assemblages, 1 walked 
 solitary ; and (except as it was my own heart, not 
 another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as the 
 tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have 
 been, could I, like a P'aust, have fancied myself 
 tempted and tormented of the Devil ; for a Hell, as 
 1 imagine, without Life, though only diabolic Life, 
 were more frightful : but in our age of Down-pulling 
 and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, 
 you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me 
 the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of 
 Volition, even of Hostility : it was one huge, dead, 
 immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead 
 indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O, the 
 vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death ! 
 Why was the Living banished thither companionless, 
 conscious } ^Vhy, if there is no Devil ; nay, unless 
 the Devil is your God ? ' 
 A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, 
 moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron 
 constitution even of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail ? 
 We conjecture tliat he has known sickness ; and, in 
 spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the 
 chronic sort. Hear this, for example : * How beauti- 
 
 * ful to die of broken-heart, on Paper ! Quite another 
 ' thing in practice ; every window of your Feeling, 
 
 * even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and 
 ' mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter ; a 
 
 * whole Drugshop in your inwards ; the fordone soul 
 ^ drowning slowl}^ in quagmires of Disgust !' 
 
 Putting all which external and internal miseries 
 together, may we not lind in the following sentences, 
 quite in our Professor's still vein, significance enough ? 
 
 * From Suicide a certain aftershine {Nachficluiin) of 
 
THE EVERLASTING NO 143 
 
 Christianity withheld me : perhaps also a certaiu in- 
 dolence of character ; for, was not that a remedy I 
 had at any time witliin reach ? Often, however, was 
 there a question present to me : Should some one 
 now, at the turning" of that corner, blow thee 
 suddenly out of Space, into the other World, or 
 other No-world, by pistol-shot, — how were it? On 
 which ground, too, I have often, in sea-storms and 
 sieged cities and other death-scenes, exhibited an 
 imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough^ for 
 courage.' 
 
 ' So had it lasted,' concludes tlie ^\'ande^er, 'so 
 had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, 
 through long years. The heart within me, unvisited 
 by any heavenly dewdrop, was smouldering in sul- 
 phurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest 
 memory I had shed no tear ; or once only when I, 
 murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's Deathsong, 
 that wild Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet (Happy 
 whom he finds in Battle's splendour), and thought 
 that of this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that 
 Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having 
 no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of 
 Man or of Devil : nay, I often felt as if it might be 
 solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, though in 
 Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell 
 him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely enough, 
 1 lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear ; tremu- 
 lous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what : 
 it seemed as if all thinjfs in the Heavens above and 
 the Earth beneath would hurt me ; as if the Heavens 
 and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devour- 
 ing monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be 
 devoured. 
 
 ' Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest 
 man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, 
 one sultry Dog-day, after much perambulation, toil- 
 ing along the dirty little Rue Snint-Tliovms de I' Enfer, 
 among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, 
 and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Fur- 
 
144 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' nace; whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered; 
 ^ when, all at once, there rose a Thoug^ht in me, and I 
 ' asked myself: " What art thou afraid of? Where- 
 ^ fore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, 
 ' and go cowering- and trembling? Despicable biped ! 
 ^ what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before 
 ' thee ? Death ? Well, Death ; and say the pangs of 
 ' Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, 
 ' will or can do against thee ! Hast thou not a heart ; 
 ' canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; and, as a~ 
 ^ Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet 
 ^ itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee ? Let 
 ' it come, then ; I will meet it and defy it ! " And as 
 ^ I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over 
 ' my whole soul ; and I shook base Fear away from 
 *^ me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength ; a 
 ' spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, the 
 ' temper of my misery was changed : not Fear or 
 ' whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim 
 ^ fire-eyed Defiance. 
 
 ^Thus had the Everlasting No {das ewige Nein) 
 ^ pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my 
 ' Being, of my Me ; and then was it that my whole Me 
 ' stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with 
 ' emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the 
 ' most important transaction in Life, may that same 
 ' Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point 
 ^ of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had 
 ' said : "Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the 
 ' Universe is mine (the Devil's) ; " to M'hich my whole 
 ' Me now made answer : "lam not thine, but Free, 
 ^ and forever hate thee ! " 
 
 ' It is from this hour that I incline to date my 
 ^Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; 
 ' perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a Man.' 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 
 
 Though, after this ' Baphometic Fire-baptism* of his, 
 our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but in- 
 creased ; as, indeed, ' Indignation and Defiance,' espe- 
 cially against things in general, are not the most 
 peaceable inmates ; yet can the Psychologist surmise 
 that it was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest ; that 
 henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve 
 round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed 
 and thunder-riven, here feels its own Freedom, which 
 feeling is its Baphometic Baptism : the citadel of its 
 whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will 
 keep inexpugnable ; outwards from which the remain- 
 ing dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will 
 doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. 
 Under another figure, we might say, if in that great 
 moment, in the Rue Sartit-Thomas de VEnfer, the old 
 inward Satanic School was not yet thrown out of 
 doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit; 
 — whereby, for the rest, its howl-chan tings, Ernulphus- 
 cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might, in 
 the meanwhile, become only the more tumultuous, 
 and difficult to keep secret. 
 
 Accordingly, if we scrutinise these Pilgrimings well, 
 there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain in- 
 cipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a 
 Spectre does Teufelsdrockh now storm through the 
 world ; at worst as a spectre-fighting Man, nay who 
 will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming rest- 
 lessly to so many ^ Saints' Wells. ' and ever without 
 
 1*5 
 
146 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little 
 secular wells, whereby from time to time some allevia- 
 tion is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, 
 yet intermitting to * eat his own heart ' ; and clutches 
 round him outwardly on the Not-me for wholesomer 
 food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him in 
 a much more natural state.'* 
 
 'Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I 
 failed not to look upon with interest. How beau Jful 
 to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the 
 remote Time ; to have, as it were, an actual section 
 of almost the earliest Past brought safe into the 
 Present, and set before your eyes ! There, in that 
 old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire put 
 down, say only two-thousand years ago ; and there, 
 burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel 
 as the region yielded, it has burnt, and still burns, 
 and thou thyself seest the very smoke thereof. Ah ! 
 and the far more mysterious live ember of Vital Fire 
 was then also put down there ; and still miraculously 
 burns and spreads ; and the smoke and ashes thereof 
 (in these Judgment-Halls and Churchyards), and its 
 bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou still seest ; 
 and its flame, looking out from every kind coun- 
 tenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or 
 scorches thee. 
 
 ' Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results 
 are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition 
 only : such are his Forms of Government, with the 
 Authority they rest on ; his Customs, or Fashions 
 both of Cloth-habits and of Soul-habits ; much more 
 his collective stock of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty 
 he has acquired of manipulating Nature : all these 
 things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, 
 cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but 
 must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable vehicles, from 
 Father to Son ; if you demand sight of them, 
 they are nowhere to be met with. Visible Plough- 
 men and Hammermen there have been, ever from 
 Cain and Tubalcain downwards : but where does 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 147 
 
 your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgies and 
 other Manufacturing Skill lie warehoused ? It 
 transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's 
 rays (by Hearing and by Vision) ; it is a thing aeri- 
 form, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like 
 manner, ask me not, W^here are the Laws ; where 
 is the Government ? In vain wilt thou go to 
 Schonbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais 
 Bourbon : thou findest nothing there but brick or 
 stone houses, and some bundles of Papers tied with 
 tape. Where, then, is that same cunningly-devised 
 almighty Government of theirs to be laid hands on ? 
 Everywhere, yet nowhere : seen only in its works, 
 this too is a thing aeriform, invisible ; or if you will, 
 mystic and miraculous. So spiritual {geiatig) is our 
 whole daily Life : all that we do springs out of 
 Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force ; only like a little 
 Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the 
 Actual body itself forth from the great mystic Deep. 
 ' Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, 
 I reckon-up to the extent of three : Cities, with their 
 Cabinets and Arsenals ; then tilled Fields, to either 
 or to both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges 
 
 may belong ; and thirdly Books. In which third 
 
 truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that 
 of tiie two others. W^ondrous indeed is the virtue of 
 a true Book, Not like a dead city of stones, yearly 
 crumbling, yearly needing repair ; more like a tilled 
 held, but then a spiritual field : like a spiritual tree, 
 let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and 
 from age to age (we have Books that already number 
 some hundred -and -fifty human ages); and yearly 
 comes its new produce of leaves (Commentaries, 
 Deductions, Philosophical, Political Systems; or were 
 it only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), 
 every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, 
 for it can persuade meiL O thou who art able to 
 write aHBook, which once in the two centuries or 
 oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him 
 whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity 
 
148 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 'him whom they name Conqueror or Citv-burner I 
 ' Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor ; but of the 
 
 * true sort, namely over the Devil : thou too hast built 
 
 * what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a 
 
 * wonder- bring-ing- City of the Mind, a Temple and 
 ' Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds 
 ' of the Earth will pilgrim. — Fool ! why journeyest 
 ' thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to 
 
 * gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay 
 
 * ones of Sacchara ? These stand there, as I can tell 
 ' thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly 
 
 * enough, for the last three-thousand years : but canst 
 ' thou not open thy Hebrew Bible, then, or even 
 ' Luther's Version thereof?' 
 
 No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not 
 in Battle, yet on some Battle-field ; which, we soon 
 gather, must be that of Wagram ; so that here, for 
 once, is a cei-tain approximation to distinctness of 
 date. Omitting much, let us impart what follows : 
 
 ' Horrible enough ! A whole Marchfeld strewed 
 
 * with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, 
 ' .'ind dead men and horses ; stragglers still remaining 
 ' not so much as buried. And those red mould heaps : 
 ' ay, there lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the 
 ' Life and Virtue has been blown ; and now are they 
 ' swept together, and crammed-down out of sight, like 
 ' blown Egg-shells ! — Did Nature, when she bade the 
 ^ Donau bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carin- 
 ' thian and Carpathian Heights, and spread them out 
 ' here into the softest, richest level, — intend thee, O 
 ' Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon her 
 ' children might be nursed ; or for a Cockpit, wherein 
 ' they might the more commodiously be throttled and 
 ' tattered? Were thy three broad Highways, meeting 
 ' here from the ends of Europe, made for Ammunition- 
 ' wagons, then ? Were thy VV^agrams and Stillfrieds 
 ' but so many ready-built Casemates, wherein the house 
 ' of Hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with 
 ' artillery be battered ? Konig Ottokar, amid yonder 
 ' hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon ; here Kaiser 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 149 
 
 Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's : within which 
 live centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, 
 fair Plain, been defaced and defiled ! The green- 
 sward is torn-up and trampled-down ; man's fond 
 care of it, his fruit-trees, hed^e-rows, and pleasant 
 dwellings, blown-away with gunpowder ; and the 
 kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Sculls. 
 — Nevertheless, Nature is at work ; neither shall 
 these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost devilry 
 gainsay her : but all that gore and carnage will be 
 shrouded-in, absorbed into manure ; and next year 
 the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty 
 unwearied Nature, ever out of our great waste 
 educing some little profit of thy own, — how dost 
 thou, from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life 
 for the Living ! 
 
 ' What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the 
 net-purport and upshot of war? To my own know- 
 ledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the 
 British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five- 
 hundred souls. From these, by certain '^Natural 
 Enemies" of the French, there are successively 
 selected, during the French war, say thirty able- 
 bodied men : Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has 
 suckled and nursed them : she has, not without 
 difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and 
 even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, 
 another build, another hammer, and the weakest can 
 stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, 
 amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected ; 
 all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at the public 
 charges, some two-thousand miles, or say only to 
 the south of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. And 
 now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are 
 thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dum- 
 drudge, in like maimer wending : till at length, 
 after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual 
 juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, 
 each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 
 "Fire!" is given: and they blow the souls out of 
 
1.50 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 one another ; and in place of sixty brisk useful 
 craftsmen, the M'orld has sixty dead carcasses, which 
 it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these 
 men any quarrel ? Busy as the Devil is, not the 
 smallest ! They lived far enough apart ; were the 
 entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a Universe, there 
 was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual 
 helpfulness between them. How then.'* Simpleton! 
 their Governors had fallen-out ; and, instead of 
 shooting- one another, had the cunning to make 
 these poor blockheads shoot. — Alas, so is it in 
 Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands ; still 
 as of old, " what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks 
 miist pay the piper ! " — In that fiction of the English 
 Smollett, it is true, the final Cessation of War is 
 perhaps prophetically shadowed foi'th ; where the 
 two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco- 
 pipe, filled with Brimstone ; light the same, and 
 smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives 
 in : but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood- 
 filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still 
 divide us !' 
 
 Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid interAals, 
 look away from his own sorrows, over the many- 
 coloured world, and pertinently enough note what is 
 passing there. We may remark, indeed, that for the 
 matter of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps 
 few periods of his life were richer than this. Inter- 
 nally, there is the most momentous instructive Course 
 of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, going on ; 
 towards the right comprehension of which his Peri- 
 patetic habits, favourable to Meditation, might help 
 him rather than hinder. Externally, again, as he 
 wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart 
 little substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough : 
 in these so boundless Travels of his, granting that the 
 Satanic School was even partially kept down, what an 
 incredible knowledge of our Planet, and its Inhabitants 
 and their Works, that is to say, of all knowable things, 
 might not Teufelsdrockh acquire ! 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 151 
 
 ^ I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, ^ in- 
 ' eluding those of Constantinople and Samarcand : in 
 ' most Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, 1 
 ^ have studied, or seen that there was no studying. 
 ' Unknown Languages have I oftenest gathered from 
 ' their natural repertory, the Air, by my organ of 
 ' Hearing ; Statistics, Geographies, Topographies came, 
 ' through the Eye, almost of their own accord. The 
 ' ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, and 
 
 * protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly 
 ' known to me. Like the great Hadrian, 1 meted-out 
 ' much of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Com- 
 ' passes that belonged to myself only. 
 
 ^Of great Scenes why speak? Three summer days, 
 ' I lingered reflecting, and even composing (dichtete), 
 ' by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse ; and in that clear 
 ' Lakelet moistened my bread. 1 have sat under the 
 ' Palm-trees of Tadmor ; smoked a pipe among the 
 ' ruins of Babylon. The great Wall of China I have 
 ' seen ; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped 
 ' and covered with granite, and shows only second- 
 ' rate masonry. — Great Events, also, have not I wit- 
 ^ nessed ? Kings sweated-down (ausgemergelt) into 
 ' Berlin-and-Milan Customhouse-Officers ; the World 
 ' well won, and the World well lost; oftener than 
 ' once a hundred-thousand individuals shot (by each 
 ' other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and 
 ' nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled 
 ^ into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in 
 ' time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, where- 
 ' with convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that 
 ' reached Heaven, could not escape me. 
 
 ' For great Men I have ever had the warmest pre- 
 ' dilection ; and can perhaps boast that fe\v such in 
 ' this era have wholly escaped me. Great Men are 
 
 * the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that 
 ' divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is 
 ' completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named 
 ' HisTOKY ; to which inspired Texts your numerous 
 
 * talented men, and your innumerable untalented men. 
 
162 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ^ are the better or worse exe^etic Commentaries, and 
 ' wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly 
 ' Sermons. For my study, the inspired Texts them- 
 ^ selves ! Thus did not I, in very early days, having 
 ' disguised me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field- 
 ' chairs, under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the 
 ' Jena Highway ; waiting upon the great Schiller and 
 ' greater Goethe ; and hearing what I have not for- 
 
 ' gotten. For ' 
 
 -But at this point the Editor recalls his principle 
 
 of caution, some time ago laid down, and must sup- 
 press much. Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still 
 more, of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should 
 we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and 
 the time come for Publication, then may these glimpses 
 into the privacy of the Illustrious be conceded ; which 
 for the present were little better than treacherous, 
 perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, 
 therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwaug, and the 
 'White VVater- roses ' (Chinese Carbonari) with their 
 mysteries, no notice here ! Of Napoleon himself we 
 shall only, glancing from afar, remark that Teufels- 
 drockh's relation to him seems to have been of very 
 varied character. At first we find our poor Professor 
 on the point of being shot as a spy ; then taken into 
 private conversation, even pinched on the ear, yet 
 presented with no money ; at last indignantly dis- 
 missed, almost thrown out of doors, as an ' Ideologist.' 
 ' He himself,' says the Professor, *^was among the 
 ' completest Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists : in the 
 ' Idea {in der Idee) he lived, moved and fought. The 
 ' man was a Divine Missionary, though unconscious of 
 ' it ; and preached, through the cannon's throat, that 
 
 * great doctrine. La carriere &uverte aux talens (The 
 ' Tools to him that can handle them), which is our 
 ' ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty 
 
 * lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthu- 
 ' siasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect 
 
 * utterance, amid much frothy rant ; yet as articulately 
 ' perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 163 
 
 ^ will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell 
 ' unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable 
 ' wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, 
 ' rioting, and even theft ; whom, notwithstanding, the 
 ' peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the bound- 
 
 * less harvest, bless.' 
 
 More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufels- 
 drockh's appearance and emergence (we know not well 
 whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on that 
 June Midnight. He has a ^light-blue Spanish cloak* 
 hanging round him, as his ' most commodious, prin- 
 ' cipal, indeed sole upper-garment ' ; and stands there, 
 on the World- promontory, looking over the infinite 
 Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now 
 motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaint- 
 est changes. 
 
 ^Silence as of death,' writes he; 'for Midnight, 
 
 * even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character : no- 
 ^ thing but the granite clifi's ruddy-tinged, the peace- 
 
 * able gurgle of that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over 
 ^ which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs low 
 ' and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his 
 
 * cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold ; 
 ' yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, 
 
 * like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to 
 ^ the abyss, and hide itself under my feet. In such 
 '■ moments. Solitude also is invaluable ; for who would 
 
 * speak, or be looked on, when behind him lies all 
 ' Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watch- 
 
 * men ; and before him the silent Immensity, and 
 ^ Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a 
 ' porch-lamp .'' 
 
 ' Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, 
 
 * or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows ; 
 ' and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails 
 
 * me in Russian speech : most probably, therefore, a 
 ' Russian Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I sig- 
 
 * nify my indifference to contraband trade, my huniane 
 
 * intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain : 
 
 * the monster, counting doubtless on his superior 
 
15si SARTOR RESARTLS 
 
 ' stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or 
 ' perliaps profit, were it with murder, continues to 
 ' advance ; ever assailing me with his importunate 
 ' train-oil hreath ; and now has advanced, till we 
 ' stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea 
 ' rippling greedily down below. What argument will 
 ^ avail .^ On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reason- 
 ' ing, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for 
 ' such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one 
 ^ step ; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a suffi- 
 ' cient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say, ^^Be so 
 ^ obliging as retire. Friend {Er ziehe sich zuruck, 
 ' Frewnd), and with promptitude !" This logic even 
 'the Hyperborean understands : fast enough, with 
 ' apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, ex- 
 ' cept for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need 
 ' not return. 
 
 ' Such 1 hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder : 
 ' that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be 
 ' cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more Mindj 
 ' though all but no Body whatever, then canst thou 
 ' kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the 
 ' Goliath powerless, and the David resistless ; savage 
 ' Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all. 
 
 ' VV^ith respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. 
 ' Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me 
 ' with more surprise. Two little visual Spectra of 
 ' men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the 
 ' midst of the Unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, 
 ' at any rate, very soon, — make pause at the distance 
 ' of twelve paces asunder ; whirl round ; and, simul- 
 ' taneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode 
 ' one another into Dissolution ; and oft-hand become 
 ' Air, and Non-extant ! Deuce on it {verdammt), the 
 ' little spitfires ! — Nay, I think with old Hugo von 
 ' Trimberg : " God must needs laugh outright, could 
 ' such a thing be, to see his wondrous Manikins here 
 ' below ! " ' 
 
 But amid these specialties, let us not forget the gi'eat 
 
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 155 
 
 generality, which is our chief quest here : How pros- 
 pered the inner man of Teufelsdrockh under so much 
 outward shifting? Does Leg"ion still lurk in him^ 
 though repressed ; or has he exorcised that Devil's 
 Brood ? We can answer that the symptoms continue 
 promising. Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor ; 
 and with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a 
 patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. Unless our 
 poor Friend belong to the numerous class of Incurables, 
 which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless be 
 effected. We should rather say that Legion, oi* the 
 Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and 
 cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its room ; 
 whereby the heart remains, for the while, in a quiet 
 but no comfortable state. 
 
 ' At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our 
 Autobiographer, ' I was what you might name calcined. 
 Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more fre- 
 quent issue, reduced to a capuf-morfuum ! But in any 
 case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar 
 with many things. Wretchedness was still wretched; 
 but I could now partly see through it, and despise it. 
 Which highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had 1 
 not found a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted ; and, 
 when I looked through his brave garnitures, miser- 
 able enough ? Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, 
 thought I : but what, had they even been all granted ! 
 Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not 
 two Planets to conquer ; or a whole Solar System ; or 
 after that, a whole Universe ? Ach Gott, when I gazed 
 into these Stars, have they not looked-down on me as 
 if with pity, from their serene spaces ; like Eyes glis- 
 tening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man ! 
 Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our 
 own, have been swallowed-up of Time, and there 
 remains no wreck of them any more ; and Arcturus 
 and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining 
 in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shep- 
 herd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw ! 
 what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth ; what 
 
16G SARTOR RPJJSARTUS 
 
 ' art thou that sittest whining there? Thou art still 
 ' Nothirijo:, Nobody : true ; but who_, then, is Something, 
 ' Somebody ? For thee the Family of Man has no use ; 
 
 * it rejects thee ; thou art wholly as a dissevered limb : 
 
 * so be it ; perhaps it is better so )' 
 
 Too heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely his bands 
 are loosening ; one day he will hurl the burden far 
 from him, and bound forth free and with a second 
 youth. 
 
 ' Tliis,' says our Professor, ' was the Centre op 
 
 * Indifference I had now reached ; through which 
 
 * whoso ti-avels from the Negative Pole to the Positive 
 ^ must necessarily pass.' 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE EVERLASTING YEA 
 
 * Temptations in the Wilderness ! ' exclaims Teufels- 
 drockh : ' Have we not all to be tried with such ? Not 
 ' so easily can the old Adam, lodg^ed in us by birth, be 
 ' dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with 
 ' Necessity ; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other 
 ' than Freedom, than Voluntary Force : thus have we 
 ' a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard -fought 
 ' battle. For the God-given mandate. Work thou in 
 ' Welldoing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean 
 ' Prophetic Characters, in our hearts ; and leaves us no 
 ' rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed ; 
 ' till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted 
 ' Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, 
 ' Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively 
 ' proclaims itself through every nerve, — must not there 
 ' be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence 
 ' can become the upper .^ 
 
 ^To me nothing seems more natural than that the 
 ^ Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first 
 ' prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must 
 ' now be vanquished or vanquish, — should be carried 
 ^ of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting 
 ' the Tempter do grimmest battle with him ; defiantly 
 ' setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it 
 ' as we choose : with or without visible Devil, whether 
 ' in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the 
 ' populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness, — 
 ' to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we 
 ' are not ! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom 
 
 157 
 
158 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 that divine handwriting has never blazed forth^ all- 
 subduing, in true sun-splendour ; but quivers dubi- 
 ously amid meaner lights : or smoulders, in dull pain, 
 in darkness, under earthly vapours ! — Our Wilderness 
 is the wide World in an Atheistic Century ; our Forty 
 Days are long years of suffering and fasting : never- 
 theless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also 
 was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of 
 Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life 
 or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the 
 enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight 
 and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, 
 to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes — of 
 that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit 
 is in Heaven only ! ' 
 
 He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure ; as 
 figures are, once for all, natural to him : ' Has not 
 ' thy Life been that of most sufficient men (tuchtigen 
 ' Manner) thou hast known in this generation ? An 
 ' outflush of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first 
 ' fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable 
 ' herbs : this all parched away, under the Droughts 
 ' of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointment, 
 
 * in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, 
 ' and Doubt gradually settled into Denial ! If I have 
 
 * had a second-crop, and now see the perennial green- 
 
 * sward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which 
 ' defy all Drought (and Doubt) ; herein too, be the 
 
 * Heavens praised, I am not without examples, and even 
 
 * exemplars.' 
 
