Sartor sesartus
Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881
>fc> • :° ^ L*0* «** <%V . • • , Vv "^o* .4^°-. *# » t •w 4 O <r* av ^6 oVJlAK* ■€? ^ -SHOT* AT * THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY SARTOR RESARTUS BY THOMAS CARLYLE THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY EACH VOLUME EDITED BY A LEADING AMERICAN AUTHORITY WILL D. HOWE, General Editor This series is composed of such works as are conspicuous in the province of literature for their enduring influence. Every volume is recognized as essential to a liberal edu- cation'and will tend to infuse a love for true literature and an appreciation of the quali- ties which cause it to endure. A descriptive list of the volumes published in this series appears in the last pages of this volume CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY SARTOR RESARTUS BY THOMAS CARLYLE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ASHLEY THORNDIKE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (X<Ct /U^^y^\A^<) (WM CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON ****** Copyright, 1921, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS A OCT -8 1921 ©CU627138 CONTENTS BOOK FIRST CHAPTER PAGE I Preliminary 1 II Editorial Difficulties 6 III Reminiscences 11 IV Characteristics .23 V The World in Clothes 30 VI Aprons. 36 VII Miscellaneous-Historical .... 39 VIII The World Out of Clothes .... 43 IX Adamitism 50 X Pure Reason 55 XI Prospective 61 BOOK SECOND I Genesis 71 II Idyllic 79 III Pedagogy 89 IV Getting Under Way 106 V Romance 118 v vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE VI Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh .... 132 VII The Everlasting No 142 VIII Center of Indifference 151 IX The Everlasting Yea 163 X Pause 176 BOOK THIRD I Incident in Modern History. 184 II Church-Clothes 190 III Symbols 193 IV Helotage 201 V The Phcenix ........ 205 VI Old Clothes 212 VII Organic Filaments 216 VIII Natural Supernaturalism ... 226 IX Circumspective ....... 237 X The Dandiacal Body. 242 XI Tailors 256 XII Farewell 260 Glossary 267 INTRODUCTION Sartor Resartus was written during the years 1830 and 1831 in the lonely farmhouse of Craigenputtock, whither the Carlyles had gone in 1828 after two years of married life in Edinburgh. Though the quiet out- of-door existence had been good for Carlyle's health, the loneliness and bleak climate had worn on his wife, so that both were ready for an escape from solitude and were looking longingly toward London. But their poverty was dire. Carlyle had failed to get a profes- sorship or to make a sufficient income from his writings, and was giving largely from his scanty means for the medical education of his brother. At one time while the Sartor was in progress, he was reduced to f ve pounds and saw no prospect of any income for months to come. As he labored over the manuscript with that painful effort which always accompanied his writing, he must have felt that it was a matter of life or death, of success or of failure from which he could scarcely recover. ' It is a work of genius, my dear,' declared Mrs. He failed to find a ready market, and the Sartor did not appear until two years later (1833-34) and then at reduced rates by instalments in Eraser's Magazine, where ' it excited the most unqualified disapprobation.' There were two years more of poverty and worry, spent mostly at Craigenputtock, before the Carlyles ven- vii viii INTRODUCTION tured to take a house in London and try to make their way in the literary metropolis. In the meantime a young American who was making his first visit to England, found his way across the moors to their farmhouse in order to meet the genius whose writings had stirred him in far-off Boston. The Carlyles agreed that Emerson was ' one of the most lovable creatures ' and hailed him as friend and fellow mystic. He undertook the ar- rangements for publishing the Sartor in the United States, where it first appeared in book form in 1836. It was not published in England until two years later, when Carlyle's French Revolution had established his position as one of the foremost of English men of let- ters. Up to the time of the Sartor Carlyle's writings had been mainly about German literature. He had worked as a translator, appreciator, and critic, but scarcely as a creative artist with a message for the world. One pur- pose indeed in his going to Craigenputtock had been to work out in solitude and quiet his own faith, and to give it an expression that the world would heed. He had been striving to set himself at right with the uni- verse, and he wished to tell the universe what he thought about it. A great many books have carried messages which have been the outcome of their authors' spiritual struggle, and Carlyle may have felt a likeness between himself and St. Augustine or Rousseau or Wordsworth, but the example that he had most in mind was that of his revered master, Goethe, who had passed through much troubled experience to a complete reconciliation with life and work. Carlyle desired to produce a book which should, like Wilhelm Meister, tell of an appren- ticeship which passed into a mastery of life. A more specific suggestion came from Swift's Tale of INTRODUCTION ix a Tub, which furnished Carlyle with the clothes meta- phor. It should be noticed that Carlyle employs this metaphor in two somewhat different ways. First, all