 So that, for Teufelsdrockh also, there has been a 
 
 * glorious revolution' : these mad shadow-hunting and 
 shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his were but some puri- 
 fying * Temptation in the Wilderness,' before his 
 apostolic work (such as it was) could begin ; which 
 Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil once 
 more worsted ! VV^as ' that high moment in the Rue 
 de I' Ertfer,' then, properly the turning-point of the 
 battle ; when the Fiend said. Worship me, or be torn in 
 shreda ; and was answered valiantly with an Apage 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA lo9 
 
 Satana? — Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst 
 told thy singular story in plain words ! But it is 
 fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. 
 Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets : a typical 
 Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric ; no clear 
 logical Picture. ' How paint to the sensual eye,' asks 
 he once, ^ what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's 
 ' Soul ; in what words, known to these profane times, 
 
 * speak even afar-off of the unspeakable ? ' We ask in 
 turn : Why perplex these times, profane as they are, 
 with needless obscurity, by omission and by commis- 
 sion ? Not mystical only is our Professor, but whimsical ; 
 and involves himself, now more than ever, in eye- 
 bewildering chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, here 
 faithfully imparted, our most gifted readers must 
 endeavour to combine for their own behoof. 
 
 He says : ' The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself 
 ' out ; its howl went silent within me ; and the long- 
 ' deafened soul could now hear. I paused in my wild 
 ^ wanderings ; and sat me down to wait, and consider ; 
 ' for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I 
 ' seemed to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say : 
 ' Fly, then, false shadows of Hope ; I will chase you no 
 ' more, I will believe you no more. And ye too, hag- 
 ^ gard spectres of Fear, I care not for you ; ye too are 
 
 * all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here : for I am 
 ' way-weary and life-weary ; I will rest here, were it 
 
 * but to die : to die or to live is alike to me ; alike 
 ' insignificant.' — And again : ' Here, then, as I lay 
 ' in that CexVtre op Indifference ; cast, doubtless 
 ' by benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, 
 
 * the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke 
 ' to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first prelimi- 
 ' nary moral Act, Annihilation of Self(Selbd- todt ung), 
 ' had^eBUi happily accomplished ; and my mind's eyes 
 ' were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved.' 
 
 Might we not also conjecture that the following 
 passage refers to his Locality, during this same ' heal- 
 ing sleep ' ; that his Pilgrim-start" lies cast aside here, 
 on Hhe high table-land'; and indeed that the repose 
 
160 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 is already taking' wholesome effect on him? If it were 
 not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, 
 even of levity, than we could have expected ! How- 
 ever, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest 
 Dualism : light dancing, with guitar-music, will be 
 going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within 
 comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We 
 transcribe the piece entire. 
 
 * Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, 
 musing and meditating ; on the high table-land, in 
 front of the Mountains ; over me, as roof, the azure 
 Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing 
 curtains, — namely, of the Four azure Winds, on 
 whose bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And 
 then to fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in 
 these Mountain hollows ; with their green flower- 
 lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely enough : 
 or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein 
 stood many a Mother baking bread, with her chil- 
 dren round her : — all hidden and protectingly folded- 
 up in the valley-folds ; yet there and alive, as sure 
 as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, 
 the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my 
 mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont 
 to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal 
 tongue ; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their 
 vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds ; whereon, as on a 
 culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. 
 For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives 
 at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their 
 husbands' kettles ; and ever a blue pillar rose up 
 into the air, successively or simultaneously, from 
 each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could 
 say : Such and such a meal is getting ready here. 
 Not uninteresting ! For you have the whole Borough, 
 with all its love-makings and scani^al-mongeries, con- 
 tentions and contentp^ents, as in miniature, and could 
 cover it all with your hat. — If, in my wide Wayfar- 
 ings, I had learned to look into the business of the 
 World in its details, here perhaps was the place for 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA 161 
 
 combining' it into general propositions, and deducing 
 inferences therefrom. 
 
 'Often also could I see the black Tempest marching 
 in anger through the Distance : round some Schreck- 
 horn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour 
 gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down 
 like a mad witch's hair ; till, after ^ space, it van- 
 ished, and, in the clear sunbeam, your Shreckhorn 
 stood smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held 
 snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy 
 great fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmos- 
 phere, of a World, O Nature ! — Or what is Nature? 
 Ha ! why do I not name thee God ? Art not thou 
 the " Living Garment of God " ? O Heavens, is it, 
 in very deed. He, then, that ever speaks through 
 thee ; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and 
 loves in me? 
 
 ' Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of 
 that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteri- 
 ously over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the 
 Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla ; ah, like the mother's 
 voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weep- 
 ing, in unknown tumults ; like soft streamings of 
 celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, came 
 that Evangel. The LTniverse is not dead and de- 
 moniacal, a charnel-house with spectres ; but godlike, 
 and my Father's ! 
 
 ' With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my 
 fellow man : with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. 
 Poor, wandering, wayward man ! Art thou not 
 tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am ? Ever, 
 whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's 
 gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden ; 
 and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, 
 my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, 
 and wipe away all tears from thy eyes ! — Truly, the 
 din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with 
 the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a 
 maddening discord, but a melting one ; like inarticu- 
 late criesj and sobbings of a duml> creature, which 
 
 L 
 
162 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, 
 
 * witli her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not 
 
 * my cruel Stepdame ; Man, with his so mad Wants 
 
 * and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer to 
 
 * me ; and even for his sufferings and liis sins, I now 
 ' first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in 
 ' the porch of that ^'^ Sanctuary of Sorrow" ; by strange, 
 
 * steep ways had 1 too been guided thither ; and ere 
 ' long its sacred gates would open, and the "Divine 
 ' Depth of Sorrow" lie disclosed to me.' 
 
 The Professor says, he here first got eye on the 
 Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway 
 could unfasten it, and was free. *' A vain interminable 
 ' controversy,' writes he, ' touching what is at present 
 
 * called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in 
 ' every soul, since the beginning of the world ; and in 
 
 * every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into 
 ^ actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. 
 
 * The most, in our time, have to go content with a 
 
 * simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this cou- 
 ' troversy ; to a few some Solution of it is indispensable. 
 ' In every new era, too, such Solution comes-out in 
 ' different terms ; and ever the Solution of the last 
 ^ era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. 
 ' For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from 
 
 * century to century ; he cannot help it though he 
 ' would. The authentic Church- Catechism of our 
 ' present century has not yet fallen into my hands : 
 ' meanwhile, for my own private behoof, 1 attempt 
 ' to elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as 
 
 * I construe, comes of his Greatness ; it is because 
 ^ there is an Infinite in him, wliich with all his cun- 
 ' ning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will 
 ^ the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and 
 ' Confectioners of modern Piurope undertake, in joint- 
 
 * stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy ? They 
 ' cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two : for the 
 
 * Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his 
 ' Stomach ; and would require, if you consider it, for 
 
 * his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA 163 
 
 *^ this allotment, no more, and no less : Godts infinite 
 
 * Universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy in- 
 
 * finitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans 
 ' of Hoehheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus: 
 
 * speak not of tliem ; to the infinite Shoeblack they 
 ^ are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than 
 ' he grumbles that it might have been of better vin- 
 ^ tage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Oni- 
 ' nipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor 
 ' of the other half, and declares himself the most 
 
 * maltreated of men. — Always there is a black spot 
 ' in our sunshine : it is even^ as I said, the Shadow of 
 '^ Ourselves. 
 
 ' But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat 
 ^ thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our 
 ' own striking, we come upon some sort of average 
 
 * terrestrial lot ; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, 
 
 * and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of 
 ' our wages, of our deserts ; requires neither thanks 
 ^ nor complaint ; only such overplus as there may be 
 
 * do we account Happiness ; any deficit again is 
 
 * Misery, Now consider that we have the valuation 
 
 * of our own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of 
 
 * Self-conceit there is in each of us, — do you wonder 
 
 * that the balance should so often dip the wrong way, 
 ^ and many a Blockhead cry : See there, what a pay- 
 ' ment ; was ever worthy gentleman so used ! — I tell 
 
 * thee. Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity ; of what 
 ' thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy 
 
 * that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), 
 ' thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot : fancy 
 
 * that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, 
 ' it will be a luxury to die in hemp. 
 
 ' So true is it, what 1 then said, that the Fraction of 
 
 * Life can he increased in value not so much by increasing 
 ' your Numerator us by lessening your Denominator. 
 ' Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me. Unity itself 
 ' divided by Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim 
 ^ of wages a zero, then ; thou hast the world under 
 
 * thy feet. Well did the ^\'isest of our time write : 
 
1(>4 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' '^ It is only with Renunciation (Entrngen) that Life, 
 ' properly speaking, can be said to begin." 
 
 ' I asked myself: What is this that, ever since ear- 
 ' liest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and 
 
 * lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? Say 
 ' it in a word : is it not because thou art not happy ? 
 ' Because the Thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently 
 ' honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared- 
 
 * for? Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was 
 ^ there that thou shouldst be Happy? A little while 
 ' ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou 
 ' wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to 
 ' be Unhappy ! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, 
 
 * then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after 
 'somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because 
 ' carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; 
 ' open thy Goethe.' 
 
 ' Es leuchtet ynir ein, I see a glimpse of it ! ' cries he 
 elsewhere : ' there is in man a Higher than Love of 
 ' Happiness : he can do without Happiness, and in- 
 ' stead thereof find Blessedness ! Was it not to preach- 
 ' forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the 
 ' Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and 
 ' suffered ; bearing testimony, through life and through 
 ' death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the 
 
 * Godlike only has he Strength and Freedom? Which 
 ' God-inspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be 
 ' taught ; O Heavens ! and broken with manifold 
 'merciful Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, 
 ' and learn it ! O, thank thy Destiny for these ; 
 ' thankfully bear what yet remain : thou hadst need 
 ' of them ; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. 
 ' By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out 
 ' the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over, 
 ' Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art 
 ' not engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of 
 ' Eternity. Love not Pleasure ; love God. This is 
 ' the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is 
 ' solved : wherein whoso walks and works, it is well 
 ' rrith him.' 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA 165 
 
 And again : ' Small is it that thou canst trample the 
 
 * Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek 
 
 * Zeno trained thee : thou canst love the Earth while 
 
 * it injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for 
 ' this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was 
 
 * sent. Knowest thou that *' Worship of Sorrow " ? 
 ' The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries 
 ' ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the 
 ' habitation of doleful creatures : nevertheless, venture 
 
 * forward ; in a low crypt, arched out of falling frag- 
 
 * meuts, thou findest the Altar still there, and its 
 
 * sacred Lamp perennially burning.' 
 
 AVithout pretending to comment on which strange 
 utterances, the Editor will only remark, that there 
 lies beside them much of a still more questionable 
 character ; unsuited to the general apprehension ; nay 
 wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous 
 disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of 
 splendour; on the ^perennial continuance of Inspira- 
 tion ' ; on Prophecy ; that there are ' true Priests, as 
 well as Baal-Priests, in our own day' ; with more of 
 the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of 
 finish to this farrago. 
 
 * Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,* thus 
 apostrophises the Professor: 'shut thy sweet voice; 
 ' for the task appointed thee seems finished. Suffi- 
 ' ciently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, 
 ' considerable or otherwise : That the Mythus of the 
 ' Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century 
 ' as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty 
 
 * quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos 
 
 * and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before 
 ' and since on tlie same subject, all needed to convince 
 
 * us of so little ! But what next,'' Wilt thou help us 
 ' to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new 
 
 * Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, 
 
 * otherwise too like perishing, may live ? AVhat ! thou 
 ' hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burn- 
 
 * ing, no hammer for building.'' Take our thanks, then, 
 ' and thyself away. 
 
166 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me ? 
 ' Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thin^ 
 ' which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me ; 
 'or dispute into me? To the '^ Worship of Sorrow" 
 
 * ascribe what origin and g^enesis thou pleasest, has 
 ' not that Worship originated, and been g"enerated ; 
 
 * is it not here? Feel it in thy heart, and then say 
 ' whether it is of God ! This is Belief ; all else is 
 ' Opinion, — for wliich latter whoso will, let him worry 
 ' and be worried.' 
 
 ' Neither,' observes he elsewhere, ^ shall ye tear-out 
 ' one another's eyes, strugg-ling" over " Plenary Inspira- 
 
 * tion," and such-like : try rather to get a little even 
 
 * Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One 
 
 * Bible I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt 
 
 * is not so much as possible ; nay with my own eyes 
 ' I saw the God's-Hand writing it : thereof all other 
 
 * Bibles are but Leaves, — say, in Picture- Writing to 
 ' assist the weaker faculty.' 
 
 Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it 
 to an end, let him take the following perhaps more 
 intelligible passage ; 
 
 ' To me, in this our life,' says the Professor, ' which 
 ' is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other 
 ' warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way 
 ' a Contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think 
 ^ well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it 
 ' to the bottom, it is simply this : ^'^ Fellow, see ! thou 
 ' art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the 
 ' world, something from my share : which, by the 
 ' Heavens, thou shalt not ; nay I will fight thee 
 ' rather." — Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is 
 'such a beggarly matter, truly a ^^ feast of shells," 
 ' for the substance has been spilled out : not enough 
 ' to quench one Appetite ; and the collective human 
 ' species clutching at them ! — Can we not, in all such 
 'cases, rather say: "Take it, thou too-ravenous in- 
 ' dividual ; take that pitiful additional fraction of a 
 ' share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so 
 ' wan test ; take it with a blessing : would to Heaven 
 
THE EVERLASTING YEA 1G7 
 
 ' I had enough for thee ! " — If Fichte's WissenschafLf- 
 ' Ichre be, ^' to a certain extent, Applied Christianity," 
 ' surely to a still greater extent, so is this. We have 
 ' here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, 
 ^ namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as we 
 ' can demonstrate it ! 
 
 ' But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, 
 ^ is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay 
 ' properly Conviction is not possible till then ; inas- 
 ^ much as all Speculation is by nature endless, form- 
 ^ less, a vortex amid vortices : only by a felt indubitable 
 ' certainty of Experience does it find any centre to 
 * revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. 
 ' Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 
 ' " Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by 
 ' Action." On Avhich ground, too, let him who gropes 
 ^ painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays 
 ' vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day. lay 
 ' this other precept well to heart, which to me was of 
 ' invaluable service : ''^ Do the duty which lies nearest 
 ' thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty ! Thy second 
 ' Duty will already have become clearer. 
 
 ' May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual 
 ' Enfranchisement is even this : When your Ideal 
 ' ^Vorld, wherein the whole man has been dimly 
 ' struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, 
 ' becomes revealed, and thrown open ; and you dis- 
 ' cover, with amazement enough, like the Lothario in 
 ^ Wilhelm Meister, that your ^'^ America is here or 
 ' nowhere " ? The Situation that has not its Duty, its 
 ' Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, 
 ' in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, 
 ' wherein thou even now staiidest, here or nowhere is 
 ' thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, 
 ^ believe, live, be free. Fool ! the Ideal is in thyself, 
 'the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is 
 ' but the stuif thou art to shape that same Ideal out 
 ' of : what matters whether such stuff be of this sort 
 ' or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be 
 ' poetic } O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of 
 
168 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 the Actual, and criest bitterly to the ^ods for a 
 kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of 
 a truth : the thiii^ thou seekest is already with thee, 
 '' here or nowhere," couldst thou only see ! 
 
 ' But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature : 
 the beginning of Creation is — Light. Till the" eye 
 have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine 
 moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once 
 over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken : Let 
 there be Light ! Ever to the greatest that has felt 
 such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announc- 
 ing ; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest 
 and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed ; 
 the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind them- 
 selves into separate Firmaments : deep silent rock- 
 foundations are built beneath ; and the skyey vault 
 with its everlasting Luminaries above : instead of a 
 dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, 
 heaven-encompassed World. 
 
 ' 1 too could now say to myself : Be no longer a 
 Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce ! 
 Produce ! Were it but the pitifuUest infinitesimal 
 fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name ! 
 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee : out with it, then. 
 Up, up ! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it 
 with thy whole might. Work while it is called 
 Today ; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can 
 work.' 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PAUSE 
 
 Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, 
 in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufels- 
 drockh through the various successive states and 
 stages of Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost 
 Reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he 
 himself seems to consider as Conversion. ^ Blame not 
 ' the word,' says he ; ' rejoice rather that such a word, 
 
 * signifying such a thing, has come to light in our 
 ' modern Era, though hidden from the wisest Ancients. 
 
 * The Old World knew nothing of Conversion ; in- 
 ' stead of an Ecce Homo, they had ^ouly some Choice 
 
 * of Hercules. It was a new-attained progress in the 
 
 * Moral Development of man : hereby has the Highest 
 
 * come home to the bosoms of the most Limited ; what 
 
 * to Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates a 
 ' chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, 
 ' your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists and 
 ' Methodists.' 
 
 It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufels- 
 drockh commences : we are henceforth to see him 
 
 * work in well-doing,' with the spirit and clear aims 
 of a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal Workshop 
 he so panted for is even this same Actual ill-furnished 
 Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can 
 say to himself : ' Tools ? Thou hast no Tools.^ Why, 
 ' there is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has 
 
 * tools. The basest of created animalcules, the Spider 
 ^itself, has a spinning -jenny, and warping - mill, 
 ' and power-loom within its head : the stupidest of 
 
 169 
 
170 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime 
 house to hold it in : every being that can live can do 
 something : this let him do. — Tools? Hast thou not 
 a Brain, furnished, furnishable with some glimmer- 
 ings of Light ; and three fingers to hold a Pen 
 withal? Soever since Aaron's Rod went out of 
 practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder- 
 working Tool : greater than all recorded miracles 
 have been performed by Pens. For strangely in this 
 so solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in 
 continual restless flux, it is appointed that Sound, 
 to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most 
 continuing of all things. The Word is well said 
 to be omnipotent in this world ; man, thereby divine, 
 can create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise ! Speak forth 
 what is in thee ; what God has given thee, what the 
 Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that 
 of Priesthood was allotted to no man : wert thou but 
 the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour 
 enough therein to spend and be spent? 
 
 ^ By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously 
 degrade into a handicraft,' adds Teufelsdrockh, ' have 
 I thenceforth abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed 
 known as mine (for what am I?), have fallen, perhaps 
 not altogether void, into the mighty seed-field of 
 Opinion ; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly 
 meet me here and there. 1 thank the Heavens that 
 1 have now found my Calling ; wherein, with or with- 
 out perceptible result, I am minded diligently to per- 
 severe. 
 
 ' Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, ' but this and the 
 other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world- 
 renowned far-working Institution ; like a grain of 
 right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and 
 now stretching-out strong boughs to the four winds, 
 for the birds of the air to lodge in, — may have been 
 properly my doing? Some one's doing, it without 
 doubt was ; from some Idea, in some single Head, it 
 did first of all take beginning : why not from some 
 Idea in mine?' Does Teufelsdrockh here glance at 
 
PAUSE 171 
 
 that ' Society for the Conservation of Property 
 {Eigenthums-conseriiirende Gesellschaft),' of which so 
 many amhiguous notices g"lide spectre-like through 
 these inexpressihle Paper-bags? ^ An Institution,' 
 hints he, '^ not unsuitable to the wants of the time; 
 ' as indeed such sudden extension proves : for already 
 ^ can the Society number, among its office-bearers or 
 ' corresponding members, the highest Names, if not 
 ' the highest Persons, in Germany, England, France ; 
 ' and contributions, both of money and of meditation, 
 ' pour in from all quarters ; to, if possible, enlist the 
 * remaining Integrity of the world, and, defensively 
 ^ and with forethought, marshal it round this Palla- 
 ' dium/ Does Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give 
 himself out as the originator of that so notable Eigen- 
 thums - conservirende {' Owndom - conserving ') Gesell- 
 schaft ; and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? 
 He again hints : ^ At a time when the divine Com- 
 ' mandment, ThoiL shall not steal, wherein truly, if 
 ' well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew 
 ^ Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitu- 
 ' tions, Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napole'on, and 
 ' all Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatso- 
 ' ever, that man has hitherto devised (and enforced 
 ' with Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guid- 
 ' ance: at a time, I say, when this divine Command- 
 ' ment has all-hut faded away from the general re- 
 ' membrauce ; and, with little disguise, a new opposite 
 ' Commandment, Thou shalt steal, is everywhere pro- 
 ^ mulgated, — it perhaps behoved, in this universal 
 ' dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind 
 ' to bestir themselves and rally. ^V'^l\eIl the widest / 
 ^ and wildest violations of that, divine right of Pro-It 
 ' pertyT^he only divine right noV-extant or conceiv-f L. 
 ' able, are sanctioned and recommended by a viciouiS^ 
 ' Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted 
 ' that we have no Property in our r-ery Bodies, hut only 
 ' an accidental Possession and Life-rent, what is the 
 ^ issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles 
 ' may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep 
 
172 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' down the smaller sort of vermin ; but what, except 
 
 * perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect 
 ' us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring 
 ' hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, therefore, the more 
 ' sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, 
 ' from what hand tliat perhaps not ill-written Program 
 
 * in the Public Journals, with its high Frize-Ques- 
 
 * tions and so liberal Prizes, could have proceeded^ — 
 ' let him now cease such wonder ; and, with undivided 
 " faculty, betake himself to the Concurrenz (Competi- 
 ' tion)/ 
 
 We ask : Has this same ' perhaps not ill-written 
 Program/ or any other authentic Transaction of that 
 Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of 
 the British Reader, in any Journal foreign or domestic ? 
 If so, what are those Prize- Questians ; what are the 
 terms of Competition, and when and where? No 
 printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, 
 to be met with in these Paper-bags ! Or is the whole 
 business one other of those whimsicalities and perverse 
 inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, mean- 
 ing much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast- 
 and-loose with us ? 
 
 Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utter- 
 ance to a painful suspicion, which, through late Chap- 
 ters, has begun to haunt him ; paralysing any little 
 enthusiasm that might still liave rendered his thorny 
 Biographical task a labour of love. It is a suspicion 
 grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into 
 ceilainty by the more and more discernible humor- 
 istico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom 
 underground humours and intricate sardonic rogueries, 
 wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning : a suspicion, 
 in one word, that these Autobiographical Documents 
 are partly a mystification ! What if many a so-called 
 Fact were little better than a Fiction ; if here we had 
 no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's 
 History ; but only some more or less fantastic Adum- 
 bration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough. 
 
PAUSE 175 
 
 ihadowing-forth the same ! Our theory begins to be 
 that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but 
 hierog-lyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in 
 that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of- 
 Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools 
 of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man. 
 so known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, 
 would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to 
 an English Editor and a German Hofrath ; and not 
 rather deceptively 77?lock both Editor and Hofrath in 
 the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered-ways of said 
 citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his 
 half-devilish way, how the fools would look ? 
 
 Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will per- 
 haps find himself short. On a small slip, formerly 
 thrown aside as blank, the ink being ail-but invisible, 
 we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the follow- 
 ing : ' What are your historical Facts ; still more your 
 ' biographical ? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a 
 ' Mankind, by stringing-together beadrolls of what 
 ' thou namest Facts ? The Man is the spirit he worked 
 ' in ; not what he did, but what he became. Facts are 
 ' engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the 
 ' key. And then how your Blockhead {Dummkapf) 
 ' studies not their Meaning ; but simply whether they 
 ' are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral ! 
 ' Still worse is it with your Bungler {Pfuscher) : such 
 ' I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences 
 
 * of interpretation ; and mistaking the ill-cut Sei-pent- 
 
 * of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' W^as 
 the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as 
 the present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufels- 
 drockh Serpent- of - Eternity in like manner? For 
 which reason it was to be altered, not without under- 
 hand satire, into a plainer Symbol ? Or is this merely 
 one of his half -soph isms, half-truisms, which if he can 
 but set on the back of a Figure, he cares not whither 
 it gallop? We say not with certainty ; and indeed, so 
 strange is the Professor, can never say. If our sus- 
 picion be wholly unfounded, let his own questionable 
 
174 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ways, not our necessary circumspectness, bear the 
 blame. 
 
 But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and 
 indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these 
 Paper-bags for the present. Let it suffice that we 
 know of Teufelsdrockh, so far, if ^not what he did, 
 yet what he became': the rather, as his character has 
 now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of 
 importance, is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chry- 
 salis is now a winded Psyche : and such, wheresoever 
 be its flight, it will continue. To trace by what com- 
 plex gyrations (flights or involuntary waftings) through 
 the mere external Life-element, Teufelsdrockh reaches 
 his University Professorship, and the Psyche clothes 
 herself in civic Titles, without altering her now fixed 
 nature, — would be comparatively an unproductive 
 task, were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at 
 least, a false and impossible one. His outward Bio- 
 graphy, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, 
 we saw churned utterly into spray-vapour, may hover 
 in that condition, for aught that concerns us here. 
 Enough that by survey of certain ' pools and plashes,' 
 we have ascertained its general direction ; do we not 
 already know that, by one way and other, it has long 
 since rained-down again into a stream ; and even now, 
 at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the 
 Philosophy of Clothes, and visible to whoso will cast eye 
 thereon.'' Over much invaluable matter, that lies 
 scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those 
 Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to glance back, 
 and somewhat will demand insertion at the right place : 
 meanwhile be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. 
 
 If now, before reopening the great Clothes-Volume, 
 we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten 
 Chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the 
 Clothes-Philosophy , let not our discouragement become 
 total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate 
 Bridge over Chaos, a few flying pontoons have perhaps 
 been added, though as yet they drift straggling on the 
 Flood ; how far they will reach, when once the chains 
 
PAUSE 175 
 
 are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be 
 matter of conjecture. -i 
 
 So much we already calculate : Through many a | 
 little loophole, we have liad glimpses into the internal: 
 world of Teufelsdrockh ; his strange mystic, almost 
 magic Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradu-j 
 ally drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. 
 Those mysterious ideas on Time, which merit considera- 
 tion, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, may 
 by and by prove significant. Still more may his some- 
 what peculiar view of Nature, the decisive Oneness he 
 ascribes to Nature. How all Nature and Life are but 
 one Garment, a ' Living Garment,' woven and ever 
 aweaving in the ^Loom of Time'; is not here, indeed, 
 the outline of a whole Clothes-Philosophy ; at least the 
 arena it is to work in } Remark, too, that the Character 
 of the Man, nowise without meaning in such a mat- 
 ter, becomes less enigmatic : amid so much tumultuous 
 obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do not a ceiiain 
 indomitable Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence 
 seem to loom forth, as the two mountain-summits, on 
 whose rock-strata all the rest were based and built? 
 
 Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's 
 Biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hiero- 
 glyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed 
 for Clothes-Philosophy.^ To look through the Shows 
 of things into Things themselves he is led and com- 
 pelled. The ' Passivity ' given him hy birth is fostered 
 by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere cast out, like 
 oil out of water, from mingling in any Employment, in 
 any puulic Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, 
 and a life of Meditation. The whole energy of his 
 existence is directed, through long years, on one task : 
 that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus 
 everywhere do the Shows of things oppress him, with- 
 stand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction : 
 only by victoriously penetrating into Things them- 
 selves can he find peace and a stronghold. But is not 
 this same looking-through the Shows, or Vestures, into 
 the Things, even the first preliminary to a Fhilosophy 
 
17G SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 of Chth4's? Do we not, in all this, discern some 
 beckoning^ towards the true higher purport of such 
 a Philosophy ; and what shape it must assume with 
 such a man, in such an era ? 
 
 Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous 
 Reader is not utterly without guess whither he is 
 bound : nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic Dream- 
 Grottoes through which, as is our lot with Teufels- 
 drockh, he must wander, will there be wanting between 
 whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar Star. 
 
BOOK THIRD 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 
 
 As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufels- 
 drockh, from an early part of this Clothes-\'^olume, has 
 more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, 
 amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of 
 vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of 
 the World ; recognising in the highest sensible phe- 
 nomena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded 
 Ilaiment ; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence 
 thereby rendered visible : and while, on the one hand, 
 he trod the old rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into 
 the mire, he on the other everyvhere exalted Spirit 
 above all earthly principalities and powers, and wor- 
 shipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a 
 true Platonic mysticism. What the man ultimately 
 purposed by thus casting his Greek-fire into the general 
 Wardrobe of the Universe ; what such, more or less 
 complete, rending and burning of Garments through- 
 out the whole compass of Civilised Life and Speculation, 
 should lead to ; the rather as he was no Adamite, in 
 any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend 
 either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a return to 
 the savage state : all this our readers are now bent to 
 discover ; this is, in fact, properly the gist and purport 
 of Professor 'Peufelsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes. 
 
 Be it remembered, however, that such purport is 
 here not so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for 
 
 177 ;i. 
 
178 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 evolving-. We are to guide our British Friends into the 
 new Gold-country, and show them the mines ; nowise 
 to difif-out and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains 
 for all time inexhaustible. Once tliere, let each dig 
 for his own behoof, and enrich himself. 
 
 Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this 
 of the Professor's, can our course now more than for- 
 merly be straig'htforward, step by step, but at best 
 leap by leap. Significant Indications stand-out here 
 and there ; which for the critical eye, that looks both 
 widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some 
 ground-scheme of a Whole : to select these with 
 judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be 
 possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them 
 together, a passable Bridge be effected : this, as here- 
 tofore, continues our only method. Among such light- 
 spots, the following, floating in much wild matter 
 about Perfectibility, has seemed worth clutching at : 
 ' Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern 
 History,' says Teufelsdrockh, ' is not the Diet of 
 Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, 
 Peterloo, or any other Battle ; but an incident passed 
 carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with 
 some degree of ridicule by others : namely, George 
 Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This 
 man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoe- 
 maker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or 
 purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased 
 to manifest itself ; and, across all the hulls of Igno- 
 rance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in 
 unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their 
 souls : who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, 
 God-possessed ; or even Gods, as in some periods it 
 has chanced. Sitting in his stall ; working on tanned 
 hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, 
 and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, never- 
 theless, a Living Spirit belonging to him ; also an 
 antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through 
 a window, it could look upwards, and discern its 
 celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes. 
 
INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 179 
 
 * coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an 
 
 * honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps 
 ' the post of Thirdboroug:h in his hundred, as the crown 
 
 * of long faithful sewing, — was nowise satisfaction 
 ' enough to such a mind : but ever amid the boring 
 ^ and hammering came tones from that far country, 
 
 * came Splendours and Terrors ; for this poor Cord- 
 
 * wainer, as we said, was a Man ; and the Temple of 
 ' Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to 
 
 * minister, was full of holy mystery to him. 
 
 ' The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained 
 
 * VVatchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, 
 
 * listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, 
 
 * and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 
 
 * *^ drink beer and dance with the girls." Blind 
 
 * leaders of the blind ! For wliat end were their tithes 
 
 * levied and eaten ; for what were their shovel-hats 
 ' scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons 
 
 * girt-on ; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, 
 ^ and organing, and other racketing, held over that 
 ' spot of God's Earth, — if Man were but a Patent 
 
 * Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand 
 ^ Reality ? Fox turned from them, with tears and a 
 
 * sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his 
 ' Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than 
 
 * ^Etna, had been heaped over that Spirit ; but it vras 
 ' a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through 
 ^ long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled 
 ' and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free : how its 
 ' prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as 
 
 * tlie giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, 
 ' and emerged into the light of Heaven ! That Leicester 
 ' shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than 
 ' any Vatican or Loretto-shrine. — " So bandaged, and 
 
 * hampered, and hemmed in," groaned he, " with 
 ' thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, 
 
 * and tagrags, I can neither see nor move : not my 
 ' own am I, but the World's ; and Time flies fast, and 
 ' Heaven is higli, and Hell is deep : Man ! bethink 
 
 * thee, if thou hast power of Tliought ! Why not; 
 
180 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 what binds me here? ^^^ant, want! — Ha^ of what? 
 Will all the shoe-wa^es under the IMoon ferry me 
 across into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation 
 can, and devout Prayer to God. I will to the woods : the 
 hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed me ; 
 and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial 
 suit of Leather ! " 
 
 ' Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdrockh, 
 is one of the Arts I never practised ; therefore shall 
 J not decide whether this subject were easy of execu- 
 tion on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me 
 as if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, ta 
 lighten, more and more into Day, the Chaotic Night 
 that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances and 
 its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there 
 is in History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with 
 seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George 
 Fox on that morning, when he spreads-out his 
 cutting-hoard for the last time, and cuts cowhides 
 by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together 
 into one continuous all-including Case, the farewell 
 service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble Fox : 
 every prick of that little instrument is pricking 
 into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and 
 the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong 
 swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee 
 across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds 
 her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true 
 Liberty ; were the work done, there is in broad 
 Europe one Free Man, and thou art he ! 
 
 ' Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the 
 loftiest height ; and for the Poor also a Gospel has 
 been published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, 
 my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest 
 man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, 
 then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest 
 of the Modems, and greater than Diogenes himself: 
 for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his 
 Manhood, casting aside all props and shears ; yet 
 not, in half-savage Pride, undervaluing the Earth ; 
 
INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 181 
 
 ' valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth 
 ' and food, he looks Heavenward from his Earth, 
 ' and dwells in an element of Mercy and AV^orship, 
 
 * with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did 
 
 * nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub ; a 
 ' temple from which man's dignity and divinity was 
 ' scornfully preached abroad : but greater is the 
 ' Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached 
 ^ there, and not in Scorn but in Love. ' 
 
 George Fox's ' perennial suit,' with all that it held, 
 has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries : 
 why, in a discussion on the Perfectibility of Society, 
 reproduce it now ? Not out of blind sectarian partisan- 
 ship : Teufelsdrockh himself is no Quaker ; with all 
 his pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that scene 
 at the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, 
 exhibit fire-arms ? 
 
 For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is 
 more meant in this passage than meets the ear. At 
 the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnest- 
 ness and Bceotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an 
 underhand satire in it), with which that *^ Incident' is 
 here brought forward ; and, in the Professor's ambigu- 
 ous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, 
 recommended to imitation ! Does Teufelsdrockh anti- 
 cipate that, in this age of refinement, any con- 
 siderable class of the community, by way of testifying 
 against the ' Mammon-god,' and escaping from what 
 he calls ' Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair,' where 
 doubtless some of them are toiled and whipped and 
 lioodwinked suflliciently, — will sheathe themselves in 
 close-fitting cases of Leather? The idea is ridiculous 
 in the extreme. Will Majesty lay aside its robes of 
 state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for a 
 second-skin of tanned hide.'' By which change 
 Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and 
 Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to 
 hungry solitudes ; and only Day and Martin could 
 profit. For neither would Teufelsdrockh's mad day- 
 
182 SARTOR RKSARTUS 
 
 drenm, here as we presume covertly intended, of 
 levelling' Society {levelling it indeed with a vengeance, 
 into one huge drowned marsh !), and so attaining 
 the political effects of Nudity without its frigorific 
 or other consequences, — be thereby realised. VVould 
 not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of Russia 
 Leather ; and the high-born Belle step-forth in red 
 or azure morocco, lined with shamoy : the black 
 cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites 
 of the world ; and so all the old Distinctions be 
 reestablished ? 
 
 Or has the Professor his own deeper intention ; 
 and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, 
 which indeed are but a part thereof? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHURCH-CLOTHES 
 
 Not less questionable is his Chapter on Church- 
 ClotheSj which has the farther distinction of beinp^ 
 the shortest in the Volume. We here translate it 
 entire : 
 
 ' By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I 
 mean infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices ; 
 and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday 
 Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it ! 
 Church-Clothes are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, 
 the y^estures, under which men have at various 
 periods embodied and represented for themselves 
 the Religious Principle ; that is to say, invested the 
 Divine Idea of the World with a sensible and prac- 
 tically active Body, so that it might dwell among 
 them as a living and life-giving Word. 
 * These are unspeakably the most important of all 
 the vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. 
 They are first spun and woven, I may say, by that 
 wonder of wonders, Society ; for it is still only when 
 '^two or three are gathered together," that Religion, 
 spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible, how- 
 ever latent, in each, first outwardly manifests itself 
 (as with "cloven tongues of fire"), and seeks to 
 be embodied in a visible Communion and Church 
 Militant. Mystical, more than magical, is that 
 ('ommuning of Soul with Soul, both looking heaven- 
 ward : here properly Soul first speaks with Soul ; 
 for only in looking heavenward, take it in what sense 
 you may, not in looking earthward, does what wo 
 
 183 
 
184 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 can call Union, mutual Love, Society, beg-iu to be 
 possible. How true is that of Novalis : " It is 
 certain, my Belief ^ains quite iiifinitely the moment 
 I can convince another mind thereof " ! Gaze thou 
 in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where plays 
 the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where rages 
 the lurid conflagration of Anger ; feel how thy own 
 so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled 
 with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each 
 other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of 
 embracing Love, or of deadly -grappling Hate) ; and 
 then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man 
 into man. But if so, through all tlie thick-plied 
 hulls of our Earthly Life ; how much more when it 
 is of the Divine Life we speak, and inmost Me is, 
 as it were, brought into contact with inmost Me ! 
 
 * 111 us was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are 
 first spun and woven by Society ; outward Religion 
 originates by Society, Society becomes possible by 
 Religion. Nay, perhaps, every conceivable Society, 
 past and present, may well be figured as properly 
 and wholly a Church, in one or other of these three 
 predicaments : an audibly preaching and prophe- 
 sying Church, which is the best ; second, a Church 
 that struggles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as 
 yet, till its Pentecost come ; and third and worst, 
 a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only 
 mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso 
 fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses 
 and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, 
 mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular 
 Professor, ' read on, light of heart (getrosten Muthes). 
 
 'But with regard to your Church proper, and the 
 
 * Church-Clothes specially recognised as Church- 
 ' Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without 
 ' such Vestures and sacred Tissues Society has not 
 
 * existed, and will not exist. For if Government is, 
 
 * so to speak, the outward Skin of the Body Politic, 
 ' holding the whole together and protecting it ; and 
 ' all your Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, 
 
CHURCH-CLOTHES 185 
 
 ' of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the nius- 
 ^ cular and osseous Tissues (lying under such Skin), 
 ' whereby Society stands and works ; — then is Religion 
 
 * the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which 
 ' ministers Life and warm Circulation to the whole. 
 ' Without which Pericardial Tissue the Bones and 
 ' Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated only 
 ' by a Galvanic vitality ; the Skin would become a 
 
 * shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide ; and Society 
 
 * itself a dead carcass, — deserving to be buried. Men 
 ^ were no longer Social, but Gregarious ; which latter 
 
 * state also could not continue, but must gradually 
 ' issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isola- 
 ' tion, and dispersion ; — whereby, as we might continue 
 ' to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would 
 ' have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and 
 ' so all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church- 
 ^ Clothes to civilised or even to rational men. 
 
 ' Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same 
 
 * Church-Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows : 
 
 * nay, far worse, many of them have become mere 
 ' hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living 
 
 * Figure or Spirit any longer dwells ; but only spiders 
 ' and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive 
 ' their trade ; and the mask still glares on you with 
 ' its glass-eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life, — some 
 ^ generation-and-hahf after Religion has quite with- 
 ' drawn from it, and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for 
 
 * herself new Vestures, wherewith to reappear, and 
 
 * bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or 
 ^ Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest 
 ' of all men, so is a Sham-priest (Schein-prieater) the 
 ' falsest and basest ; neither is it doubtful that his 
 ' Canonicals, were they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be 
 ' torn from him, to make bandages for the wounds of 
 ' mankind ; or even to burn into tinder, for general 
 
 * scientific or culinary purposes. 
 
 * All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled 
 ' in my Second Volume, On the Pali/igeriesia, or jVew- 
 ^ birth of Society ; which volume, as treating practically 
 
18G SARTOR R?:SARTUS 
 
 ' of the Wear, Destruction, and Retexture of Spiritual 
 ' Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking, the 
 ' Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my work 
 * on- Clothes, and is already in a state of forwardness.' 
 
 And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or com- 
 mentary bein^ added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must 
 his Editor now, terminate the sinis^ular chapter on 
 Church-Clothes ! 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SYMBOLS 
 
 Probably it will elucidate the drift of these fo^eg^oing^ 
 ohscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of 
 our Professor's speculations on Symbols. To state his 
 whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass : 
 nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in 
 this of ' Faatasy being the organ of the Godlike ' ; and 
 how ^ Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on 
 ' the small Visible, does nevertheless extend down 
 ^ into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which In- 
 ' visible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying 
 ' forth.' Let us, omitting these high transcendental 
 aspects of the matter, study to glean (whether from the 
 Paper-bags or the Printed Volume) what little seems 
 logical and practical, and cunningly arrange it into 
 such degree of coherence as it will assume. By way 
 of proem, take the following not injudicious remarks : 
 'The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our 
 Professor, ^ who shall speak or sing? Silence and 
 ' Secrecy I Altars might still be raised to them (were 
 ' this an altar-building time) for universal worship. 
 ' Silence is the element in which great things fashion 
 ' themselves together ; that at length they may emerge, 
 ' full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, 
 ^ which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William 
 ' the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have 
 ' known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic 
 * of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating 
 ' and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, 
 ^ do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day : on 
 
 187 
 
188 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and 
 duties; what wreck aud rubbish have those mute 
 workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive 
 noises were shut out ! Speech is too often not, as 
 the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing 
 Thought ; but of quite stifling and suspending 
 Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech 
 too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss 
 Inscription says : Sprechen iat silbern, Schweigen ist 
 golden (Speech is silvern. Silence is golden) ; or as I 
 might rather express it : Speech is of Time, Silence 
 is of Eternity. 
 
 ' Bees will not work except in darkness ; Thought 
 will not work except in Silence . neither will Virtue 
 work except in Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know 
 what thy right hand doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate 
 even to thy own heart of ** those secrets known to 
 all." is not Shame {Schaam) the soil of all Virtue, 
 of all good manners and good morals,^ Like other 
 plants. Virtue will not grow unless its root be hidden, 
 buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine 
 on it, nay do hut look at it privily thyself, the root 
 withers, and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, 
 when we view the fair clustering flowers that over- 
 wreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, and en- 
 circle man's life with the fragrance and hues of 
 Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer 
 that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, 
 grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish 
 in ! Men speak much of the Printing- Press vvith its 
 Newspapers : du Hbnmel! what are these to Clothes 
 and the Tailor's Goose ? * 
 
 ' Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Conceal- 
 ment, and connected with still greater things, is the 
 wondrous agency of Symbols. In a Symbol there is 
 concealment and yet revelation : here therefore, by 
 Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double 
 significance. And if both the Speech be itself high, 
 and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will 
 their union be ! Thus in many a painted Device, or 
 
SYMBOLS 189 
 
 simple Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out 
 to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. 
 ' For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonder- 
 land plays into the small prose domain of Sense_, and 
 becomes incorporated therewith. In the Symbol 
 proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, 
 more or less distinctly and directly, some embodi- 
 ment and revelation of the Infinite ; the Infinite is 
 made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, 
 and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accord- 
 ing-ly, is man g-uided and commanded, made happy, 
 made wretched. He everywhere finds himself en- 
 compassed with Symbols, recognised as such or not 
 recognised : the Universe is but one vast Symbol of 
 God ; nay if thou wilt have it, what is man himself 
 but a Symbol of God ; is not all that he does sym- 
 bolical ; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given 
 force that is in him ; a " Gospel of Freedom," which 
 he, the " Messias of Nature," preaches, as he can, by 
 act and word.'* Not a Hut he builds but is the 
 visible embodiment of a Thought ; but bears visible 
 record of invisible things ; but is, in the transcen 
 dental sense, symbolical as well as real.' 
 ^ Man,' says the Professor elsewhere, in quite anti- 
 podal contrast with these high -soaring delineations, 
 which we have here cut-short on the verge of the 
 nane, ' Man is by birth somewhat of an ow . Perhaps, 
 too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the 
 most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually 
 existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough 
 man has played, in his time ; has fancied himself to 
 be most things, down even to an animated heap of 
 Glass : but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for 
 weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved for 
 this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe 
 one huge Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be 
 weighed against each other ; and looks long-eared 
 enough. Alas, poor devil ! spectres are appointed to 
 haunt him : one age he is hagridden, bewitched ; the 
 next, priestridden, befooled ; in all ages, bedevilled. 
 
190 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * And now the Genius of Mechanism smothers him 
 
 * worse than any Nightmare did ; till the Soul is nigh 
 ' choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, 
 ' Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he 
 ^ can see nothing but Mechanism ; has fear for nothing 
 ' else, hope in nothing else : the world would indeed 
 ' grind him to pieces ; but cannot he fathom the Doc- 
 ' trine of Motives, and cunningly compute these, and 
 ' mechanise them to grind the other way ? 
 
 ' Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by eu- 
 ^ chantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes 
 ' and look. In which country, in which time, was it 
 
 * hitherto that man's history, or the history of any 
 
 * man, went-on by calculated or calculable " Alotives " ? 
 
 * What make ye of your Christianities, and Chivalries, 
 
 * and Reformations, and Marseillese Hymns, and 
 ' Reigns of Terror } Nay, has not perhaps the Motive- 
 ^ grinder himself been in Love'i Did he never stand 
 ' so much as a contested Election .^ Leave him to 
 ' Time, and the medicating virtue of Nature.' 
 
 * Yes, Friends,' elsewhere observes the Professor, 
 ^ not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imagi- 
 ' native one is King over us ; I might say, Priest and 
 ^ Prophet to lead us heavenward ; or Magician and 
 ^ Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the 
 
 * basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the implement 
 
 * of Fantasy ; the vessel it drinks out of .^ Ever in 
 
 * the" dullest existence there is a sheen either of Jn- 
 
 * spiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy 
 
 * choice, which of the two), that gleams-in from the 
 
 * circumambient Eternity, and colours with its own 
 ^ hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding 
 
 * is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make 
 
 * it ; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving 
 
 * retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself 
 
 * known five-hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'- 
 ' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called 
 
 * their Flag ; which, had you sold it at any market- 
 
 * cross, would not have brought above three groschen ? 
 
 * Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some 
 
SYMBOLS 191 
 
 tumultuous mooii- stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser 
 Joseph pocketed their Irou Crown ; an implement, 
 as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial 
 value little differing from a horse-shoe? It is in 
 and through Symboln that man, consciously or un- 
 consciously, lives, works, and has his being : those 
 ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which 
 caH the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize 
 it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him 
 who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revela- 
 tion of the Godlike ? 
 
 ' Of Symbols, how ever, 1 remark farther, that they 
 have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value ; oftenest 
 the former only. WTiat, for instance, was in that 
 clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with 
 tliem as ensign in their Bauemkrieg (Peasants' War) .'* 
 Or in the ^Vallet-and-staff round which the Nether- 
 land Gueiijc, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, 
 heroically rallied and prevailed, though against King 
 Philip himself.^ Intrinsic significance these had 
 none : only extrinsic ; as the accidental Standards of 
 multitudes more or less sacredly uniting together ; 
 in which union itself, as above noted, there is ever 
 something mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. 
 Under a like category, too, stand, or stood, the 
 stupidest heraldic Coat-of-arms ; military Banners 
 everywhere ; and generally all national or other 
 sectarian Costumes and Customs : they have no 
 intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth ; but 
 have acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through 
 all these there glimmers something of a Divine Idea; 
 as through military Banners themselves, the Divine 
 Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring ; in some instances of 
 Freedom, of Right. Nay the highest ensign that 
 men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, 
 had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one. 
 