ranks, offices, creeds, organizations, may be regarded as, the coverings, symbols, or worn-out clothes of reality. Second, society, the universe, space and time may be re- garded as the mere appearances or manifestations or clothes of the divine and ideal reality. By the first use of the metaphor, Carlyle has a means for satire or criticism of the existing state of things. By the sec- ond use of the metaphor, he has a means for expressing the fundamentals of his philosophy and religion. As Goethe had said, * the world in the living garment of God.' Wilhelm Meister and the Tale of a Tub might offer suggestions and methods, but Carlyle found great diffi- culty in adapting these to his own powers of expres- sion. He was thirty-five, and had experiences and be- liefs of his own which he wished the world to heed. He tried the two most popular literary forms of the day, a novel and an article for the reviews. The novel * Wotton Reinf red ' was begun during the first months of his married life, but did not get beyond seven chap- ters. The hero, disappointed in love, seems likely to attain some renewal of resolution through idealistic philosophy — when the novel breaks off. The review ar- ticle was on Clothes, and this took the title ' Teufels- drockh/ but it was unacceptable to Fraser, and was re- turned to Carlyle to become the basis of Sartor. He wrote to his brother, ' I can devise some more biography for Teufelsdrockh, give a second deeper part in the same vein, leading through Religion and the nature of Society, and Lord knows what/ It was through this experimenting that the Sartor took form. Book I corresponds roughly to the article on x INTRODUCTION Clothes. It serves as an introduction to pique the reader through its mystifications in regard to the German philosopher and his amazing new theories and porten- tous style, but it also carefully states and restates the essence of the clothes philosophy. Book II tells the story of the hero, utilizing passages from the discarded ' Wotton Reinfred,' and recalling much from Carlyle's own experience. It culminates with the spiritual con- version in which the hero faces and vanquishes the Ever- lasting No, i.e., the power of doubt ard denial, and from which he emerges to proclaim the Everlasting Yea, the gospel of work. In Book III, now that our interest has been won for this imaginary hero who has conquered doubt and found a gospel, Carlyle is free to set forth this gospel more at large and to announce his own ideas about the needs of the universe. But both his criticism of utilitarianism, of democracy, and of Rous- seauism, and his advocacy of an organization of labor, hero worship, and a new purpose in literature are based on the idealistic philosophy which he proclaims most eloquently in the chapter on Natural Supernaturalism. The pretense that the book was an account and in part a translation of the philosophy and biography of a German professor was a manifest hoax that could not deceive readers acquainted with a few words of the Ger- man language. The pretense, however, was serviceable enough as a device for presenting to the public a young man known chiefly as a writer on German literature who wished now to be heard for himself. Some sort of a disguise, such as that of Teufelsdrockh, was necessary if he were to win a hearing as a prophet. But the rather elaborate fooling about the professor and his friend Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke and the University of Weissnichtwo and the six paper bags, which puzzled or annoyed the readers of ninety years ago, is often a little INTRODUCTION xi tedious for the reader of to-day. We no longer look upon the Germans as an unknown and little appreciated race of mystics, idealists and speculative philosophers, and we are neither deceived nor delighted by the many German words and phrases. Much of this framework must be regarded as belonging to the year 1830 and not very essential for posterity. Moreover, the scheme ex- hibits many inconsistencies. It is not easy to accept as one person the venerable German mystic, Professor Devilsdung in Part I, the romantic youth suffering the pangs of poverty, disappointed love, and religious doubt in Part II, and the discourser upon the dandiacal novel Pelham and the state of labor in England in Part III, But the figure of the professor is only a convenient mask, which the real author uses or discards as he wishes. The book gains its unity of appeal not through its general plan or its German disguise, but through the power and individuality of its expression. There can be no doubt that it is written by one man, and that man a genius. Readers when the book first appeared, and ever since, have complained a good deal of its style, of its mannerisms, obscurities, strange coinages, and Ger- man contortions. Carlyle certainly did not write in the approved manner of a popular novelist like Bulwer or of a popular review writer like Macaulay, and he did employ capital letters and an occasional idiom after the German fashion, and he perhaps caught something of the rhapsodic tone of Jean Paul Richter. But chiefly he wrote like himself. He abandoned the restraints and conventionalities that had heretofore held him back in writing for the reviews. He let himself go. Under the German disguise he could give his humor or eloquence an unabashed opportunity, and he could even invent a new word or risk a picturesque epithet. He wrote