 ' Another n\atter it is, however, when your Symbol 
 has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself _/i7 that men 
 sliould unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest 
 itself to Sense ; let but Eternity look, more or less 
 
192 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 visibly, throuai-h the Time-Fig-ure {ZeithUd) ! Then 
 is it fit that men unite there ; and worship together 
 before such Symbol ; and so from day to day^ and 
 from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 
 
 ' Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art : in 
 them (if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of 
 Artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking through 
 Time ; the Godlike rendered visible. Here too may 
 an extrinsic value gradually superadd itself: thus 
 certain Iliads, and the like, have, in three-thousand 
 years, attained quite new significance. But nobler 
 than all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god- 
 inspired Men ; for what other Work of Art is so 
 divine } In Death too, in the Death of the Just, 
 as the last perfection of a Work of Art, may we not 
 discern symbolic meaning .^ In that divinely trans- 
 figured Sleep, as of Victory, resting over the beloved 
 face which now knows thee no more, read (if thou 
 canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, 
 and some gleam of the latter peering through. 
 
 ^ Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist 
 or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can 
 recognise a present God, and worship the same : 
 1 mean religious Symbols. Various enough have 
 been such religious Symbols, what we call Religions ; 
 as men stood in this stage of culture or the othery 
 and could worse or better body-forth the Godlike : 
 some Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; 
 many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what 
 height man has carried it in this manner, look on 
 our divinest Symbol : on Jesus of Nazareth, and his 
 Life, and his Biography, and what followed there- 
 from. Higher has the human Thought not yet 
 reached : this is Christianity and Christendom ; a 
 Symbol of quite perennial, infinite character ; whose 
 significance will ever demand to be anew inquired 
 into, and anew made manifest. 
 
 ' But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the 
 sacredness of Symbols, so likewise in his progress 
 he at length defaces, or even desecrates them ; and 
 
SYMBOLS 193 
 
 Symbols, like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. 
 Homer's Epos has not ceased to be true ; yet it is no 
 longer our Epos, but shines in the dist^uice, if clearer 
 and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a re- 
 ceding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs 
 to be reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, 
 before we can so much as know that it vms a Sun. 
 So likewise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with 
 his Eddas, must withdraw into dimness ; and many 
 an African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be 
 utterly abolished. For all things, even Celestial 
 Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have 
 their rise, their culmination, their decline.' 
 
 ' Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal 
 Sceptre is but a piece of gilt-wood ; that the Pyx has 
 become a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient 
 Pistol thought, ^^ of little price." A right Conjuror 
 might I n;ime thee, couldst thou conjure back into 
 these wooden tools the divine virtue they once held.' 
 
 ' Of this thing, however, be certain : wouldst thou 
 plant for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite 
 faculties of man, his Fantasy and Heart ; wouldst 
 thou plant for Year and Day, then plant into his 
 shallow superficial faculties, his Self-love and Arith- 
 metical Understanding, what will grow there. A 
 Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World will 
 we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker ; who, 
 Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring 
 new Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such too will , 
 not always be wanting ; neither perhaps now are. 
 Meanwhile, as the average of matters goes, we 
 account him Legislator and wise who can so much 
 as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently 
 remove it. 
 
 * When, as the last English Coronation ^ was pre- 
 paring,' concludes this wonderful Professor, ^I read 
 in their Newspapers that the '' Champion of Eng- 
 land," he who has to offer battle to the Universe 
 
 1 That of George IV.- Ed. 
 
194 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 * for his new Kiu^, had brought it so far that he 
 ' could now '^ mount his horse with little assistance," 
 
 * I said to myself: Here also we have a Symbol 
 
 * well-nigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever 
 ' you may, are not the tatters and rags of superannu- 
 ' ated worn-out Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) 
 ' dropping off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, 
 ' to tether you ; nay, if you shake them not aside, 
 ' threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce 
 
 * suflFocation ? ' 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HELOTAGE 
 
 At this point we determine on adverting^ shortly, 
 or rather reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath 
 Heuschrecke's, entitled Institute for tfie Repression of 
 Population; which lies, dishonourably enough (with 
 torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), 
 stuffed into the Bag Pisces. Not indeed for the sake 
 of the Tract itself, which we admire little ; but of the 
 marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, 
 which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may 
 be in their right place here. 
 
 Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary 
 schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and 
 the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for 
 us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of 
 Mai thus ; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal 
 almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Popu- 
 lation possesses the Hofrath ; something like a fixed- 
 idea ; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of 
 Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual 
 world, is there light ; nothing but a grim shadow of 
 Hunger ; open mouths opening wider and wider ; a 
 world to terminate by the frightfullest consummation : 
 by its too dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, 
 universally eating one another. To make air for him- 
 self in which strangulation, choking enough to a 
 benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to 
 found, this Institute of his, as the best he can do. It 
 is only with our Professor's comments thereon that we 
 concern ourselves. 
 
 196 
 
196 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a specu- 
 lative Radical, has his own notions about human 
 dii^nity; that the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies 
 have not made him forg^etful of the Futteral cottages. 
 On the blank cover of Heusohrecke's Tract we find 
 the following indistinctly engrossed : 
 
 ' Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toil- 
 worn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement 
 laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. 
 Venerable to me is the hard Hand ; crooked, coarse ; 
 wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue in- 
 defeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. 
 Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, 
 besoiled, with its rude intelligence ; for it is the 
 face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more 
 venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we 
 must pity as well as love thee ! Hardly-entreated 
 Brother ! For us was thy back so bent, for us were 
 thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed : thou 
 wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fight- 
 ing our battles wert so marred. For in thee too 
 lay a god-created Form, ])ut it was not to be un- 
 folded ; encrusted must it stand with the thick 
 adhesions and defacements of Labour : and thy body, 
 like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil 
 on, toil on : thou art in thy duty, be out of it who 
 may ; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, 
 for daily bread. 
 
 ' A second man I honour, and still more highly : 
 Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indis- 
 pensable ; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. 
 Is not he too in his duty ; endeavouring towards 
 inward Harmony ; revealing this, by act or by word, 
 through all his outward endeavours, be they high 
 or low } Highest of all, when his outward and his 
 inward endeavour are one : when we can name him 
 Artist ; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired 
 Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers 
 Heaven for us ! If the poor and humble toil that 
 we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil 
 
HELOTAGE 197 
 
 for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, 
 Freedom, Immortality ? — These two, in all their 
 degrees, 1 honour ; all else is chaif and dust, which 
 let the wind blow whither it listeth. 
 
 ' Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find 
 both dignities united ; and he that must toil out- 
 wardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling 
 inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world 
 know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such 
 now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take 
 thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the 
 splendour of Heaven spring forth from the hum- 
 blest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great 
 darkness.' 
 
 And again : * It is not because of his toils that I 
 lament for the poor : we must all toil, or steal 
 (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse ; 
 no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The 
 poor is hungry and athirst ; but for him also there is 
 food and drink : he is heavy-laden and weary, but for 
 him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest ; 
 in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest en- 
 velops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted 
 Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, that the 
 lamp of his soul should go out ; that no ray of 
 heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, should 
 visit him ; but only, in the haggard darkness, like 
 two spectres. Fear and Indignation bear him 
 company. Alas, while the Body stands so broad 
 and brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, 
 stupefied, almost annihilated ! Alas, was this too a 
 Breath of God ; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth 
 never to be unfolded !— That there should one Man 
 die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this 
 I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than 
 twenty times in the minute, as by some computations 
 it does. The miserable fraction of Science which our 
 united Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, 
 has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, 
 imparted to all.^' 
 
198 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Quite in an opposite strain is the following : ' The 
 old Spartans had a wiser method ; and went out and 
 hunted-down their Helots, and speared and spitted 
 them, when they grew too numerous. With our 
 improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now 
 after the invention of fire-arms, and standing-armies, 
 how much easier were such a hunt ! Perhaps in 
 the most thickly-peopled country, some three days 
 annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied 
 Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let 
 Governments think of this. The expense were 
 trifling : nay the very carcasses would pay it. Have 
 them salted and barrelled ; could not you victual 
 therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet richly such 
 infirm Paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as 
 enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, might 
 see good to keep alive ? ' 
 
 ' And yet,' writes he farther on, ' there must be 
 something wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any 
 market, bring from twenty to as high as two-hundred 
 Friedrichs d'or : such is his worth to the world. A 
 full-formed Man is not only worth nothing to the 
 world, but the world could afford him a round sum 
 would he simply engage to go and hang himself. 
 Nevertheless, which of the two was the more 
 cunningly-devised article, even as an Engine "? Good 
 Heavens ! A white European Man, standing on his 
 two Legs, with his two five-fingered Hands at his 
 shackle-bones, and miraculous Head on his shoul- 
 ders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred 
 Horses !' 
 
 ' True, thou Gold-Hofrath,' cries the Professor else- 
 where : ' too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile, what 
 portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe 
 have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow 
 no more.'* How thick stands your Population in 
 the Pampas and Savannas of America ; round 
 ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa ; on 
 both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central 
 Platform of Asia ; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim 
 
HELOTAGE 199 
 
 ' Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare ? One man, in 
 ' one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him 
 ' Earth, will feed himself and nine others. Alas, 
 ' where now are the Plengsts and Alarics of our still- 
 ' glowing, still-expanding Europe ; who, when their 
 
 • home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like 
 " Fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses 
 ' of indomitable living Valour ; equipped, not now 
 
 • with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the 
 
 • steam-engine and ploughshare ? Where are they ? — 
 ■ Preserving their Game !' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FHCENIX 
 
 Putting which four singular Chapters together, and 
 alongside of them numerous Iiints, and even direct 
 utterances, scattered over these Writings of his, we 
 come upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for 
 conclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who 
 consider Society, properly so called, to be as good as 
 extinct ; and that only the gregarious feelings, and 
 old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from 
 Dispersion, and universal national, civil, domestic and 
 personal war ! He says expressly : ' For the last three 
 ' centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a 
 ' century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue (as 
 ' we named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence 
 ' of Society, has been smote-at and perforated, need- 
 
 * fully and needlessly ; till now it is quite rent into 
 ' shreds ; and Society, long pining, diabetic, consump- 
 ' tive, can be regarded as defunct ; for those spasmodic, 
 ' galvanic sprawlings are not life ; neither indeed will 
 ' they endure, galvanise as you may, beyond two days.' 
 
 ^ Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, ' where 
 ' there is no longer any Social Idea extant ; not so 
 ' much as the Idea of a common Home, but only of 
 ' a common over-crowded Lodging-house ? Where 
 ' each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, turned 
 ' against his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and 
 
 * cries "Mine!" and calls it Peace, because, in the 
 ^ cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, 
 ' but only a far cunuinger sort, can be employed? 
 ' Where Friendship, Communion, has become an 
 
 200 
 
THE PH(EN1X 201 
 
 incredible tradition ; and your holiest Sacramental 
 Supper is a smoking- Tavern Dinner, with Cook for 
 Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue 
 but for plate-licking : and your high Guides and 
 Governors cannot guide ; but on all hands hear it 
 passionately proclaimed : Laissez /aire ; Leave us 
 alone of your guidance, such light is darker than 
 darkness ; eat you your wages, and sleep ! 
 ' Thus, too,' continues he, ' does an observant eye 
 discern everywhere that saddest spectacle : The Poor 
 perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, 
 of Hunger and Over-work ; the Rich, still more 
 wretchedly, of Idleness, Satiety, and Over-growth. 
 The Highest in rank, at length, without honour 
 from the Lowest ; scarcely, with a little mouth- 
 honour, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put 
 it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as 
 empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the 
 expense ; a World becoming dismantled : in one 
 word, the Church fallen speechless, from obesity 
 and apoplexy ; the State shrunken into a Police- 
 Office, straitened to get its pay I ' 
 We might ask, are there many ^observant eyes,' 
 belonging to practical men in England or elsewhere, 
 which have descried these phenomena ; or is it only 
 from the mystic elevation of a German Wahngasse that 
 such wonders are visible .^ Teufelsdrockh contends 
 that the aspect of a * deceased or expiring Society' 
 fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may read. 
 ' What, for example,' says he, ' is the universally- 
 • arrogated Virtue, almost the sole remaining Catholic 
 ' Virtue, of these days? For some half century, it has 
 ^ been the thing you name "Independence." Sus- 
 ' picion of " Servility," of reverence for Superiors, 
 ' the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. Fools ! 
 ' Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you 
 ' worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your 
 ' only possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, 
 ' is rebellion ; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and 
 ' everywhere prescribe it ? ' 
 
202 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 But what then? Are we returning', as Rousseau 
 prayed, to the state of Nature? 'The Soul Politic 
 havinjo^ departed,' says Teufelsdrockh, 'what can 
 follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, 
 to avoid putrescence ? Liberals, Economists, Ctifi- 
 tarians enough I see marching with its bier, and 
 chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral-pile, where, 
 amid wailing-s from some, and saturnalian revelries 
 from the m()st, the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. 
 Or, in plain words, that these men. Liberals, Utili- 
 tarians, or whatsoever they are called, will ultimately 
 carry their point, and dissever and destroy most 
 existing Institutions of Society, seems a thing which 
 has some time ago ceased to be doubtful. 
 
 ' Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand 
 Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated 
 England? A living nucleus, that will attract and 
 grow, does at length appear there also ; and under 
 curious phasis ; properly as the inconsiderable fag- 
 end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy 
 itself the van. Our European Mechanisers are a 
 sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and cooperative 
 spirit : has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places 
 of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every 
 European country, at some time or other, within the 
 last fifty years ? If now in all countries, except 
 perhaps England, it has ceased to flourish, or indeed 
 to exist, among Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists 
 and the popular mass, — who sees not that, as hereby 
 it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it now needs 
 no Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the 
 doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid 
 to heart? The fit pabulum, in these times, for a 
 certain rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise 
 without their corresponding workshop strength and 
 ferocity, it requires but to be stated \n such scenes to 
 make proselytes enough. — Admirably calculated for 
 destroying, only not for rebuilding" ! It spreads like 
 a sort of Dog-madness ; till the whole World-kennel 
 will be rabid : then woe to the Huntsmen, with or 
 
THE PHCENIX 203 
 
 ' without their whips ! They should have given the 
 ' quadrupeds water,' adds he ; ' the water, namely, of 
 ' Knowledge and of Life, while it was yet time.' 
 
 Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, 
 we are at this hour in a most critical condition ; belea- 
 gTiered by that boundless ^Armament of Mechanisers' 
 and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare ! ' The 
 ' World,' says he, 'as it needs must, is under a process 
 ' of devastation and waste, which, whether by silent 
 ' assiduous corrosion, or open quicker combustion, as 
 ' the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate 
 ' the past Forms of Society ; replace them with what it 
 ' may. For the present, it is contemplated that when 
 *' man's whole Spiritual Interests are once divested, 
 * these innumerable stript-ofF Garments shall mostly 
 ' be burnt ; but the sounder Rags among them be 
 ' quilted together into one huge Irish watchcoat for 
 ' the defence of the Body only ! ' — This, we think, is 
 but Job's-news to the humane reader. 
 
 ' Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdrockh, ' who can hinder 
 ' it ; who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes 
 ' of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the lime : 
 'Turn back, I command thee.^ — Wiser were it that 
 ' we yielded to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and 
 ' accounted even this the best.' 
 
 Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own 
 inferences from what stands written, conjecture that 
 Teufelsdrockh individually had yielded to this same 
 ' Inevitable and Inexorable ' heartily enough ; and now 
 sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico- 
 angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? EHd we 
 not hear him complain that the World was a ' huge 
 Ragfair,' and the '^ rags and tatters of old Symbols' 
 were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, 
 and suffocate him ? What with those ' unhunted 
 Helots ' of his ; and the uneven sic vos non vofris 
 pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to 
 discern in existing things ; what with the so hateful 
 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, yet glaring 
 out on him, from their glass eyes, ' with a ghastly 
 
204 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 affectation of life/ — we feel entitled to conclude him 
 even willing that much should be thrown to the Devil, 
 so it were but done gently ! Safe himself in that 
 * Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo,' he would consent, with a 
 tragic solemnity, that the monster Utilitaria, held 
 back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, 
 fo(>t-shackles, and every conceivable modification of 
 rope, should go fortli to do her work ; — to tread down 
 old ruinous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, 
 till the whole were trodden down, that new and better 
 might be built ! Remarkable in this point of view are 
 the following sentences. 
 
 ' Society,' says he, ' is not dead : that Carcass, which 
 you call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which 
 she has shuffled-off, to assume a nobler ; she herself, 
 through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer 
 development, has to live till Time also merge in 
 Eternity. Wheresoever two or three Living Men 
 are gathered together, there is Society ; or there it 
 will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous 
 structures, overspreading this little Globe, and reach- 
 ing upwards to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna : 
 for always, under one or the other figure, it has two 
 authentic Revelations, of a God and of a Devil ; the 
 Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows.' 
 Indeed, we ali-eady heard him speak of * Religion, in 
 unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures ' ; — 
 Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the loom-treadles ! 
 Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange 
 aphorism of Saint -Simon's, concerning which and 
 whom so much were to be said: ' L'dge d'or, quune 
 ' avi'ugle tradition a place jusquici dans- le passe, est 
 ' devant nous ; The golden age, which a blind tradition 
 ' has hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us.' — But 
 ' listen again : 
 
 ' When the Phcenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will 
 ' there not be sparks flying ! Alas, some millions of 
 ' men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have 
 ' already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, 
 ^ and like moths consumed there. Still also have 
 
THE PH(ENIX 205 
 
 ' we to fear that incautious beards will get 
 ' singed. 
 
 ^ For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix- 
 ' cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The 
 ' law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man : by 
 ' nature he hates change ; seldom will he quit his old 
 ' house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus 
 • have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred 
 ' Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three- 
 ' hundred years and more after all life and sacredness 
 ' had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what 
 ^ time the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, de- 
 ^ peuds on unseen contingencies. — Meanwhile, would 
 ' Destiny oifer Mankind, that after, say two centuries 
 ' of convulsion and conflagration, more or less vivid, 
 ' the fire-creation should be accomplished, and we to 
 ' find ourselves again in a Living Society, and no 
 ^ longer fighting but working, — were it not perhaps 
 ^ prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain .'' ' 
 
 Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick Society 
 should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel 
 than spice- wood) ; in the faith that she is a Phoenix ; 
 and that a new heavenborn young one will rise out of 
 her ashes ! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of 
 Indicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, M-ill 
 not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproach- 
 fully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think : 
 From a Doctor utriusque Juru, titular Professor in a 
 University, and man to whom hitherto, for his ser- 
 vices, Society, bad as she is, has given not only food 
 and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and guk- 
 guk, we expected more gratitude to his benefactress ; 
 and less of a blind trust in the future, which resembles 
 that rather of a philosophical Fatalist and F^nthusiast, 
 than of a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a 
 Christian country. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 OLD CLOTHES 
 
 As mentioned above^ Teufelsdrockh, though a sanscu- 
 lottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant : 
 his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed 
 with the spirit of politeness ; a noble natural Courtesy 
 shines through him, beautifying his vagaries ; like sun- 
 light, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora 
 out of mere aqueous clouds ; nay brightening London- 
 smoke itself into gold vapour, as from the crucible of 
 an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic 
 wise he expresses himself on this head : 
 
 ^ Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only 
 ' by the rich ? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at 
 ' ail, from High-breeding, only as it gracefully re- 
 ' members the rights of others, rather than gracefully 
 ' insists on its own rights, 1 discern no special con- 
 ^ nexion with wealth or birth : but rather that it lies 
 ^ in human nature itself, and is due from all men to- 
 ' wards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster 
 '^ at his post, and worth anything when there, this, 
 ^ with so much else, would be reformed. Nay, each 
 ' man were then also his neighbour's schoolmaster ; 
 ^ till at length a rude-visaged, unmannered Peasant 
 
 * could no more be met with, than a Peasant un- 
 ' acquainted with botanical Physiology, or who felt 
 ' not that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. 
 
 ' For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, 
 ' art not thou alive ; is not this thy brother alive ? 
 
 * *' There is but one temple in the world," says Novalis, 
 
 * *' and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is 
 
 206 
 
OLD CLOTHES 207 
 
 holier tliau this high Form. Bending before men is 
 a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. 
 We touch Heaven^ when we lay our hands on a 
 human Body." 
 
 * On which ground, 1 would fain carry it farther 
 than most do ; and whereas the English Johnson 
 only bowed to every Clergyman, or man with a 
 shovel-hat, 1 would bow to every Man with any sort 
 of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is not he a Temple, 
 then ; the visible Manifestation and Impersonation 
 of the Divinity f And yet, alas, such indiscriminate 
 bowing serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in 
 man, as well as a Divinity ; and too often the bow is 
 but pocketed by the former. It would go to the 
 pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest phasis of the 
 Devil, in these times) ; therefore must we withhold it. 
 
 * The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do rever- 
 ence to those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, 
 wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but 
 only the pure emblem and effigies of Man : I mean, 
 to Empty, or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not 
 to Clothes that most men do reverence : to the fine 
 frogged broadcloth, nowise to the "straddling animal 
 with bandy legs " which it holds, and makes a Dig- 
 nitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded in 
 tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer.'' 
 Nevertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade 
 of hypocrisy, a practical deception : for h((w often 
 does the Body appropriate what was meant for the 
 Cloth only ! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which 
 is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to 
 take a different course. That reverence which can- 
 not act without obstruction and perversion when the 
 Clothes are full, may have free course when they 
 are empty. Even as, for Hindoo A\"orshippers, the 
 Pagoda is not less sacred than the God ; so do I 
 too worship the hollow cloth Garment with equal 
 fervour, as when it contained the Man : nay, with 
 more, for I now fear no deception, of mvself or of 
 others. 
 
208 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' Did not King- Toomtahard , or, in other words, John 
 Baliol, reign long over Scotland ; the man John 
 Haliol being quite gone, and only the " Toom Tabard " 
 (Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells 
 in a suit of Cast Clothes ! How meekly it bears its 
 honours ! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture : 
 silent and serene, it fronts the world ; neither de- 
 manding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat 
 still carries the physiognomy of its Head : but the 
 vanity and the stupidit}', and goose-speech which was 
 the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is 
 stretched out, but not to strike ; the Breeches, in 
 modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now at last 
 have a graceful flow ; the Waistcoat hides no evil 
 passion, no riotous desire ; hunger or thirst now 
 dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the gross- 
 ness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices 
 of the World ; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse ; 
 as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or 
 purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth. 
 