as xii INTRODUCTION he talked — with irony, rough humor, fierce invective, ten- derness, laughter, and fiery eloquence. It is not a model style, but it is the man himself, full grown, and it has all the characteristics which distinguished his writings for the rest of his life. Moreover, he thought not as a reviewer or a novelist, but as a prophet. He is tremendously in earnest and he is bound to make us readers take heed. He annoys, puzzles, overwhelms us, but incessantly demands our at- tention. Pathos and eloquence are lavished in order to make us hear. It is not the style of a writer trying to make a finished, a perfect creation of beauty; it is the expression of a great imagination, of a man who is bound at any cost of words to stir and arouse us. He preaches the destruction that is to come, and proclaims the way of salvation. Literature for him is not a thing of nice sentences and carefully selected words and pleasant rhythms, but a means to set the universe right, a voice in the wilderness that will make tremble the palace and temple. Sartor Resartus revealed a new prophet to the Eng- lish-speaking world, a powerful personality with a mes- sage. That message rests on a certain philosophy which, as we have noted, is summed up repeatedly in the course of the book. It is that union of idealism and individualism which had been implicit in most of the English romanticists, and which was later very ex- plicit in Browning and Emerson. We have seen its es- sence stated in the metaphor of clothes. The sole real- ity in the universe is conceived as mind or spirit, of which the individual personality is a part and a revela- tion. This spiritual reality, or God, unfolds and reveals its purpose in the course of civilization as well as in the attributes of individual souls. This gives a sanction not only for individual volition and activity but also INTRODUCTION xiii for Carlyle's doctrine of hero-worship. Soul is reality, and therefore the individual must have faith in him- self and in God who moves through him, and proceed to busy himself with the work of the world. But the great spirits among men are the chief revealers of God, and hence should be the chief leaders of mankind. Re- ligion lies in the mystic (i. e., not rational or intellectual) recognition of spirit, and in the worship by the lesser of the greater souls. Carlyle's idealism was indeed preached not as a metaphysics, but as a religion, not as an intellectual system but as a creed reached by faith and imagina- tion. This faith had been attained through his own per- sonal struggle with the universe, and in order to under- stand both its points of difference from similar creeds and also its points of application to conduct and belief, we must look a little more closely at this personal strug- gle of Carlyle's and at the universe he wished to reform. In other words, the Sartor is not merely a restatement of idealistic philosophy, but is both the expression of Car- lyle's personality and an appeal for making the world better. What are the important elements of his life and character which speak in the book? And what was the state of the environment against which his person- ality reacted? What was the state of the world in 1830 in which he summoned the spirits of Englishmen to battle? Carlyle's biography is too well known to be retold here, except as it helps to make plain the significance of the Sartor. There are many things in the youth of Teufelsdrockh which are reminiscent of Carlyle's: the picture of childhood in the peasant's cottage, the boy at school who has promised his mother not to fight, the association with the rich and fashionable (Carlyle as tutor in the Buller family), and the story of Blumine, xiv INTRODUCTION compounded perhaps of Carlyle's relations with Mar- garet Gorden, Kitty Fitzpatrick, and Jane Welsh. But as Carlyle protested it is "symbolical myth all except that of the incident in the Rue St. Thomas de FEnfer (Book II, Chap. 7), which occurred quite literally to myself in Leith Walk, during three weeks of total sleep- lessness, in which almost my one solace was that of a daily bathe on the sands between Leith and Portobello.' That victory over the Everlasting No took place in June, 1821, when Carlyle was twenty-live. By that time he had found that he could not enter the ministry, for which his parents had sent him through college; he had found school teaching intolerable, and had tried and abandoned the study of law. He was poor, harassed by dyspepsia, ' a rat gnawing at the pit of the stom- ach/ by religious doubts and difficulties, by a sense of the misery of the poor. He was earning a small pit- tance by hack writing but saw no opening to a career of any sort. When Carlyle wrote: ' Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe . . . Love not Pleasure, love God ' — he was a little unfair to Byron and he was preaching a gospel that he had learned in his Ecclefechan home long before he heard of Goethe, — the old gospel of renunciation and work. But for him Byron stood as a symbol of emo- tional unrest, of the personal search for happiness, and Goethe, who had passed through a time of emotional storm and stress to a confident and serene activity, was the one living man who commanded hero-worship. Car- lyle seems to have felt that he was separating himself from the romanticists and pointing the way to a prac- tical ethics. Nearly all the romanticists, including Rousseau, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron, had believed, like Carlyle, in the power and significance of the individual. Most of them had also believed in the life and reign of the spirit; none of them had been materialists or rationalists. But they had been inter- ested in the individual's emotions, in states of feeling, in what men are or ought to be^ rather than in what they ought to do. Carlyle differed from them in plac- ing his emphasis on the volitional side of personality. Exercise your will, make your choice, he cried. ' Be no longer a Chaos but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infini- tesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name. 