 ' Often, while I sojjourned in that monstrous tuber- 
 osity of Civilised Life, the Capital of England ; and 
 meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that ink- 
 sea of vapour, black, thick, and multifarious as 
 Spartan broth ; and was one lone soul amid those 
 grinding millions ; — often have I turned into their 
 Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck 
 heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with 
 its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless 
 Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their 
 silence : the past witnesses and instruments of Woe 
 and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the 
 fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in ^'the Prison 
 men call Life." Friends I trust not the heart of that 
 man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, 
 too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish High-priest, 
 who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, 
 summons them from the four winds ! On his head, 
 like the Pope, he has three Hats, — a real triple tiara ; 
 on either hand are the similitude of wings, whereon 
 
OLD CLOTHES 209 
 
 ' the summoned Garments come to alight ; and ever, 
 * as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep 
 ' fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were pro- 
 ^ claiming : ^'^ Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!" 
 ' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts : he will purify you 
 ^ in his Purgatory, with fire and with water ; and, one 
 ^ day, new-created ye shall reappear. O, let him in 
 ' whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who 
 ' has never worshipped, and knows not what to wor- 
 ' ship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the 
 ^ pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his 
 ' heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, 
 ' with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, 
 ' be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, 
 ' we hear the Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring 
 ^ against lazy VV^ealth, that it has left them there cast- 
 ' out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness and 
 ' the Devil, — then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, 
 '^ where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Exist- 
 ' ence passes awfully before us ; with its wail and 
 ^jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and 
 ' gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood, — the 
 ' Bedlam of Creation ! ' 
 
 To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will 
 seem overcharged. We too have walked through 
 Monmouth Street ; but with little feeling of ' Devo- 
 tion ' : probably in part because the contemplative pro- 
 cess is so fatally broken in upon by the brood of 
 money-changers who nestle in that Church, and im- 
 portune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. 
 Whereas Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy middle 
 state, which leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope either 
 of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger there 
 without molestation. — Something we would have given 
 to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple- 
 hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 
 ' pacing and repacing in austerest thought ' that foolish 
 Street ; which to him was a true Delphic avenue, and 
 supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the ' Ghosts 
 
 o 
 
210 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 of Life' rounded strang^e secrets in his ear. O thou 
 philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others 
 only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest 
 the grass grow ! 
 
 At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag 
 Documents destined for an English work, there exists 
 nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in 
 London ; and of his Meditations among the Clothes- 
 shops only the obscurest emblematic shadows ? Neither, 
 in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester 
 you with his Travels), have we heard him more than 
 allude to the subject. 
 
 For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting 
 that we here find how early the significance of Clothes 
 had dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes-Pro- 
 fessor. Might we but fancy it to have been even in 
 Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English 
 ' ink-sea,' that this remarkable Volume first took being, 
 and shot forth its salient point in his soul, — as in Chaos 
 did the Egg of Eros, one day to be hatched into a 
 Universe ! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ORGANIC FILAMENTS 
 
 For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix 
 is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as 
 Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain 
 would she engage to have done ' within two centuries,' 
 there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not alto- 
 gether so, however, does the Professor figure it. * In 
 ' the living subject,' says he, ' change is Mont to be 
 
 * gradual : thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, 
 
 * the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest 
 ' thou of the burning of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest 
 ' that she must first burn-out, and lie as a dead cine- 
 ' reous heap ; and therefrom the young one start-up 
 ' by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise ! 
 ' In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destructiou 
 
 * proceed together ; ever as the ashes of the Old are 
 ' i)l<)wn about, do organic filaments of the New mys- 
 ^ teriously spin themselves : and amid the rushing and 
 
 * the waving of the Whirlwind-element come tones of 
 
 * a melodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones 
 
 * of a more melodious Birthsoug. Nay, look into the 
 ' Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see.' 
 Let us actually look, then : to poor individuals, wlio 
 cannot expect to live two centuries, those same organic 
 filaments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be 
 the best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this 
 of Mankind in general : 
 
 * In vain thou deuiest it,' says the Professor ; ^ thou 
 
 * art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, 
 ' those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic 
 
 211 
 
212 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 humour : what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? 
 Were I a Steam -eng-ine, wouldst thou take the trouble 
 to tell lies of me? Not thou ! I should grind all 
 unheeded, whether badly or well. 
 
 ' Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one 
 and all ; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the 
 iron chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. 
 More than once have I said to myself, of some 
 perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, such as pro- 
 vokes whimsical thoughts: "Wert thou, my little 
 Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest 
 imaginable Glass-bell, — what a thing it were, not for 
 thyself only, but for the world ! Post Letters, more 
 or fewer, from all the four winds, impinge against 
 thy Glass walls, but have to drop unread : neither 
 from within comes there question or response into 
 any Postbag ; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly 
 ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing 
 hand : thou art no longer a circulating venous- 
 arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circulatest 
 through all Space and all Time : there has a Hole 
 fallen-out in the immeasurable, universal World- 
 tissue, which must be darned-up again ! " 
 
 ' Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal 
 Messages, paper and other Packages, going out from 
 him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible 
 to the eye : but the finer nervous circulation, by 
 which all things, the minutest that he does, minutely 
 influence all men, and the very look of his face 
 blesses or curses whomso it lights on, and so gene- 
 rates ever new blessing or new cursing : all this you 
 cannot see, but only imagine. I say, there is not 
 a red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel 
 with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for 
 it : will not the price of beaver rise ? It is a mathe- 
 matical fact that the casting of this pebble from my 
 hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe. 
 
 ' If now an existing generation of men stand so 
 woven together, not less indissolubly does generation 
 with generation. Hast thou ever meditated on that 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS 213 
 
 word, Tradition : how we inherit not Life only, but 
 all the garniture and form of Life ; and work, and 
 speak, and even tliink and feel, as our Fathers, and 
 primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, have 
 given it us? — Who printed thee, for example, this 
 unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? 
 Not the Herren Stillschweigen and Company ; but 
 Cadmus of Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable 
 others whom thou knowest not. Had there been 
 no Moesogothic Ulhla, there had been no English 
 Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton ! it was 
 Tubalcain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and 
 sewed that court-suit of thine, 
 
 ' Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible 
 whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects 
 and creates Nature, without which Nature were not. 
 As palpable life-streams in that wondrous Individual 
 Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not 
 palpable, flow on those main-currents of what we 
 call Opinion ; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, 
 Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is to 
 understand and know that a Thought did never yet 
 die ; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast 
 gathered it and created it from the whole Past, so 
 thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is 
 thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first 
 times, still feels and sees in us of the latest ; that 
 the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritu- 
 ally embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers ; 
 and there is a living, literal Communion of Saints, 
 wide as the World itself, and as the History of the 
 World. 
 
 * Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress 
 of this same Individual, wilt thou find his sub- 
 division into Generations. Generations are as the 
 Days of Toilsome Mankind : Death and Birth are 
 the vesper and the matin bells, that summon Man- 
 kind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advauce- 
 jnent. What the Father has made, the Son can 
 make and enjoy ; but has also work of his own 
 
214 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 appointed him. Thus all thinpfs wax, and roll on- 
 wards ; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothins?' is 
 completed, but ever completing. Newton has learned 
 to see what Kepler saw ; but there is also a fresh 
 heaven-derived force in Newton ; he must mount to 
 still higher points of vision. So too the Hebrew 
 Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an Apostle of 
 the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, as this 
 also is from time to time a necessary work, thou 
 findest a like sequence and perseverance : for Luther 
 it was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning 
 of the Pope's Bull ; Voltaire could not warm himself 
 at the glimmering ashes, but required quite other 
 fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig has, 
 in the second generation, become an English Radical; 
 who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will be- 
 come an English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where 
 thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, in 
 progress faster or slower : the Phcenix soars aloft, 
 hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth with 
 her music ; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral 
 swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may 
 soar the higher and sing the clearer.' 
 Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous 
 period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little 
 comfort they can. We subjoin another passage, con- 
 cerning Titles : 
 
 ^ Remark, not without surprise,' says Teufelsdrockh, 
 'how all high Titles of Honour come hitherto from 
 ' Fighting. Your Herzog (Duke, Dux) is leader of 
 ' Armies ; your Earl {Jarl) is Strong Man ; your 
 ' Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. A Millennium, or 
 ' reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from of old 
 ' been prophesied, and becoming now daily more 
 ' and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended 
 ' that such Fighting-titles will cease to be palatable, 
 ' and new and higher need to be devised } 
 
 ^The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace 
 ' eternity, is that of King. Kimig (King), anciently 
 ' Konning, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS 215 
 
 the same thing, Cau-uing. Ever must the Sovereign 
 of Mankind be fitly entitled King.' 
 ' Well, also,' says he elsewhere, ' was it written by 
 Theologians : a King rules by divine right. He 
 carries in him an authority from God, or man will 
 never give it him. Can 1 choose my own King? 
 I can choose my own King Popinjay, and play what 
 farce or tragedy 1 may with him : but he who is to 
 be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my 
 will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except 
 in such Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom 
 so much as conceivable.' 
 
 The Editor will here admit that, among all the 
 wondrous provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, 
 there is none he walks in with such astonishment, 
 hesitation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, 
 with our English love of Ministry and Opposition, 
 and that generous conflict of Parties, mind warming 
 itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the 
 Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invalu- 
 able Constitution kept warm and alive ; how shall we 
 domesticate ourselves in this spectral Necropolis, or 
 rather City both of the Dead and of the Unborn, where 
 the Present seems little other than an inconsiderable 
 Film dividing the Past and the Future? In those dim 
 longdrawn expanses, all is so immeasurable ; much so 
 disastrous, ghastly ; your very radiances and strag- 
 gling light-beams have a supernatural character. And 
 then with such an indifference, such a prophetic 
 peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as 
 already here, to him all one whether it be distant by 
 centuries or only by days), does he sit ; — and live, you 
 would say, rather in any other age than in his own! 
 It is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, 
 looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow- 
 burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills us 
 with shuddering admiration. 
 
 Thus, for example, he appears to make little even 
 of the Elective Franchise ; at least so we interpret 
 
216 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 the folloM'iug : ' Satisfy yourselves/ he says^ ' by 
 
 * universal, indubitable experiment, even as ye are 
 ' now doing or will do, whether Freedom, heaveu- 
 ' born and leading heavenward, and so vitally essential 
 ' for us all, cannot peradventure be mechanically 
 ' hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot- 
 ' Box of yours ; or at worst, in some other discover- 
 ' able or devisable Box, Edifice, or Steam-mechanism. 
 
 * It were a mighty convenience ; and beyond all feats 
 ' of manufacture witnessed hitherto.' Is Teufels- 
 drockh acquainted with the British Constitution, even 
 slightly ? — He says, under another figure ; ' But after 
 ' all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere 
 ' is. To rebuild your old House from the top down- 
 ' wards (since you must live in it the Avhile), what 
 ' better, what other, than the Representative Machine 
 ' will serve your turn.^ Meanwhile, however, mock 
 ' me not with the name of Free, ^'when you have but 
 ' knit-up my chains into ornamental festoons." ' — Or 
 what will any member of the Peace Society make of 
 such an assertion as this : ' The lower people every- 
 ' where desire War. Not so unwisely ; there is then 
 ' a demand for lower people — to be shot ! ' 
 
 Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul- 
 confusing labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into 
 somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking round, as 
 was our best, for * organic filaments,' we ask, may not 
 this, touching ' Hero-worship,' be of the number } 
 It seems of a cheerful character ; yet so quaint, so 
 mystical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie 
 under it. Our readers shall look with their own 
 eyes : 
 
 ' True is it that, in these days, man can do almost 
 ' all things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso 
 ' cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule ; he 
 ' that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior 
 ' of nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, 
 ' believe not that man has lost his faculty of Rever- 
 ' ence ; that if it slumber in him it has gone dead. 
 ' Painful for man is that same rebellious Independence, 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS 217 
 
 when it has become inevitable ; only in loving com- 
 panionship with his fellows does he feel safe; only 
 in reverently bowing down before the Higher does 
 he feel himself exalted. 
 
 ' Or what if the character of our so troublous Era 
 lay even in this : that man had forever cast away 
 Fear, which is the lower ; but not yet risen into per- 
 ennial Reverence, which is the higher and highest ? 
 ' Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has 
 Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to 
 obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revela- 
 tion of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent ; 
 least of all, when the Godlike showed itself revealed 
 in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious 
 Loyalty forever rooted in his heart ; nay in all 
 ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more 
 or less orthodox Hero-worship. In which fact, that 
 Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever 
 exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou dis- 
 cern the corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all 
 Polities for the remotest time may stand secure.' 
 Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or 
 even so much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at.'* 
 He exclaims, ^ Or hast thou forgotten Paris and 
 ' Voltaire ? How the aged, withered man, though 
 ' but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, 
 ' yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could 
 ' drag mankind at his chariot- wheels, so that princes 
 ' coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France 
 ' would have laid their hair beneath his feet ! All 
 ' Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship ; though 
 ' their Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. 
 
 'But if such things,' continues he, 'were done in 
 ' the dry tree, what will be done in the green ? If, 
 ' in the most parched season of Man's History, in 
 ' the most parched spot of Europe, when Parisian 
 ' life was at best but a scientific Hortus Siccus, 
 ' bedizened with some Italian Gumflowers, such virtue 
 ' could come out of it ; what is to be looked for when 
 * Life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero- 
 
218 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ^ Divinity shall have nothing- apelike, but be wholly 
 
 * human? Know that there is in man a quite in- 
 ^ destructible Reverence for whatsoever holds of 
 '■ Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such holding. 
 ' Show the dullest clodpole, show the haug-htiest 
 ^ featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is 
 ' actually here ; were his knees stiffened into brass, 
 ' he must down and worship.' 
 
 Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteri- 
 ously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover 
 in the following passage : 
 
 ^ There is no Church, sayest thou.'' The voice of 
 ^ Prophecy has gone dumb ? This is even what I dis- 
 ' pute : but in any case, hast thou not still Preaching 
 ^ enough ? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every 
 ^ village ; and builds a pulpit, which he calls News- 
 ^ paper. Therefrom he preaches what most momentous 
 ^ doctrine is in him, for man's salvation ; and dost not 
 ' thou listen, and believe ? Look well, thou seest 
 *^ everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, 
 ' some bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion 
 ' itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously 
 ^ enough, for copper alms and the love of God. These 
 ' break in pieces the ancient idols ; and, though them- 
 ^ selves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont 
 ' to be, mark out the sites of new Churches, where 
 *^ the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find 
 ' audience, and minister. Said 1 not. Before the 
 ^ old skin was shed, the new had formed itself be- 
 ^ neath it ? ' 
 
 Perhaps also in the following ; wherewith we now 
 hasten to knit-up this ravelled sleeve : 
 
 ^ But there is no Religion ? ' reiterates the Professor. 
 
 * Fool ! 1 tell thee, there is. Hast thou well con- 
 ' sidered all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean 
 ^ we name Litkraturk.'* Fragments of a genuine 
 ' ^\\\xvch.-Homiktxc lie scattered there, which Time 
 ' will assort : nay fractions even of a Liturgy could 
 ' 1 point out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even 
 ' in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age.** 
 
ORGANIC FILAMENTS 210 
 
 ' None to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, 
 ^ through all meanest and highest forms of the 
 ' Common ; and by him been again prophetically 
 ' revealed : in whose inspired melody, even in these 
 ^ rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life 
 ' again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine ? 
 ^ Knowest thou none such ? 1 know him, and name 
 ^ liim — Goethe. 
 
 ^ But thou as yet standest in no Temple ; joinest in 
 ' no Psalm-worship ; feelest well that, where there is 
 ' no ministering Priest, the people perish ? Be of 
 ' comfort ! Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith, 
 ' Spake we not of a Communion of Saints, unseen, 
 ' yet not unreal, accompanpng and brother-like em- 
 ' bracing thee, so thou be worthy ? Their heroic 
 ' Sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, 
 ' out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred 
 ' Miserere ; their heroic Actions also, as a boundless 
 ' everlasting Psalm of Triumph. Neither say that 
 ' thou hast now no Symbol of the Godlike. Is not 
 ' God's Univers^i a Symbol of the Godlike ; is not 
 ^ Immensity a Temple ; is not Man's History, and 
 ^ Men's History, a perpetual Evangel ? Listen, and 
 ' for organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the 
 * Morning Stars sing together.' 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 
 
 It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Super- 
 naturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer ; 
 and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, 
 finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes- 
 Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. 
 Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with ; 
 * Cloth-webs and Cob-webs,' of Imperial Mantles, 
 Superannuated Symbols, and what not : yet still did 
 he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all, 
 two quite mysterious, world-embracing Phantasms, 
 Time and Space, have ever hovered round him, per- 
 plexing and bewildering : but with these also he now 
 resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends 
 asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Exist- 
 ence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and 
 garnitures have all melted away ; and now, to his 
 rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies 
 disclosed. 
 
 Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy 
 of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism ; this last leap, 
 c^H we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised 
 land, where Palbigenesia, in all senses, may be con- 
 sidered as beginning. ' Courage, then ! ' may our 
 Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes 
 the First once did. This stupendous Section we, 
 after long painful meditation, have found not to be 
 unintelligible ; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, 
 nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, 
 turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect 
 
 220 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 221 
 
 is in him, do his part ; as we, by judicious selection 
 
 and adjustment, shall study to do ours: 
 
 ' Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' 
 
 thus quietly begins the Professor ; ' far deeper per- 
 haps than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of 
 questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To 
 that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a 
 miracle ; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, 
 and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a 
 miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is 
 still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and 
 magical " Open sesame!" every time I please to pay 
 twopence, and open for him an impassable Schlag- 
 haiun, or shut Turnpike? 
 
 ' " But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the 
 Laws of Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by 
 this new question : What are the Laws of Nature ? 
 To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were 
 no violation of these Laws, but a confirmation ; were 
 some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and 
 by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, 
 brought to bear on us with its Material Force. 
 ' Here too may some inquire, not without astonish- 
 ment : On what ground shall one, that can make 
 Iron swim, come and declare that therefore he can 
 teach Religion ? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth 
 Century, such declaration were inept enough ; which 
 nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was 
 full of meaning. 
 
 ' ^' But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she 
 be constant?" cries an illuminated class: "Is not 
 the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalter- 
 able Rules?" Probable enough, good friends : nay 
 I, too, must believe that the God, whom ancient 
 inspired men assert to be " without variableness or 
 shadow of turning," does indeed never change ; that 
 Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so 
 pleases can h** prevented from calling a Machine, does 
 move by the most unalterable rules. And now of you, 
 too, I make the old inquiry : What those same unalter- 
 
222 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 able rules, forming- the complete Statute-Book of 
 Nature, may possibly he ? 
 
 'lliey stand written in our Works of Science, say 
 you ; in the accumulated records of Man's Experi- 
 ence ? — Was Man with his Experience present at the 
 Creation, then, to see how it all went on ? Have any 
 deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the 
 foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything 
 there? Did the Maker take them into His counsel ; 
 that they read His groundplan of the incomprehensible 
 All ; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no 
 more than this ? Alas, not in anywise ! These scien- 
 tific individuals have been nowhere but where we also 
 are ; have seen some handbreadths deeper than we see 
 into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as with- 
 out shore. 
 
 * Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits 
 that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate 
 round our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a course 
 which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of 
 him have succeeded in detecting, — is to me as pre- 
 cious as to another. But is this what thou namest 
 "Mechanism of the Heavens," and "System of the 
 World": this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and 
 all Herschel's Fifteen-thousand Suns per minute, 
 being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, and 
 inert Balls, had been — looked at, nicknamed, and 
 marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; so that we can 
 now prate of their ^Vliereabout ; their How, their 
 Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the 
 signless Inane? 
 
 ' System of Nature ! To the wisest man, wide as is 
 his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of 
 quite infinite expansion ; and all Experience thereof 
 limits itself to some few computed centuries and 
 measured square -miles. The course of Nature's 
 phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is 
 partially known to us : but who knows what deeper 
 (bourses these depend on ; what infinitely larger Cycle 
 (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 223 
 
 Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and 
 accident, of its little native Creek may have become 
 familiar : but does the Minnow undei-stand the Ocean 
 Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and 
 Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses ; by all which the 
 condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, 
 from time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite 
 overset and reversed ? Such a minnow is Man ; his 
 Creek this Planet Earth ; his Oceaai the immeasur- 
 able All : his Monsoons and periodic Currents the 
 mysterious Course of Providence through iEons of 
 iEons. 
 
 * We speak of the Volume of Nature : and truly a 
 Volume it is, — whose Author and AVriter is God. To 
 read it ! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know 
 the Alphabet thereof? ^Vith its Words, Sentences, 
 and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophi- 
 cal, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands 
 of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume 
 written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred- 
 writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they 
 can read here a line and there a line. As for your 
 Institutes, and Academies of Science, they strive 
 bravely ; and, from amid the thick-crowded, inex- 
 tricably intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out, 
 by dextrous combination, some Letters in the vulgar 
 Character, and therefrom put together this and the 
 other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. 
 That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of 
 such Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domes- 
 tic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in 
 this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream. 
 
 ' Custom,' continues the Professor, ' doth make do- 
 tards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that 
 Custom is the greatest of Weavers ; and weaves air- 
 raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe ; whereby 
 indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering 
 servants, in our houses and workshops : but their 
 spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. 
 
224 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 Philosophy comphiins that Custom has hoodwinked 
 us, from the first ; that we do everything by Custom, 
 even Believe by it ; that our very Axioms, let us 
 boast of Free-thinking- as we may, are oftenest simply 
 such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. 
 Nay, what is Philosopliy throughout but a continual 
 battle against Custom ; an ever-renewed effort to 
 trajh'ice7id the sphere of blind Custom, and so become 
 Transcendental ? 
 
 ' Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain- 
 tricks of Custom : but of all these, perhaps the cleverest 
 is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by 
 simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it 
 is by this means we live ; for man must work as well 
 as wonder : and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, 
 guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond 
 foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurselings, 
 when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong 
 the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous 
 with stupid indifl^erence, because I have seen it twice, 
 or two-hundred or two-million times? There is no 
 reason in Nature or in Art why I should : unless, 
 indeed, I am a mere Work-machine, for whom the 
 divine gift of Thought were no other than the terres- 
 trial gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine ; a power 
 whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's 
 worth realised. 
 
 ' Notable enough, too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou 
 find the potency of Names ; which indeed are but one 
 kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. 
 W'itchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and 
 Demonology, we have now named Madness and Dis- 
 eases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the 
 new question comes upon us : What is Madness, 
 what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness 
 remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boil- 
 ing-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair- 
 painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, 
 which we name the Real, Was Luther's Picture of 
 the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 225 
 
 ' within the bodily eye, or without it ? In every the 
 ' wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an 
 ' authentic Demon-Empire ; out of which, indeed, his 
 ' world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, 
 ' and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a 
 ' habitable flowery Earth-rind. 
 
 ' But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding* 
 ' Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand 
 ' fundamental world-enveloping- Appearances, Space 
 
 * and Time. These, as spun and woven for us from 
 
 * before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for 
 ' dwelling here, and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, 
 
 * as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby 
 ' all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave 
 ' and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, 
 ' shall you endeavour to strip them off; you can, at 
 ' best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look 
 ' through. 
 
 ' Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put 
 ' on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was 
 
 * There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed 
 
 * over Space, he had annihilated Space ; for him there 
 
 * was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to 
 ' establish himself, in the W^ahngasse of Weissnichtwo, 
 ' and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a 
 ' world we should have of it ! Still stranger, should, 
 ' on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter 
 ' establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made 
 ' Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating ! 
 
 * Of both would I purchase, were it with my last 
 ' groschen ; but chiefly of this latter. To clap-on 
 ' your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were 
 ' Anywhere, straightway to be Therp ! Next to clap-on 
 ' your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were 
 
 * Any when, straightway to be Then ! This were indeed 
 ' the grander : shooting at will from the Fire-Creation 
 ' of the World to its Fire-Consummation ; here his- 
 ' toricaUy present in the First Century, conversing face 
 ' to face with Paul and Seneca ; there prophetically in 
 
 p 
 
226 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with 
 other Pauls and Seuecas, who as yet stand hidden in 
 the depth of that late time ! 
 
 ' Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable ? 
 Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the 
 Future non-extant, or only future? Those mystic 
 faculties of thine, Alemory and Hope, already answer : 
 already through those mystic avenues, thou the 
 Earth-blinded summonest both Past and Future, and 
 communest with them, though as yet darkly, and 
 with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday 
 drop down, the curtains of Tomorrow roll up ; but 
 Yesterday and Tomorrow both are. Pierce through 
 the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. Believe 
 what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's 
 Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly 
 read it there : that Time and Space are not God, but 
 creations of God ; that with God as it is a universal 
 Here, so is it an everlasting Now. 
 