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then/ In other words, believe in yourself and go to work. What is this universe in which the individual soul must labor? For Carlyle, it was the world after the Napoleonic Wars, in the era of reaction which lasted from Waterloo to the Reform Bill. The rationalism of the eighteenth century had advanced to a denial of the xvi INTRODUCTION supernatural, and this rationalism had been applied by the French Revolution which undertook to destroy church and state and to found on the ruins of the old a new religion and government with promises of liberty, equality, and fraternity. This great effort at reforming human affairs had resulted in long and devastating wars, in the temporary success of a master tyrant, and then in a revulsion of Toryism which saw the only hope for civi- lization in the reestablishment of church, state and so- ciety on a pre-revolutionary basis. Further, in England the industrial revolution was transforming the ways of living as well as those of manufacture and introducing to a perplexed world all those problems of the modern competitive system which are still with us. Carlyle, wrestling with the devil in Edinburgh of 1821, saw his satanic majesty exhibited in all the misery and squalor of the poor in that era of general business depression. A Tory like Scott saw the only salvation in holding fast to the old and in resisting all reform. A romanticist like Byron flung his great personality into bitter satire and attack on everything that was. Should one trust his own emotion, or should one trust to the Holy Alliance, to the union of church and property, for which in England the Duke of Wellington stood stalwart? There was one other solution, that of the Benthamites, or Utilitarians, or Philosophical Radicals, who were making their theories heard especially in connection with the new science of Political Economy. They too were individualists but not emotionalists. They analyzed human life rationally, and they demanded the reorgani- zation of society according to their formula, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. They substituted cal- culation for intuition in ethjcs, and laissez faire for government regulation in politics, and individual rights and privileges in place of caste and organization in INTRODUCTION xvii society. In the Sartor Carlyle is bitter against this * gospel of Mammonism,' this substitution of a search for happiness instead of for duty. But he nevertheless regarded the Utilitarians with some sympathy, for they were the one group seriously bent on radical reform. His whole view of life was opposed to theirs, but he was, like them, a radical. Carlyle had not yet come to see the full meaning of the industrial revolution, which he was later to set forth in Chartism and Past and Present. But he saw the modern world preeminently as a place of toil, the smithy in the Black Forest serving as a symbol of this nexus of work which binds closely together modern men ; and he paid eloquent tribute to the dignity and worth of manual labor. He saw his England in terms of the rich and the poor, the idle aristocrats and the unedu- cated manual workers, and he likened Dandyism and Drudgism to ' two bottomless boiling Whirlpools ' likely to spread into a * true Hell of Waters and Noah's deluge is out-deluged ! Society was in danger of another and greater French Revolution which might destroy it utterly. He dismisses rapidly and with vituperative epithets all elements and theories which are offering remedies. The church and religion seem dead, mere old clothes. Kings and aris- tocracies are likewise outworn and meaningless symbols. The Return to Nature, Democracy, Universal Suffrage, Utilitarianism, and Political Economy are all rejected as quack nostrums. But in the dying Phoenix of Society, he discerns some organic filaments from which a new world may be constructed. Chief of these is Hero- worship, and second, there is literature, but both must be based on faith in spirit. Any reliance on the com- mercialism and materialism so rampant, or on the rationalism so threatening, will doom society to death. xviii INTRODUCTION Begin with a renewal of faith, a divine and indestructible spiritual purpose moving through society and man, and the doctrine of hero-worship becomes a practical appli- cation of this faith to politics, economics, or religion. The hero is the strong man, the man in whom God most manifests himself, and we must learn to recognize and obey such heroes. For the present time the heroes needed are the executives, the administrators, the organ- izers, men who will really govern, will organize labor, will lead the people. Literature may serve to