 *And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immor- 
 tality ? — O Heaven ! Is the white Tomb of our 
 Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be 
 left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like 
 a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how 
 many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed 
 on alone, — but a pale spectral Illusion ! Is the lost 
 Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here 
 mysteriously, with God ! — Know of a truth that only 
 the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; 
 that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, 
 and whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, 
 should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder 
 at thy leisure ; for the next twenty years, or the next 
 twenty centuries : believe it thou must ; understand 
 it thou canst not. 
 
 * That the Thought- forms, Space and Time, wherein, 
 once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should 
 condition and determine our whole Practical reason- 
 infirs, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems 
 altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they 
 
NATURAL SUPEIINATURALISM 227 
 
 * should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure 
 ' spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the Monder 
 ' everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. 
 ^ Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms 
 ' of Thoug-ht ; nay even, if thou wilt, to their (juite 
 ' undue rank of Realities : and consider, then, with 
 ' thyself how their thin disg-uises hide from us the 
 ' brightest God-effulgences ! Thus, were it not mira- 
 
 * culous, could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the 
 'Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my 
 
 * hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing 
 ' it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, 
 ' to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or 
 ' in pounds avoirdupois of weight ; and not to see that 
 
 * the true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in 
 ' this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all ; that 
 'I have free Foi'ce to clutch aught therewith? In- 
 ' numerable other of this sort are the deceptions, and 
 ' wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space practises 
 
 * on us. 
 
 ' Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand 
 ' anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this 
 
 * same lying Time. Had we but the Time-annihilating 
 
 * Hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves 
 ' in a \\ orld of Miracles, wherein all fabled or auth- 
 ' eutic Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. 
 ' But unhappily we have not such a Hat ; and man, 
 
 * poor fool that he is, can seldom and scantily help 
 
 * himself without one. 
 
 ^ Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, 
 
 * or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere 
 ^ sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me. Who built these 
 ' walls of AV^eissnichtwo ; summoning out all the sand- 
 ' stone rocks, to dance along from the ^^tfhihruch (now 
 ' a huge Ti-oglodyte Ghasm, with frightful green- 
 
 * mantled pools) ; and shape tliemselves into Doric and 
 
 * Ionic pillars, squared aslihir Jiouses and noble streets? 
 ' Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, 
 ' Mho, in past centuries, by the divine Music of ^Vis- 
 
 * dom, succeeded in civilising Man ? Our highest 
 
228 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' Orpheus walked in Jiidea, ei^hteen-hnndred years 
 ' Rs;o ; his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, 
 ' took captive the ravished souls of men ; and, being- of 
 ' a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though 
 ' now with thousandfold accompaniments, and rich 
 ' symphonies, through all our hearts ; and modulates^ 
 
 * and divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which 
 ' happens in two hours ; and does it cease to be won- 
 ' derful if happening in two million? Not onlj' was 
 ' Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus ; but with- 
 ' out the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city 
 
 * ever built, no work that man glories in ever done. 
 
 ' Sweep away the Illusion of Time ; glance, if thou 
 
 * have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far- 
 ' distant Mover : The stroke that came transmitted 
 ' through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a 
 ' stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and 
 
 * sent flying.^ O, could I (with the Time-annihilating 
 ' Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings to 
 ' the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and 
 ^ thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial 
 ' wonder ! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, 
 ' were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very 
 ' deed the star-domed City of God ; that through every 
 ' star, through every grass-blade, and most through 
 ' every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still 
 ' beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of 
 ' God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from 
 ' the foolish. 
 
 ' Again, could anything be more miraculous than an 
 ' actual authentic Ghost ? The English Johnson longed, 
 ' all his life, to see one ; but could not, though he 
 ' went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, 
 ' and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor ! Did he 
 ' never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, 
 ' look round him into that full tide of human Life he 
 ' so loved ; did he never so much as look into Himself? 
 ' The good Doctor M'as a Ghost, as actual and authentic 
 ' as heart could wish ; well-nigh a million of Ghosts 
 ' were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I 
 
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 229 
 
 say, sweep aAvay the illusion of Time ; compress the 
 threescore years into three minutes : what else was 
 he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are 
 shaped into a body, into an Appearance ; and that 
 fade away again into air and Invisibility ? This is no 
 metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact : we start out 
 of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; 
 round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity ; 
 and to Eternity minutes are as years and aions. 
 Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from 
 celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls ? 
 And again, do not we squeak and jibber (in our dis- 
 cordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminat- 
 ings) ; and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; 
 or uproar {poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of 
 the Dead, — till the scent of the morning air summons 
 us to our still Home ; and dreamy Night becomes 
 awake and Day ? Where now is Alexander of Mace- 
 don : does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle- 
 shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him ; or 
 have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed 
 Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Re- 
 treats and Austerlitz Campaigns ! Was it all other 
 than the veriest Spectre-hunt ; which has now, with 
 its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted 
 away ? — Ghosts ! There are nigh a thousand-million 
 walking the Earth openly at noontide ; some half- 
 hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred 
 have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 
 ' O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider 
 that we not only carry each a future Ghost within 
 him ; but are, in very deed, Ghosts ! These Limbs, 
 whence had we them ; this stormy Force ; this life- 
 blood with its burning Passion ? They are dust and 
 shadow ; a Shadow-system gathered round our Me ; 
 wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine 
 Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior 
 on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; 
 force dwells in his arm and heart : but warrior and 
 war-horse are a vision ; a revealed Force, nothing 
 
280 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 ' more. Stately they tre.id the Earth, as if it were a 
 
 * firm substance : fool ! the Klarth is but a film ; it 
 
 * cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink be- 
 ' yond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy 
 ' herself will not follow them. A little while ag-o, 
 
 * they were not ; a little while, and they are not, their 
 ' very ashes are not. 
 
 ' So has it been from the beg'inninfi;', so will it be to 
 ' the end. Generation after generation takes to itself 
 ' tlie Form of a Body ; and forth-issuing ft'om Cim- 
 ' merian Night, on Heaven's mission appears. What 
 ' Ff>rce and Fire is in each he expends : one grinding 
 ' in the mill of Industry ; one hunter-like climbing the 
 ' giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed 
 ' in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his 
 
 * fellow : — and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his 
 ' earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense 
 ' becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild- 
 ' flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, 
 ' does this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, 
 ' in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through 
 ' the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire- 
 ' breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane ; 
 ' haste stormfully across the astonished Earth ; then 
 ' plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are 
 ' levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage : can 
 ' the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist 
 ' Spirits which have reality and are alive } On the 
 ' hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in ; 
 ' the last Rear of the host will read traces of the 
 'earliest Van. But whence? — O Heaven, whither? 
 ' Sense knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is 
 ' through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 
 
 " We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
 Is rounded with a sleep ! " ' 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CIRCUMSPECTIVE 
 
 Here, then, arises the so momentous question : Have 
 many British Readers actually arrived with us at the 
 new promised country ; is the Philosophy of C'lothes 
 now at last opening around them ? Lono;- and ad- 
 venturous has the journey been : from those outmost 
 vulg^ar, palpable Woollen Hulls of Man ; throujg-h his 
 wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous Social 
 Garnitures ; inwards to the Garments of his very 
 Soul's Soul, to Time and Space themselves ! And 
 now does the spiritual, eternal Essence of Man, and 
 of Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any 
 measure to reveal itself? Can many readers discern, 
 as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, 
 some primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is 
 changeable divided from what is unchangeable ? Does 
 that Earth-Spirit's speech in Faust, — 
 
 ' 'Tia thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
 And weave for God the Gfirment thou see'st Him by ; ' 
 
 or that other thousand-times repeated speech of the 
 Magician, Shakspeare, — 
 
 ' And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud capt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
 The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself. 
 And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
 And like this unsubstantial pageant faded. 
 Leave not a wrack behind ; ' 
 
 begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do 
 we at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic 
 
 231 
 
232 SARTOR REiSARTUS 
 
 Creation and Palin^enesia^ where that Phoenix Death- 
 Birth of Human Society, and of all Human Things, 
 appears possible, is seen to be inevitable ? 
 
 Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, 
 which the Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen 
 himself enabled to conclude if not complete, it cannot 
 be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that 
 many have travelled without accident. No firm arch, 
 overspanning the Impassable with paved highway, 
 could the Editor construct ; only, as was said, some 
 zig-zag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. 
 Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often 
 of a breakneck character ; the darkness, the nature 
 of the element, all was against us ! 
 
 Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a 
 thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect 
 rare in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of 
 all ? Happy few ! little band of Friends ! be welcome, 
 be of courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed 
 to its new Whereabout; the hand can stretch itself 
 forth to work there : it is in this grand and indeed 
 highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall labour, 
 each according to ability. New labourers will arrive ; 
 new Bridges will be built ; nay, may not our own 
 poor rope-and-raft Bridge, in your passings and re- 
 passings, be mended in many a point, till it grow 
 quite firm, passable even for the halt.^ 
 
 Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that 
 started with us, joyous and full of hope, where now 
 is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no longer 
 by our side.^* The most have recoiled, and stand 
 gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonishment, at 
 our career : not a few, pressing forward with more 
 courage, have missed footing, or leaped short ; and 
 now swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards 
 this shore, some towards that. To these also a help- 
 ing hand should be held out ; at least some word of 
 encouragement be said. 
 
 Or, to sj)eak witliout metaphor, with which mode 
 of utterance Teufelsdrcickh unhappily has somewhat 
 
CIRCUMSPECTIVE 233 
 
 infected us, — can it be hidden from the Editor that 
 many a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered 
 in head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the 
 present Work? Yes, long ago has many a British 
 Reader been, as now, demanding with something like 
 a snarl : Whereto does all this lead ; or what use is 
 in it? 
 
 In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise 
 aiding thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it 
 leads to nothing, and there is no use in it ; but rather 
 the reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, 
 if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, 
 and we by means of him, have led thee into the true 
 Land of Dreams ; and through the Clothes-Screen, as 
 through a magical Pierre-Pertuis, thou lookest, even 
 for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, 
 and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with 
 Wonder, and based on Wonder, and thy very blankets 
 and breeches are Miracles, — then art thou profited 
 beyond money's worth ; and hast a thankfulness to- 
 wards our Professor ; nay, perhaps in many a literary 
 Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express 
 that same. 
 
 Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time 
 made aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes ; that 
 all Forms whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, 
 whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes ; 
 and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, 
 which a Tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but 
 the Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness of 
 Majesty, and all inferior Worsliips (Worthships) 
 are properly a Vesture and Raiment ; and the Thirty- 
 nine Articles themselves are articles of wearing-apparel 
 (for the Religious Idea)? In which case, must it not 
 also be admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high 
 one, and may with infinitely deeper study on thy part 
 yield richer fruit : that it takes scientific rank beside 
 Codification, and Political Economy, and the Theory 
 of the British Constitution ; nay rather, from its pro- 
 phetic height looks down on all these, as on so many 
 
234 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the ^'estures 
 which it has to fashion, and consecrate and distribute, 
 are, too often by hae^a^ard hun^^ry operatives who see 
 no farther than their nose, mechanically woven and 
 spun ? 
 
 But omitting' all this, much more all that concerns 
 Natural Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has 
 reference to the Ulterior or Transcendental portion 
 of the Science, or bears never so remotely on that 
 promised Volume of the Palin^enesie der mervtchlichen 
 Ge.sellscha/1 (Newbirth of Society), — we humbly sug- 
 gest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the 
 lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumerable 
 inferences of a practical natui*e may be drawn there- 
 from. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, 
 ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on the 
 Clothes-Philosopher from the very threshold of his 
 Science ; nothing even of those ' architectural ideas,' 
 which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all 
 Modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, 
 lead to important revolutions, — let us glance for a 
 moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes-Philo- 
 sophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class 
 of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so 
 much were to be looked on, the million spinners, 
 weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that 
 puddle and muddle in their dark recesses, to make 
 us Clothes, and die that we may live, — let us but 
 turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions 
 of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as 
 C'loth-animals, creatures that live, move and have their 
 being in Cloth : we mean, Dandies and Tailors. 
 
 In regard to both which small divisions it may be 
 asserted without scruple, that the public feeling, 
 unenlightened by Philosophy, is at fault ; and even 
 that the dictates of humanity are violated. As will 
 perhaps abundantly appear to readers of the two fol- 
 lowing Chapters. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DANDIACAL BODY 
 
 First, touching- Dandies, let us consider, with some 
 scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A 
 Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, 
 office and existence consists in the wearing- of Clothes. 
 Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is 
 heroically consecrated to this one object, the wear- 
 ing- of Clothes wisely and well : so that as others 
 dress to live, he lives to dress. The all-importance 
 of Clothes, which a German Professor, of unequalled 
 learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume 
 to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the 
 Dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius ; he 
 is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teu- 
 felsdrockh would call a ' Divine Idea of Cloth' is born 
 with him ; and this, like other such Ideas, will ex- 
 press itself outwardly, or wring- his heart asunder 
 with unutterable throes. 
 
 But, like a g-enerous, creative enthusiast, he fear- 
 lessly makes his Idea an Action ; shows himself in 
 peculiar guise to mankind ; walks forth, a witness and 
 living- Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We 
 called him a Poet : is not his body the (stuffed) 
 parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning- 
 Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow.'* 
 Say, rather, an Epos, and Clotha Vinimque cano, to 
 the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that 
 runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what seems to be 
 admissible, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle 
 in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is there 
 
 235 
 
236 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 not in this Life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing 
 sacrifice of the Jmmortal to the Perishable, something 
 (though in reverse order) of that blending and identifi- 
 cation of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen, 
 constitutes the Prophetic character ? 
 
 And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and 
 Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy 
 asks in return ? Solely, we may say, that you would 
 recognise his existence ; would admit him to be a 
 living object ; or even failing this, a visual object, or 
 thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or 
 your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has already 
 secured him) he solicits not ; simply the glance of 
 your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or 
 altogether miss and misinterpret it ; do but look at 
 him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame 
 on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor 
 boon ; which will waste its optic faculty on dried 
 Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins ; and over the domestic 
 wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance 
 with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed 
 contempt I Him no Zoologist classes among the 
 Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care : when 
 did we see any injected Preparation of the Dandy 
 in our Museums ; any specimen of him preserved 
 in spirits? Lord Herringbone may dress himself in 
 a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes : 
 it skills not ; the undiscerning public, occupied with 
 grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other 
 side. 
 
 The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, 
 properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to 
 sleep : for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to re- 
 suscitate, strangely enough, both the one and the 
 other ! Should sound views of this Science come to 
 prevail, the essential nature of the British Dandy, and 
 the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot always 
 remain hidden under laughable and lamentable hal- 
 lucination. The following long Extract from Pro- 
 fessor Teufelsdrockh may set the matter, if not in 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY 237 
 
 its true light, yet in the way towards such. It is 
 to be regretted, however, that here, as so often else- 
 where, the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity 
 is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of almost 
 owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, ineffec- 
 tual, ironic tendency ; our readers shall judge which : 
 
 'In these distracted times,' writes he, 'when the 
 Religious Principle, driven out of most Churches, 
 either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking" 
 and longing and silently working there towards some 
 new Revelation ; or else wanders homeless over the 
 world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial 
 organisation. — into how many strange shapes, of 
 Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tentatively 
 and errantly cast itself ! The hif^her Enthusiasm 
 of man's nature is for the while without Exponent ; 
 yet does it continue indestructible, unweariedly 
 active, and work blindly in the great chaotic deep : 
 thus Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, 
 bodies itself forth, and melts again into new meta- 
 morphosis. 
 
 ' Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as 
 the wealthiest and worst-instructed of European 
 nations, offers precisely the elements (of Heat, 
 namely, and of Darkness), in which such moon- 
 calves and monstrosities are best generated. Among- 
 the newer Sects of that country, one of the most 
 notable, and closely connected with our present 
 subject, is that of the Dandie.^ ; concerning which, 
 what little information I have been able to procure 
 may fitly stand here. 
 
 ' It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men 
 generally without sense for the Religious Principle, 
 or judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their 
 brief enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather 
 a Secular Sect, and not a Religious one ; neverthe- 
 less, to the psychologic eye its devotional and even 
 sacrificial character plainly enough reveals itself. 
 Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, 
 
238 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what ofher 
 class^ may in the present state of our intelligence 
 remain undecided (achwehen). A certain touch of 
 Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is 
 discernible enoujj^h : also (for human Error walks in 
 a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-inconsider- 
 able resemblance to that Superstition of the Athos 
 Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and 
 looking intensely for a length of time into their own 
 navelsj came to discern therein the true Apocalypse 
 of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own sur- 
 mise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a 
 new modification, adapted to the new time, of that 
 primeval Superstition, Self-worship ; which Zerdusht, 
 Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, and others, strove rather 
 to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate, and 
 which only in the purer forms of Religion has been 
 altogether rejected. Wherefore, if any one chooses 
 to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of 
 Demon- Worship, 1 have, so far as is yet visible, no 
 objection. 
 
 ' For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal 
 of a new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and 
 what force there is in man's nature, though never so 
 enslaved. They affect great purity and separatism ; 
 distinguish themselves by a particular costume 
 (whereof some notices were given in the earlier 
 part of this Volume) ; likewise, so far as possible, 
 by a particular speech (apparently some broken 
 Lingua-fraiu'u, or English-French) ; and, on the 
 whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene deport- 
 ment, and keep themselves unspotted from the 
 world. 
 
 * They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the 
 Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis ; and 
 is named Ahnack'n, a word of uncertain etymology. 
 ■^They worship principally by night ; and have their 
 Highpriests and Highpriestesses, who, however, do 
 not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to 
 be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusiniau 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY 239 
 
 ' or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
 ' Sacred Books wanting to the Sect ; these they call 
 
 * Fashionable Nave/s : however, the Canon is not com- 
 
 * pleted, and some are canonical and otliers not. 
 
 ^ Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, 
 ' procured myself some samples ; and in hope of true 
 
 * insight, and with the zeal which beseems an Inquirer 
 ^ into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But 
 
 * wholly to no purpose : that tough faculty of reading, 
 
 * for which the world will not refuse me credit, was 
 ' here for the first time foiled and set at naught. In 
 
 * vain that 1 summoned my whole energies (mich 
 
 * weidlich aristrettgte), and did my very utmost; at the 
 
 * end of some short space, I was uniformly seized with 
 
 * not so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, 
 ^ as a kind of infinite, unsufFerable, Jew's-harping and 
 
 * scrannel-piping there ; to which the frightfullest 
 
 * species of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if 
 ' I strove to shake this away, and absolutely would not 
 
 * yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of 
 ' Delirium Tremens, and a melting into total deliquium: 
 ' till at last, by order of the Doctor, dreading ruin to 
 ' my whole intellectual and bodily faculties, and a 
 ' general breaking-up of the constitution, I reluctantly 
 ' but determinedly forbore. AVas there some miracle 
 ' at work here ; like those Fire-balls, and supernal 
 ' and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of the 
 ' Jewish Mysteries, have also more than once scared- 
 ^ back the Alien? Be this as it may, such failure on 
 ^ my part, after best efforts, must excuse the imper- 
 ' fection of this sketch ; altogether incomplete, yet 
 ' the completest I could give of a Sect too singular 
 ' to be omitted. 
 
 * Lctving my ow«i life and senses as I do, no power 
 ' shall induce me, as a private individual, to open 
 ' another Fashionable Novel. But luckily, in this 
 
 * dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds ; whereby 
 ' if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. Rouud 
 ' one of those Book-packages, which tlie Still-schweig- 
 ' en'sche Buchhandlung is in the habit of importing 
 
240 SARTOR RE8ARTUS 
 
 ' from Enp^land, come, as is usual, various waste 
 ' printed sheets {MacuJatur-bldtter\ by way of interior 
 ' wi-appag-e : into these the Clothes-Philosopher, with 
 
 * a certain Mohamedan reverence even for waste- 
 
 * paper, where curious knowleda^e will sometimes 
 ' hover, disdains not to cast his eye. Readers may 
 'judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced 
 ' stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some 
 ' English Periodical, such as they name Magazins, 
 ' appears something like a Dissertation on this very 
 'subject of Fashionable Novels! It sets out, indeed, 
 ' chiefly from a Secular point of view ; directing itself, 
 ' not without asperity, against some to me unknown 
 ' individual named Pelham, who seems to be a Mysta- 
 ' gogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the 
 
 * Sect ; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be 
 
 * expected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the 
 ' true secret, the Religious physiognomy and physi- 
 ' ology of the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully 
 ' open there. Nevertheless, scattered lights do from 
 ' time to time sparkle out, whereby I have endea- 
 ' voured to profit. Nay, in one ])assage selected from 
 
 * the Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever 
 ' they are (for the style seems very mixed) of this 
 ' Mystagogue, I find wliat appears to be a Confession 
 ' of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, according to the 
 
 * tenets of that Sect. VVhich Confession or ^V^hole 
 ' Duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source so 
 
 * authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven distinct 
 
 * Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the 
 ' German world ; therewith taking leave of this matter. 
 ' Observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, I, 
 ' as far as may be, quote literally from the Original : 
 
 ' ARTICLES OF FAITH. 
 
 '' 1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about 
 
 * them; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be 
 
 * carefully avoided. 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY 241 
 
 *'2. The collar is a very important point : it should 
 ' be low behind, and slightly rolled. 
 
 " S. No license of fashion can allow a man of deli- 
 ' cate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a 
 ' Hottentot. 
 
 '' 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 
 
 ^' 5. The g-ood sense of a s^entleman is nowhere more 
 ' finely developed than in his rings. 
 
 '' (3. It is permitted to mankind, under certain re- 
 ' strictions, to wear white waistcoats. 
 
 *^ 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across 
 ' the hips." 
 
 ' All which Propositions I, for the present, content 
 ' myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably 
 ' denying. 
 
 ^ In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands 
 ' another British Sect, originally, as 1 understand, of 
 ^ Ireland, where its chief seat still is; but known also 
 ' in the main Island, and indeed everywhere rapidly 
 ' spreading. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no 
 ' C^anonical Books, it remains to me in the same state 
 
 * of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has published 
 ' Books that the unassisted human faculties are inade- 
 ' quate to read. The members appear to be designated 
 ' by a considerable diversity of names, according to 
 ' their various places of establishment : in England 
 ^ they are generally called the Drudge Sect ; also, 
 
 * unphilosophically enough, the White Negroes; and, 
 ' chiefly in scorn by those of other communions, the 
 ' Ragged-Beggar Sect. In Scotland, again, I find them 
 ' entitled HaUanshakers, or the Stook of Duds Sect ; 
 ' any individual communicant is named Stook of Duds 
 ^ (that is. Shock of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to 
 ' their professional Costume. While in Ireland, which, 
 ' as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a 
 ' perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as Bog- 
 ' trotters, Red^shauks. Rihbonnien^ Cottiers, Peep-of-Day 
 ' Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, Poor - Slaves : which 
 ' last, however, seems to be the primary and generic 
 
 * name ; whereto, probably enough, the others are only 
 
 * subsidiary species, or slight varieties ; or, at mo«t., 
 
 Q 
 
242 SARTOR RESARTLS 
 
 ' propagated oflFsets from the parent stem, whose minute 
 ' subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here 
 
 * loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to under- 
 ' stand, what seems indubitable, that the original Sect 
 ' is that of the Po&r-Slaves ; whose doctrines, practices, 
 ' and fundamental characteristics pervade and animate 
 
 * the whole Body, howsoever denominated or outwardly 
 ' diversified. 
 
 ^ The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood : 
 ' how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture 
 ' themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave ; with 
 
 * what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the 
 
 * Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, 
 ' it were extremely difficult to specify. Something 
 ' Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution : 
 
 * we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of 
 
 * Poverty and Obedience ; which Vows, especially the 
 
 * former^ it is said, they observe with great strictness ; 
 ' nay, as I have understood it, they are pledged, and be 
 ' it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevo- 
 ' cably consecrated thereto, even before birth. That the 
 ' third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced 
 
 * among them, I find no ground to conjecture. 
 
 * Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal 
 
 * Sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar 
 ' Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no 
 
 * description will indeed be found in the present 
 ' Volume ; for this reason, that by the imperfect organ 
 
 * of Language it did not seem describable. Their 
 ' raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and 
 
 * irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours ; 
 
 * through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their 
 ' bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It 
 
 * is fastened together by a multiplex combination of 
 ' buttons, thrums, and skewei-s ; to which frequently 
 
 * is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of 
 ' straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, 
 ' they seem partial, and often wear it by way of sandals. 
 ' In head-dress they affect a certain freedom : hats with 
 ' partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, 
 
 * hinged, or valved crown ; in the former case, they 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY 243 
 
 someiimes invert the hat, and wear it brim uppermost, 
 like a University-cap, with what view is unknown. 
 
 * The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, 
 Polish, or Russian origin : not so, however, the in- 
 terior essence and spirit of their Superstition, which 
 rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. 
 One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the 
 Earth : for they dig and aiFectionately work con- 
 tinually in her bosom ; or else, shut-up in private 
 Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances 
 derived from her ; seldom looking-up towards the 
 Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative 
 indifference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, 
 they live in dark dwellings ; often even breaking 
 their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuff- 
 ing them up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque 
 substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. Again, 
 like all followers of Nature- Worship, they are liable 
 to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity ; 
 and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod 
 cottages. 
 
 * In respect of diet, they have also their observances. 
 All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; 
 a few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings : 
 other animal food they abstain from ; except indeed, 
 with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a 
 Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural 
 death. Their universal sustenance is the root named 
 Potato, cooked by fire alone ; and generally without 
 condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown 
 condiment named Point, into the meaning of wliich 
 I have vainly inquired ; the victual Potatoe^s-and-Point 
 not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of 
 description, in any European Cookerj'-Book whatever. 
 For drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic 
 counterpoise of taste. Milk, which is the mildest of 
 liquors, and Potheen, which is the fiercest. This 
 latter I have tasted, as well as the English Blue- Ruin, 
 and the Scotch Whuky, analogous fluids used by the 
 Sect in those countries : it evidently contains some 
 form of alcohol, in tlie highest state of couceutratioa, 
 
244 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 thoua^h disguised with acrid oils ; and is, on the whole, 
 the most pungent substance known to me, — indeed, 
 a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solem- 
 nities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, 
 and largely consumed. 
 
 ^ An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, 
 who presents himself under the to me unmeaning 
 title of The late John Bernard,, offers the following 
 sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates 
 whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear 
 to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall my Ger- 
 man readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it 
 were with their own eyes ; and even see him at meat. 
 Moreover, in the so precious waste-paper sheet above 
 mentioned, I have found some corresponding picture 
 of a Dandiacal Household, painted by that same Dan- 
 diacal Mystagogue, or Theogonist : this also, by way 
 of counterpart and contrast, the world shall look into. 
 
 ' First, therefore, of the Poor- Slave, who appears? 
 likewise to have been a species of Innkeeper. I 
 quote from the original : 
 
 Poor-Slave Household. 
 
 * '' The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a 
 
 * large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two 
 ' Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft 
 ' above (attainable by a ladder), upon which the in- 
 ' mates slept ; and the space below was divided by a 
 ' hurdle into two Apartments ; the one for their cow 
 ' and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On 
 ' entering the house we discovered the family, eleven 
 ' in number, at dinner : the father sitting at the top, 
 ' the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, 
 ' of a large oaken Board, which was scooped-out in the 
 ' middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their 
 ' Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal 
 
 * distances to contain Salt ; and a bowl of Milk stood 
 ' on the table : all the luxuries of meat and beer, 
 ' bread, knives and dishes were dispensed with." The 
 ' Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he says, 
 ' broad-backed,black-browftd, of great personal strength. 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY 245 
 
 * and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun- 
 ' browned but well-featured woman ; and his young 
 '^ ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite of ravens. 
 ' Of their Philosophical or Religious tenets or observ- 
 ' ances, no notice or hint. 
 
 * But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household ; 
 
 * in which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue 
 
 * and inspired Penman himself has his abode : 
 
 Dandiacal Household. 
 
 ^ " A Dressing-room splendidly furnished ; violet- 
 
 * coloured curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same 
 ' hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, one on 
 
 * each side of a table, which supports the luxuries of 
 
 * the Toilet. Several Bottles of Perfumes, arranged 
 
 * in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of 
 
 * mother-of-pearl : opposite to these are placed the 
 
 * appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted 
 
 * silver. A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left ; the 
 ' doors of which, being partly open, discover a pro- 
 ^ fusion of Clothes ; Shoes of a singularly small size 
 ' monopolise the lower shelves. Fronting the ward- 
 
 * robe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a Bath- 
 
 * room. Folding-doors in the background. — Enter 
 ' the Author," our Theogonist in person, " obsequiously 
 ' preceded by a French Valet, in white silk Jacket and 
 
 * cambric Apron." 
 
 ' Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, 
 ' divide the more unsettled portion of the British 
 
 * People ; and agitate that ever-vexed country. To 
 
 * the eye of the political Seer, their mutual relation, 
 ^ pregnant with the elements of discord and hostility, 
 
 * is far from consoling. These two principles of Dan- 
 ' diacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor- 
 ' Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that 
 ' same Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest 
 ' themselves under distant and nowise considerable 
 ' shapes : nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean 
 ' ramifications, they extend through the entire struc- 
 ' ture of Society, and work unweaxiedly in the secret 
 
246 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 depths of Eng-lish national Existence ; striving to 
 separate and isolate it into two contradictory, un- 
 communicating masses. 
 
 ' In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor- 
 Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly in- 
 creasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no 
 proselytising Sect ; but it boasts of great hereditary re- 
 sources, aiul is strong by union ; whereas the Drudges, 
 split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point ; or at 
 best only cooperate by means of partial secret affilia- 
 tions. If, indeed, there were to arise a Communion 
 of Drudges, as there is already a Communion of Saints, 
 what strangest effects would follow therefrom ! Dandy- 
 ism as yet affects to look down on Drudgism : but 
 perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically 
 seen which ought to look down, and which up, is not 
 so distant. 
 
 *To me it seems probable that the two Sects will 
 one day part England between them ; each recruiting 
 itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none 
 left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Mani- 
 cheans, with the host of Dandyising Christians, will 
 form one body : the Drudges, gathering round them 
 whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel 
 Pagan ; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utili- 
 tarians, Radicals, refractory Potwallopers, and so 
 forth, into their general mass, will form another. I 
 could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottom- 
 less boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out on oppo- 
 site quarters of the firm land : as yet they appear 
 only disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's 
 art'might cover-in; yet mark them, their diameter 
 is daily widening : they are hollow Cones that boil-up 
 from the infinite Deep, over which your firm land is 
 but a thin crust or rind ! Thus daily is the inter- 
 mediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire of the 
 two Buchan-Bullers extending ; till now there is but 
 a foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them ; this 
 too is washed away : — and then — we have the true 
 Hell of V\'aters, and Noah's Deluge is out-deluged ! 
 
 *Or better, I might call them two boundless, and 
 
THE DANDIACAL BODY 247 
 
 ' indeed unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the 
 ' ** Machinery of Society"), with batteries of opposite 
 ' quality ; Drudgism the Neg^ative, Dandyism the Posi- 
 ' tive : one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates 
 ' all the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the 
 
 * Money thereof) ; the other is equally busy with the 
 ' Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally 
 ' potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient 
 ' sparkles and sputters : but wait a little, till the 
 ' entire nation is in an electric state ; till your whole 
 
 * vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is 
 
 * cut into two isolated portions of Positive and Negti- 
 ^ tive (of Money and of Hunger) ; and stands there 
 ' bottled-up in two World-Batteries ! The stirring of 
 ' a child's finger brings the two together ; and then — 
 ' What then ? The Earth is but shivered into im- 
 ' palpable smoke by that Doom's-thunderpeal ; the 
 ' Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thence- 
 ' forth there are no eclipses of the Moon. — Or better 
 ' still, 1 might liken' — 
 
 O, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes ; in 
 excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teu- 
 felsdrockh or ourselves sin the more. 
 
 We have often blamed him for a habit of wire- 
 drawing and over-refining ; from of old we have 
 been familiar with his tendency to Mysticism and 
 Religiosity, whereby in everything he was stiH scent- 
 ing-out Religion : but never perhaps did these 
 amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort his other- 
 wise most piercing vision, as in this of the Dandiacal 
 Body ! Or was there something of intended satire ; 
 is the Professor and Seer not quite the blinkard he 
 affects to be ? Of an ordinary mortal we should have 
 decisively answered in the affirmative ; but with a 
 Teufelsdrockh there ever hovers some shade of doubt. 
 In the meanwhile, if satire were actually intended, 
 the case is little better. There are not wanting men 
 who will answer : Does your Professor take us for 
 simpletons? His irony has overshot itself; we see 
 through it, and perhaps through him. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 TAILORS 
 
 Thus^ however, has our first Practical Inference from 
 the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, 
 been sufficiently drawn ; and we come now to the 
 second, concerning Tailors. On this latter our opin- 
 ion happily quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrcickh 
 himself, as expressed in the concluding page of his 
 Volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. 
 Let him speak his own last words, in his own way : 
 
 ' Upwards of a century,' says he, ' must elapse, and 
 still the bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso 
 is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled 
 on altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of 
 Iniquity have his victims, and the Michael of Justice 
 his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their 
 true prerogatives of manhood, aud^ this last wound 
 of suffering Humanity be closed. 
 
 ' If aught in the history of the world's blindness 
 could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and 
 wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself 
 down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors 
 are a distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but 
 fractional Parts of a Man. Call any one a Schneider 
 (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hood- 
 winked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, 
 equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity.'* 
 The epithet schneidermdas^lg (tailor-like) betokens an 
 otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity : 
 we introduce a Tailor s-Meiaitcholy^ more opprobrious 
 
 24S 
 
TAILORS 249 
 
 * than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine ; and 
 
 * fable I know not what of his generating it by living 
 ^ on Cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs 
 ' (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), 
 
 * with his Schneider mit dem Panier? M'hy of Shak- 
 ' speare, in his Taming of the Shrew, and elsewhere? 
 ' Does it not stand on record that the English Queen 
 ' Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, 
 ' addressed them with a " Good morning, gentlemen 
 ' both ! " Did not the same virago boast that she had 
 ' a Cavalry Regiment, whereof neither horse nor man 
 ' could be injured ; her Regiment, namely, of Tailors 
 ' on Mares ? Thus everywhere is the falsehood taken 
 
 * for granted, and acted on as an indisputable fact. 
 
 ' Nevertheless, need 1 put the question to any 
 
 * Physiologist, whether it is disputable or not.'' Seems 
 ' it not at least presumable, that, under his Clothes, 
 ' the Tailor has bones and viscera, and other muscles 
 
 * than the sartorious? Which function of manhood 
 ^ is the Tailor not conjectured to perform ? Can he 
 
 * not arrest for debt.'* Is he not in most countries 
 ' a tax-paying animal ? 
 
 * To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful 
 ' which conviction is mine. Nay if the fruit of these 
 ' long vigils, and almost preternatural Inquiries, is 
 ' not to perish utterly, the world will have approxi- 
 
 * mated towards a higher Truth ; and the doctrine, 
 ^ which Swift, with the keen forecast of genius, 
 ^ dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light : 
 ' that the Tailor is not only a Man, but something of 
 
 * a Creator or Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that 
 ^'^he snatched the Thunder from Heaven and the 
 ' Sceptre from Kings " : but which is greater, 1 would 
 ' ask, he that lends, or he that snatches.'' For, 
 ' looking away from individual cases, and how a Man 
 ' is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, and 
 
 * clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a 
 ' Mystic Dominion, — is not the fair fabric of Society 
 ' itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, 
 
 * whereby, from nakedness and dismemberment, we 
 
250 SARTOR RKSARTUS 
 
 are orsranised into Polities, into nations, and a whole 
 cooperating- Mankind, the creation, as has here been 
 often irrefrag-ably evinced, of the Tailor alone ? — 
 VV^hat too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a 
 species of Metaphorical Tailors ? Touching which 
 high Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has 
 triumphantly asked us : '' Nay if thou wilt have it, 
 who but the Poet first made Gods for men ; brought 
 them down to us ; and raised us up to them ? " 
 
 ' And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the 
 hard basis of his Shopboard, the world treats with 
 contumely, as the ninth part of a man ! Look up, 
 thou much-injured one, look up with the kindling- 
 eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better 
 time. Too long hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, 
 wearing thy ankle-joints to horn ; like some sacred 
 Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing 
 down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that 
 scoiFed at thee. Be of hope ! Already streaks of 
 hhie peer through our clouds ; the thick gloom of 
 Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will be Day. 
 Mankind will repay with interest their long-accumu- 
 lated debt : the Anchorite that was scoffed at will 
 be worshipped ; the Fraction will become not an 
 Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With 
 astonishment the world will recognise that the 
 Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even its 
 God. 
 
 * As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked 
 upon these F'our-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and 
 embroidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan 
 sends yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, 1 thought 
 within myself: How many other Unholies has your 
 covering Art made holy, besides this Arabian Whin- 
 stone ! 
 
 ' Still more touching was it when, turning the 
 corner of a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, 
 1 came upon a Signpost, whereon stood written that 
 such and such a one was " Breeches-Maker to his 
 Majesty " ; and stood painted the Effigies of a Pair 
 
TAILORS 251 
 
 ' of Leather Breeches, and between the knees these 
 ' memorable words, Sic itub ad astra. Was not this 
 ' the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sia^hine^ indeed 
 
 * in bonds, yet sighing- towards deliverance, and pro- 
 ' phetically appealing to a better day? A day of jus- 
 ' tice, when the worth of Breeches would be revealed 
 ' to man, and the Scissors become forever venerable. 
 
 ' Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal 
 ' been altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, 
 ' when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, 
 ' is open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived 
 ' this Work on Clothes : the greatest I can ever hope 
 ' to do ; which has already, after long retardations, 
 ' occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a section of 
 
 * my Life ; and of which the Primary and simpler 
 
 * Portion may here find its conclusion.' 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 FAREWELL 
 
 So have we endeavoured, from the enormous, amor- 
 phous Plum-puddiu^, more like a Scottish Haggis, 
 which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow 
 mortals, to pick out the choicest Plums, and present 
 them separatel} on a cover of our own. A laborious, 
 perhaps a thankless enterprise ; in which, however, 
 something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and 
 of which we can now wash our hands not altogether 
 without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric 
 wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been 
 added to the scanty ration of our beloved British 
 world, what nobler recompense could the Editor 
 desire ? If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur ? 
 Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any case, had 
 appointed him ; which having now done with, he sees 
 his general Day's-work so much the lighter, so much 
 the shorter ? 
 
 Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to 
 take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, 
 gratitude and disapproval. Who will not regret that 
 talents, which might have profited in the higher Malks 
 of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much 
 devoted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms ; nay 
 too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings 
 and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests ? 
 Regret is unavoidable ; yet censure were loss of time. 
 To cure him of his mad humours British Criticism 
 would essay in vain : enough for her if she can, by 
 vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among our- 
 
 252 
 
FAREWELL 253 
 
 selves. What a result, should this piebald, entangled, 
 hyper-metaphorical style of writing, not to say of think- 
 ing, become general among our Literary men ! As it 
 might so easily do. Thus has not the Editor himself, 
 working over Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of his 
 own English purity ? Even as the smaller whirlpool 
 is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along 
 with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been 
 forced to become portion of the greater, and, like it, 
 see all things figuratively : which habit time and 
 assiduous effort will be needed to eradicate. 
 
 Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows him- 
 self, is there any reader that can part with him in 
 declared enmity.'* Let us confess, there is that in 
 the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which 
 almost attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and 
 believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, Begone ; 
 and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be ; and to 
 Truth, Be thou in place of all to me : a man who had 
 manfully defied the '^ Time-prince,' or Devil, to his 
 face ; nay perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously 
 consecrated from birth to that warfare, and now stood 
 minded to wage the same, by all weapons, in all places, 
 at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but 
 a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome. 
 
 Still the question returns on us : How could a man 
 occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense 
 of propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, 
 resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on 
 the absurd ? Which question he were wiser than the 
 present Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our 
 conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps Necessity 
 as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not 
 conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where 
 so much bountifully given by Nature had in Practice 
 failed and misgone. Literature also would never rightly 
 prosper : that striving with his characteristic vehe- 
 mence to paint this and the other picture, and ever 
 without success, he at last desperately dashes his 
 sponge, full of all colours, against the canvas, to try 
 
254 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 whether it will paint Foam? With all his stillness, 
 there were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh desperation 
 enough for this. 
 
 A second conjecture we hazard with even less 
 warranty. It is, that Teufelsdrockh is not without some 
 touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytise. 
 How often already have we paused, uncertain whether 
 the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really 
 Stoicism and Despair, or Love and Hope only seared 
 into the figure of these ! Remarkable, moreover, is 
 this saying of his : ' How were Friendship possible ? 
 
 * In mutual devotedness to the Crood and True : 
 
 * otherwise impossible ; except as Armed Neutz'ality, 
 ' or hollow Commercial League. A man, be the 
 
 * Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet 
 ' were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and 
 ' of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. 
 ' Infinite is the help man can yield to man.' And 
 now in conjunction therewith consider this other : 
 
 * It is the Night of the World, and still long till it 
 
 * be Day : we wander amid the glimmer of smoking 
 
 * ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as 
 
 * if blotted out for a season ; and two immeasurable 
 
 * Phantoms, Hypocrisy and Atheism, with the Gowl, 
 
 * Sensuality, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call 
 
 * it theirs : well at ease are the Sleepers for whom 
 ' Existence is a shallow Dream.' 
 
 But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a 
 Reality ? Should not these unite ; since even an 
 authentic Spectre is not visible to Two.^ — In which 
 case were this enormous Clothes- Volume properly an 
 enormous Pitchpan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his 
 lone watchtower had kindled, that it might flame far 
 *iud wide through the Night, and many a disconso- 
 lately wandering spirit be guided thither to a Brother's 
 bosom ! — We say as before, with all his malign In- 
 difference, who knows what mad Hopes this man 
 may harbour ? 
 
 Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which 
 haimonises ill with such conjecture; and^ indeed. 
 
FARE>VELL 255 
 
 were Teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as 
 good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while 
 the Beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman 
 had quitted it; that no pilgrim could now ask him : 
 Watchman, what of the Night? Professor Teufels- 
 drdckh, be it known, is no longer visibly present at 
 Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in 
 space ! Some time ago, tlie Hofrath Heuschrecke 
 was pleased to favour us with another copious Epistle ; 
 wherein much is said about the ' Population-Institute ' ; 
 much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, 
 the hieroglyphic nature of which our Hofrath still 
 seems not to have surmised ; and, lastly, the strangest 
 occurrence communicated, to us for the first time, in 
 the following paragraph : 
 
 * I)w. Wohlgeboren will have seen from the public 
 ' Prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless 
 ^ solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of 
 ' her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany 
 
 * prevail on him to return ; nay could we but so much 
 
 * as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went 
 
 * away ! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects 
 ^ the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance : 
 
 * in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up ; 
 ' the Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit no 
 ^ answer. 
 
 ' It had been remarked that while the agitating 
 
 * news of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth 
 
 * to mouth, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, 
 ^ Herr Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the Gans or 
 " elsewhere, to have spoken, for a whole week, any 
 ' syllable except once these three : E.f geht an (It is 
 
 * beginning). Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgeboren 
 
 * knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, 
 
 * threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did 
 
 * there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate 
 
 * Alarmists, who asserted that the closing Chapter 
 ^ of the Clothes-Volume was to blame. In this ap- 
 
 * palling crisis, the serenity of our Philosopher was 
 
 * indescribable : nay, perhaps through one humble 
 
256 SARTOR RESARTUS 
 
 individual, something thereof might pass into Rath 
 (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's 
 deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacifi- 
 cated. — 
 
 ' To neither of these two incidents can I attribute 
 our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspi- 
 cion out of Paris and its Politics. For example, when 
 the Saint-Simonian Society transmitted its Proposi- 
 tions hither, and the whole Gans was one vast cackle 
 of laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our Sage 
 sat mute ; and at the end of the third evening said 
 merely : " Here also are men who have discovered, 
 not without amazement, that Man is still Man ; of 
 which high, long-forgotten Truth you already see 
 them make a false application." Since then, as has 
 been ascertained by examination of the Post-Director, 
 there passed at least one Letter with its Answer 
 between the Messieurs Buzzard-Enfantin and our 
 Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be 
 conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was 
 seen for the last time ! 
 
 ^ Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most «of 
 the hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited 
 away by certain of their emissaries ; or did he go 
 forth voluntarily to their headquarters to confer with 
 them and confront them ? Reason we have, at least 
 of a negative sort, to believe the Lost still living ; 
 our widowed heart also whispers that ere long he 
 will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his 
 archives must, one day, be opened by Authority ; 
 where much, perhaps the Palingenesie itself, is 
 thought to be reposited.' 
 
 Thus far the Hofrath ; who vanishes, as is his wont, 
 too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 
 
 So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not 
 done, then, or reduced to an even, unromautic tenor : 
 nay, perhaps the better part thereof were only be- 
 ginning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where 
 substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be 
 
FAREWELL 257 
 
 distinguished from the other. May Time, which solves 
 or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this 
 also ! Our own private conjecture, now amounting 
 almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some 
 stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, Teufelsdrockh 
 is actually in London ! 
 
 Here, however, can the present Editor, with an 
 ambrosial joy as of over-weai-iness falling into sleep, 
 lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human 
 testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British 
 readers likewise, this is a satisfying consummation ; 
 that innumerable British readers consider him, during 
 these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to 
 their ways of thought and digestion ; and indicate so 
 much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken 
 invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not 
 he to thank the Upper Powers.^ To one and all of 
 you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms 
 and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, 
 miraculous Entity, who namest thyself Yorke and 
 Oliver, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with 
 thy ail-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour of 
 palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell ; 
 long as thou canst, fare-well! Have we not, in the 
 course of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life- 
 journey in partial sight of one another ; have we not 
 existed together, though in a state of quarrel .^ 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 
 I. Highest Class, Bookseller's Taster. 
 
 Taster to Bookseller. — "The Author of Teufelsdrockh 
 is a person of talent ; his work displays here and there 
 some felicity of thought and expression, considerable 
 fancy and knowledge : but whether or not it would 
 take with the public seems doubtful. For a jeu d' esprit 
 of that kind it is too long ; it would have suited better 
 as an essay or article than as a volume. The Author 
 has no great tact ; his wit is frequently heavy ; and 
 reminds one of the German Baron who took to leaping 
 on tables, and answered that he was learning to be 
 lively. Is the work a translation } " 
 
 Bookseller to Editor. — ^^ Allow me to say that such 
 a writer requires only a little more tact to produce a 
 popular as well as an able work. Directly on receiving 
 your permission, I sent your Ms. to a gentleman in the 
 highest class of men of letters, and an accomplished 
 German scholar : I now enclose you his opinion, which, 
 you may rely upon it, is a just one; and I have too 
 high an opinion of your good sense to " &c. &c. — Ms. 
 {penes nos), London, VJth September 1831. 
 
 II. Critic of the Sun. 
 
 ^^ Frasers Magazine exhibits the usual brilliancy, 
 and also the" &c. '^ Sartor Resartus is what old 
 Dennis used to call '^a heap of clotted nonsense/ 
 
 258 
 
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 269 
 
 mixed however, here and there, with passages marked 
 by thought and striking poetic vigour. But what does 
 the writer mean by ' Baphometic fire-baptism ' ? Why 
 cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to 
 make himself generally intelligible? We quote by 
 way of curiosity a sentence from the Sartor Eesartus ; 
 which may be read either backwards or forwards, for 
 it is equally intelligible either way : indeed, by begin- 
 ning at the tail, and so working up to the head, we 
 think the reader will stand the fairest chance of get- 
 ting at its meaning : ' The fire-baptized soul, long so 
 scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom ; 
 which feeling is its Baphometic baptism : the citadel 
 of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, 
 and will keep inexpugnable ; outwards from which the 
 remaining dominions, not indeed without hard batter- 
 ing, will doubtless by degrees be conquered and paci- 
 
 ficated.' Here is a" — — Sun Newspaper, 1st 
 
 April 1834. 
 
 III. North-American Reviewer. 
 
 "After a careful survey of the whole 
 
 ground, our belief is that no such persons as Professor 
 Teufelsdrockh or Counsellor Heuschrecke ever existed ; 
 that the six Paper-bags, with their China-ink inscrip- 
 tions and multifarious contents, are a mere figment of 
 the brain ; that the ' present Editor * is the only person 
 who has ever written upon the Philosophy of Clothes ; 
 and that the Sartor Eesartus is the only treatise that 
 has yet appeared upon that subject ; — in short, that 
 the whole account of the origin of the work before us, 
 which the supposed Editor relates with so much gravity, 
 and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in 
 plain English, a hum. 
 
 " Without troubling our readers at any great length 
 with our reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we 
 may remark, that the absence of all other information 
 on the subject, except what is contained in the work, 
 is itself a fact of a most significant character. The 
 
260 APPENDIX 
 
 whole German press, as well as the particular one where 
 the work purports to have been printed, seems to be 
 under the control of Sfi/hchvjeigen and Co. — Silence and 
 Company. If the Clothes-Philosophy and its author 
 are making so great a sensation throughout Germany 
 as is pretended, how happens it that the only notice 
 we have of the fact is contained in a few numbers of a 
 monthly Magazine published at London ? How happens 
 it that no intelligence about the matter has come out 
 directly to this country? Vie pique ourselves here in 
 New England upon knowing- at least as much of what 
 is going- on in the literary way in the old Dutch 
 Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle; 
 but thus far we have no tidings whatever of the ' ex- 
 tensive close-printed close-meditated volume/ which 
 forms the subject of this pretended commentary. 
 Again, we would respectfully inquire of the ' present 
 Editor' upon what part of the map of Germany we are 
 to look for the city of Weissiiichfwo — ' Know-not- where ' 
 — at which place the work is supposed to have been 
 printed, and the Author to have resided. It has been 
 our fortune to visit several portions of the German 
 territory, and to examine pretty carefully, at diiferent 
 times and for various purposes, maps of the whole ; 
 but we have no recollection of any such place. We 
 suspect that the city of Kiww-not-where might be called, 
 with at least as much propriety, Nobody -knows-where, 
 and is to be found in the kingdom of Nowhere. Again, 
 the village of Entepfuhl — * Duck-pond' — where the 
 supposed Author of the work is said to have passed 
 his youth, and that of Hinterschlag , where he had 
 his education, are equally foreign to our geography. 
 Duck-ponds enough there undoubtedly are in almost 
 every village in Germany, as the traveller in that 
 country knows too well to his cost, but any particular 
 village denominated Duck-pond is to us altogether 
 terra incognita. The names of the personages are not 
 less singular than those of the places. Who can re- 
 frain from a smile at the yoking together of such a 
 pair of appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh } The 
 
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 261 
 
 supposed bearer of tliis strange title is represented as 
 admitting-, in his pretended autobiography, that ' he 
 had searched to no purpose through all the Heralds' 
 books in and without the German empire, and through 
 all manner of Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other 
 Name-catalogues,' but had nowhere been able to find 
 '^the name Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to his 
 own person.' We can readily believe this, and we 
 doubt very much whether any Christian parent would 
 think of condemning a son to carry through life the 
 Jj»urden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor 
 Heuschrecke — ' Grasshopper ' — though not offensive, 
 looks much more like a piece of fancy work than a 
 ^fair business transaction.' The same may be said of 
 Blumine — ' Flower-Goddess ' — the heroine of the fable ; 
 and so of the rest. 
 
 ^^ In short, our private opinion is, as we have re- 
 marked, that the whole story of a correspondence with 
 Germany, a university of Nobody-knows-where, a Pro- 
 fessor of Things in General, a Counsellor Grasshopper, 
 a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as 
 much foundation in truth as the late entertaining 
 account of Sir John Herschel's discoveries in the moon. 
 Fictions of this kind are, however, not uncommon, and 
 ought not, perhaps, to be condemned with too much 
 severity ; but we are not sure that we can exercise the 
 same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which seems 
 to be made to mislead the public as to the substance 
 of the work before us, and its pretended (ierman 
 original. Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon 
 the subject of Clothes, or dress. Clothes, their Origin 
 and Influence, is the title of the supposed German 
 treatise of Professor Teufelsdrockh, and the rather odd 
 name of Sartor Resartus — the Tailor Patched — which 
 the present Editor has affixed to his pretended com- 
 mentary, seems to look the same way. But though 
 there is a good deal of remark throughout the work in 
 a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems to 
 be in reality a treatise upon the great science of Things 
 in General, which Teufelsdrockh is supposed to have 
 
262 APPENDIX 
 
 professed at the university of Nobody-knows-where. 
 Now, without intending to adopt a too rigid standard 
 of morals, we own that we doubt a little the propriety 
 of offering to the public a treatise on Things in General, 
 under the name and in the form of an Essay on Dress. 
 For ourselves, advanced as we unfortunately are in the 
 journey of life, far beyond the period when dress is 
 practically a matter of interest, we have no hesitation 
 in saying, that the real subject of the work is to us 
 more attractive than the ostensible one. But this is 
 probably not the case with the mass of readers. To 
 the younger portion of the community, which con- 
 stitutes everywhere the very great majority, the subject 
 of dress is one of intense and paramount importance. 
 An author who treats it appeals, like the poet, to the 
 young men and maidens — vii^ginihus puerUque — and 
 calls upon them, by all the motives which habitually 
 operate most strongly upon their feelings, to buy his 
 book. When, after opening their purses for this pur- 
 pose, they have carried home the work in triumph, 
 expecting to find in it some particular instruction in 
 regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of 
 their corsets, and meet with nothing better than a dis- 
 sertation on Things in General, they will — to use the 
 mildest term — not be in very good humour. If the 
 last improvements in legislation, which we have made 
 in this country, should have found their way to Eng- 
 land, the author, we think, would stand some chance 
 of being Lynched. Whether his object in this piece of 
 supercherie be merely pecuniary profit, or whether he 
 takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dandies, we 
 shall not undertake to say. In the latter part of the 
 work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of 
 persons, from the tenor of which we should be dis- 
 posed to conclude, that he would consider any mode 
 of divesting them of their property very much in the 
 nature of a spoiling of the Egyptians. 
 
 " The only thing about the work, tending to prove 
 that it is what it purports to be, a commentary on a 
 real German treatise, is the style, which is a sort of 
 
TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS 263 
 
 Babylonish dialect, not destitute, it is true, of richness, 
 vigour, and at times a sort of singular felicity of 
 expression, but very strongly tinged throughout with 
 the peculiar idiom of the German language. This 
 quality in style, however, may be a mere result of a 
 great familiarity with German literature ; and we 
 cannot, therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, 
 still less as outweighing so much evidence of an 
 opposite character." — North-American Review, No. 89, 
 October 1835. 
 
 IV. New England Editors. 
 
 '^The Editors have been induced, by the express 
 desire of many persons, to collect the following sheets 
 out of the ephemeral pamphlets ^ in which they first 
 appeared, under the conviction that they contain in 
 themselves the assurance of a longer date. 
 
 •'^The Editors have no expectation that this little 
 Work will have a sudden and general popularity. 
 They will not undertake, as there is no need, to 
 justify the gay costume in which the Author delights 
 to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms with 
 which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. It is 
 liis humour to advance the gravest speculations upon 
 the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If 
 his masquerade offend any of his audience, to that 
 degree that they will not hear what he has to say, it 
 may chance to draw others to listen to his wisdom ; 
 and what work of imagination can hope to please all } 
 But we will venture to remark that the distaste excited 
 by these peculiarities in some readers is greatest at 
 first, and is soon forgotten ; and that the foreign 
 dress and aspect of the Work are quite superficial, 
 and cover a genuine Saxon heart. We. believe, no 
 book has been published for many years, written in 
 a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which 
 discovers an equal mastery over all the riches of the 
 
 1 Frasers (London) Magazine, 1833-4. 
 
264 APPENDIX 
 
 languaf^e. The Author makes ample amends for the 
 occasional eccentricity of his genius, not only by fre- 
 quent bursts of pure splendour, but by the wit and 
 sense which never fail him. 
 
 ^' But what will chiefly commend the Book to the 
 discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, 
 which is, a Criticism upon the Spirit of the Age — we 
 had almost said, of the hour — in which we live ; ex- 
 hibiting in the most just and novel light the present 
 aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts, and 
 Social Life. Under all his gaiety the Writer has 
 an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into 
 the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, 
 which is very rare among our popular authors. The 
 philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment, which 
 inspire the work, will And their way to the heart of 
 every lover of virtue." — Preface to Sartor Resarttis: 
 Boston, 1835, 1887. 
 
 Sunt, Fuerunt vel Fueke. 
 London, ZOth June 1838, 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Ballantynb, Hanson «&- Co. 
 Edinburgh &* London 
 
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The World's Classics 
 
 1'^HE best recommendation of The World's 
 Classics is the books themselves, which have 
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 classes of the public. Some two million copies have 
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 the eve of pubhcation. A great feature is the brief 
 critical introductions written by leading authorities 
 of the day. The volumes of The World's Classics 
 are obtainable in a number of different styles, 
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 on page i ; but special attention may be called to 
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 The Pocket Edition is printed on thin opaque 
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 reduced, and the volumes marked with an asterisk 
 are now ready in this form. 
 
 y««d, 1913. 
 
THE WORLD'S CLASSICS 
 
 LIST OF TITLES 
 
 IN THEIK ORDER IN THE SERIES 
 
 The voiuynes marked * can be obtained in Ihe thin paper, or pocket, edition. 
 
 *i. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Fourth Imp. 
 
 *2. Lamb's Essaj^'s of Elia, and The Last Essays 
 of Elia. Fiftli Impression. 
 
 *3. Tennyson's Poems, 1830-1865. With an Intro- 
 duction by T. H. Warren. Sixth Impression. 
 
 *4. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Third Imp. 
 
 *5. Ha.zlitt's Table-Talk. Fourth Impression. 
 
 *6. Emerson's Essays, ist and 2nd Series, Fifth Imp. 
 
 *']. Keats's Poems. Tliird Impression. 
 
 *8. Dickens's Oliver Twist. Second Impression. 
 
 *Q. Barham's Ingoldsby Legends. Fourth Imp. 
 *io, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. 3rd Imp. 
 *li. Darv/in's Origin of Species. Fourth Impression. 
 *I2. Bun3:'an's Pilgrim's Progress. Second Imp. 
 *I3. English Songs and Ballads. Compiled by 
 
 T. W. H. Crosland. Third Impression. 
 *I4. Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. Third Impression. 
 *i5. Haziitt's Sketches and Essays. Third Imp. 
 *i6- Herrick's Poems. Second Impression. 
 *!']. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Second Impression. 
 *i8. Pope's Iliad of Homer. Third Impression. 
 *IQ. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Third Impression. 
 
 20. Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Second Impression. 
 *2.T. Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. 
 
 Third Impression. 
 *22. White's Natural History of Selborne. 2nd Imp. 
 *23. De Quincey's Opium-Eater. Third Impression. 
 *24. Bacon's Essays. Third Impression. 
 *25. Haziitt's Winterslovi/. Second Impression. 
 
 2(j. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Second Imp. 
 *27. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 2nd Imp. 
 *28. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. Third Imp. 
 
 29. Scott's Ivanhoe. Second Impression. 
 *30. Emerson's English Traits, and Representa- 
 tive Men. Second Impression. 
 *3i. George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. Third Imp. 
 *32. Selected English Essays. Chosen and Arranged 
 by W. Peacock. Ninth Impression. 
 
 33. Hume's Essays. Second Impression. 
 •34. Burns's Poems. Second Impression. 
 
THE WORLD'S CLASSICS 
 
 List of Titles — continued 
 
 *35» *44. *5i» *55> *64, *69, *74. Gibbon's Roman Em- 
 pire. Seven Vols. With Maps. Vols. I, II, Third 
 Impression. Ill — V, Second Impression. 
 
 *36. Pope's Odyssey of Homer. Second Impression. 
 
 *37. Dryden's Virgil. Second Impression. 
 
 *38. Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. Third Impression. 
 
 *39. Longfello\v's Poems. Second Impression. 
 
 *40. Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Second Impression. 
 
 *4i, *48, *53. Buckle's History of Civilization in 
 England. Vol. I, 3rd Imp. ; Vols. II, III, 2nd Imp. 
 
 *42, *56, *76. Chaucer's Works. From the Text of Prof. 
 Skeat. Three Vols. Vol. I, Second Impression. Vol. 
 Ill contains ' The Canterbury Tales.' 
 
 *43 Machiavelli's The Prince. Translated by Luigi 
 Ricci. Second Impression. 
 
 *45. English Prose from Mandeville to Ruskin. 
 Chosen <ind arranged by V/. Peacock. Third Imp. 
 
 *46. Essays and Letters by Leo Tolstoy. Trans- 
 lated by Aylmer Maude. Third Impression. 
 
 *47. Charlotte Bronte's Villette. Second Impression. 
 
 *49. A Kempis's Imitation of Christ. Second Imp. 
 
 *56. Thackeray's Book of Snobs, Sketches and 
 Travels in London, etc. Second hiipression. 
 
 *52. Watts-Dunton's Ayli;vin. Third Impression. 
 
 *54» *59- Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Two 
 Vols. Second Impression. 
 
 *57. Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age. Second Impression. 
 
 *55, *I37. Robert Browning's Poems. Vol.1 (Pauline, 
 Paracelsus, Straffo'-d, Sordello, Pippa Passes, King 
 Victor and King Charles). Vol. II (Dramatic Lyrics 
 and Romances, Men and Women, and Dramatis 
 Personae). Vol. I, Second Impression. 
 
 *6o. The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius. A new 
 translation by John Jackson. Second Impression. 
 
 *6i. Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 
 Second Impression. 
 
 *62. Carlyle's On Heroes and Hero-W^orship. 
 Second Impression. 
 
 *63. George Eliot's Adam Bede. Second Impression. 
 
 *65» *70, *77. Montaigne's Essays. Florio's transla- 
 tion. Three volumes. 
 
 *66. Borrow^'s Lavengro. Second Impression. 
 
THE WORLD'S CLASSICS 
 
 List of Titles— continued 
 
 ♦67. Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 
 *68. Thoreau's Walden. Intro, by T. Watts-Dunton. 
 *7i, *8i, *iii-*ii4. Burke's Works. Six vols. With 
 Prefaces by Judge Willis, F. W. Raffety, and F. H. 
 
 AViLLIS. 
 
 *72. Twenty-three Tales by Tolstoy. Translated 
 by L. and A. Maudp:. Third Impression. 
 
 *73. Borrow's Romany Rye. 
 
 *7S Borrow's Bible in Spain. 
 
 *78. Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, and the 
 Poems Of C, E., and A. Bronte. Introduction 
 by Theodore Watts-Dunton. 
 
 *7Q. Sheridan's Plays. Intro, by Joseph Knight. 
 
 *8o. George Eliot's Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, 
 Brother Jacob. Intro, by T. Watts-Dunton. 
 
 *82. Defoe's Captain Singleton. With an Introduc- 
 tion by Theodore Watts-Dunton. 
 
 *83, *84. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. With an In- 
 troduction by Arthur Waugh. Two Vols. 
 
 *85. Matthew Arnold's Poems. With an Introduction 
 by Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch. 
 
 *86. Mrs. Gaskell's Mary Barton. With an Intro- 
 duction by Clement Shorter. 
 
 *87 Hood's Poems. With an Intro, by Walter Jerroid. 
 
 *88. Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth. With an Introduction by 
 Clemknt Shorter. 
 
 *8c|. Holmes's Professor at the Breakfast-Table. 
 With an Introduction by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll. 
 
 *Q0. Smollett's Travels through France and 
 Italy. With an Introduction by Thomas Seccombe. 
 
 *gi, *92. Thackeray's Pendennis. With an Intro- 
 duction by Edmund Gosse. Two Vols. 
 
 *93. Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and The 
 Nev^^ Atlantis. Vv'ith an Intro, by Professor Case. 
 
 *94. Scott's Lives of the Novelists. With an Intro- 
 duction by Austin Dobson. 
 
 *95. Holmes's Poet at the Breakfast-Table. With 
 an Introduction by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll. 
 
 '96, *97, *98. Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic. 
 With an Intro, by Clement Shorter. Three Vols. 
 
 *99. Coleridge's Poems. With an Introduction by Sir 
 
 A. T. QUILIER-COUCH. 
 
THE WORLDS CLASSICS 
 
 List of Titles — continued 
 
 *ioo-*io8. Shakespeare's Plaj^s and Poems. With a 
 Preface by A. C. Swinburne, Introductions to the 
 several plays by E. Dowden, and a Note by T Watts- 
 DuNTON on the special typographical features of this 
 edition. Nine Volumes, 
 
 *I09. George Herbert's Poems. With an Introduction 
 by Arthur Waugh. 
 
 *iio. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, The Cage at Cran- 
 ford, and The MoorL-ind Cottage. With an 
 Introduction by Clement Shorter, 
 
 *ii5. Essays and Sketches by Leigh Hunt. With 
 an Introduction by R. Brimley Johnson, 
 
 *ix6. Sophocles. The Seven Plays. Translated into 
 English Verse by Professor Lewis Campbell, 
 
 *ii7. Aeschylus. The Seven Plays. Translated into 
 English Verse by Professor Lewis Campbell. 
 
 *ii8. Horae Subsecivae. By Dr, John Brown, With 
 an Introduction by Austin Dobson. 
 
 *II9. Cobboid's Margaret Catchpole. With an In- 
 troduction by Clement Shorter. 
 
 *I20, *I2I. Dickens's Pickwick Papers. With 43 Illus- 
 trations by Seymour and " Phiz." Two Vols. 
 
 *i22. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, and other 
 Stories and Essays, by Douglas Jkkkold. With 
 an Intro, by Walter Jerrold, and 90 Illustrations. 
 
 *i23. Goldsmith's Poems. Edited by Austin Dobson. 
 
 *I24. Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic 
 Writers. With an Intro, by R. Brimley Johnson. 
 
 *I25, *I26. Carlyle's French Revolution. With an 
 Introduction by C. R. L, Fletcher. Two Vols. 
 
 *I27. Home's A New Spirit of the Age. With an 
 Introduction by Walter Jerrold, 
 
 *.X28. Dickens's Great Expectations. With 6 Illustra- 
 tions by Warwick Goble. 
 
 *i29. Jane Austen's Emma. Intro, by E. V. Lucas. 
 
 *i30, "^131. Cervantes's Don Quixote. Jervas's transla- 
 tion. With an Introduction and Notes by J, FiTZ- 
 maurice-Kelly. Two Vols. 
 
 *I32. Leigh Hunt's The Tov/n. With an Introduction 
 and Notes bv Austin Dobson, and a Frontispiece. 
 
 *i33. Palgrave's Golden Treasury, with additional 
 Poems. Filth Impression. 
 
THE WORLD'S CLASSICS 
 
 List of TitleS—rrmttJim-r/ 
 
 *i34. Aristophanes. Frere's translation of the 
 Acharnians, Knights, Birds, and Frogs. 
 
 With an Introduction by W. W. Merry. 
 *i35. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Goethe's Faust, 
 
 Part I. Anster's Translation. Intro, by A, W. Ward. 
 *I36. Butler's Analogy. Edited by W. E. Gladstone. 
 *I38. Cowper's Letters. Selected, with an Introduction, 
 
 by E. V. Lucas. vSecond Impression. 
 *i3g. Gibbon's Autobiography. With an Introduction 
 
 by J. B. Bury. 
 *i4o. Anthony Trollope's The Three Clerks. With 
 
 an Introduction by \v. Teignmouth Shore. 
 *i4i. Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey. 
 *i42. Fielding's Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. 
 
 With Introduction and Notes by Austin Dobson, and 
 
 Two Illustrations. 
 *I43. Wells's Joseph and his Brethren. Introduc- 
 tion by A. C. Swinburne, and a Note on Rossctti and 
 
 Charles Wells by Theodore Watts-Dunton. 
 *I44. Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. Vv'ilh an In- 
 troduction by W. Hale White. 
 *I45. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, and The Ethics 
 
 of the Dust. Rij ;kin House edition. 
 *i45. Ruski^^'"^^ Trnie and Tide, and The Cro^vD of 
 
 "Wild Olive. Knskin House edition. 
 ^"147. Ruskin's "^A Joy for Ever,' and The Tvv^o 
 
 Paths. Illustrated. Ruskin House edition. 
 *i4S. Ruskin's Unto this Last, and Munera Pul- 
 
 veris. Ruskiii House edition. 
 *i49. Reynolds's Discourses, and his Letters to 
 
 the ' Idler.' With an Iniro. by Austin Dubson. 
 *i5o, V/ashjngton Irving's Conquest of Granada. 
 *I5I, "^isa. Lesage'S Gil Bias. Smollett's translation. 
 
 Intro, and Notes by J. Kit/.maurice-Kelly. 2 Vols. 
 *I53. Carlyle's Past "and Present. With an intro- 
 duction by G. K. Chesterton. 
 *I54. Mrs. Gaskell's North and South. With an 
 
 Introduction by Clement Shorter. 
 
 George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. With 
 
 an Introduc:t;on by Annie Mathkson. 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers. With an 
 
 Introduction by Clement Shorter. 
 
THE WORLDS CLASSICS 
 
 List of Titles — continued 
 
 •157. Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. With 
 
 an Introduction by Clement Shorter. 
 ^158 Lord Dufferin's Letters from High Lati- 
 tudes. Illustrated. Introduction by R. W. Macan. 
 159. Grant's Captain of the Guard. 
 i5o. Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy. 
 161. Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs. 
 162 Ainsworth's The Tower of London. 
 
 163. Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. 
 
 164. Marryat's The King's Own. With 6 Illustra- 
 tions by Warwick Goble. 
 
 *i65. Lytton's Harold. With 6 Illustrations by Charles 
 Burton. 
 
 166. Mayne Reid's The Rifle Rangers. With 6 
 Illustrations by ]'. E. Sutcliffe. 
 
 167. Mayne Reid's The Scalp Hunters. With 6 
 Illustrations by A. H. Collins. 
 
 *i68. Mrs. Gaskell's Cousin Phillis, and other 
 Tales, etc. With an Intro, by Clement Shorter. 
 
 *i69. Southey's Letters. Selected, with an Introduction 
 and Notes, by Maurice H. FitzGerald. 
 
 *i7o. Mill's Liberty, Representative Government, 
 and The Subjection of Women. With an In- 
 troduction by Mrs. Fawcett. 
 
 *I71. Blackmore's Lorna Doone. With an Introduc- 
 tion by T, Herbert Warren. 
 
 •172. Book of English Essays, 1600-1900. Chosen by 
 S. V, Makower and B. H. Blackwell. 
 
 Other Volumes in preparation 
 
 BOOKCASES to hold 50 Volumes ordinary 
 paper, or 100 Volumes thin paper, World's 
 
 Classics size. 
 
 In Fumed Oak, with two fixed shelves. Size 22 by 21 J 
 
 by 4I inches Price 5s. net. 
 
 Oh ALL BOOKSELLERS 
 
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 LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO & MELBOURNE 
 
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