aid and interpret these leaders, to reveal them by history and by prophecy, and to preach hero-worship as a sort of link between the mystical absolute and this every-day work- ing world. But practically, hero-worship means, recog- nize some one as your superior. This gospel of hero-worship, like Carlyle's applica- tion of his faith to the reform of industrialism, was to receive fuller exposition in later books. But the Sartor in Book III not only contains suggestions for much of his later teaching and preaching, it also enforces and applies the faith in spirit and the gospel of work to England of his own day. The great effect of the book was as a moral tonic which stirred the young men of the next generation, Arnold, Kingsley, Huxley, Tyndall and many others, to earnest and serious efforts to make the world better. The book was by no means merely an emotional exhortation, it called men to work, and it also pointed to the work to be done. It was not an appeal merely to save your own soul, but to make the world better by work. It has gone on repeating its message for nearly a century. It has helped to direct our literature to the task of a serious criticism of life, an earnest effort at reform. Is its message still a vital one? We are facing a new world at the end of a World War, far more INTRODUCTION xix terrific and devastating than the wars of Napoleon. Progress has had an interruption. The clocks of all the nations have been set back. There must be a great and a long materialistic and commercial reaction to make good the physical losses. We shall hear many voices, some reactionary and others revolutionary, as contradictory and uncertain as those heard in England after Waterloo. Shall we not find something to listen to in this voice of a century ago which proclaimed with such fervor the immanence of the spirit and the duty of work? Is there not for our time a need of insistence on individual responsibility, on the importance in the universe of human will? Have we no dandies and drudges? Have we no need of heroes who will lead rather than talk? no need of a literature devoted to the ideal of a better world? Along with much talk of equality, do we not need to recognize and acclaim superiority? As I turn back to-day to the Sartor my own impression is that Carlyle is now speaking to a world very like that in which he lived, and that, what- ever its mistakes in emphasis or prejudice, his sermon is as much needed now as then. Ashley Thorndike SARTOR RESARTUS BOOK FIRST CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thou- sand years and upwards ; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur- matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, — it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes. Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary 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 we know enough: what with the labors of our Werners and Huttons, what with the 1 2 SARTOR RESARTUS 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; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, How the apples were got in, pre- sented difficulties. 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 In- toxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fiber of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a 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 Tis- sue, should have been quite overlooked by Science, — the vestural Tissue, namely, of woolen or other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's- glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spon- taneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare PRELIMINARY 3 says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary 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 Herren und lasset's Euch sagen; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Ger- mans have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a rough journey; as if, for- saking 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 bil- berries 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 noth- ing 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 4 SARTOR RESARTUS looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will un- fold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man ? It is written, ' Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed; — thereby, in these his seemingly so aim- less rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he who counseled 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 endeavor, cramps the free flight of Thought, —that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language. What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German Learned, PRELIMINARY 5 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 continued dormant for indefinite periods. The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign sug- gestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating ex- pressly of this subject, and in a style which, whether understood or not, could not even by the blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not re- mained without effect. ' Die Kleider, ihr Werden und WirJcen (Clothes, their Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, J.U.D. etc. S tills chweig en und Co9nie. 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 his- torian, and the philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged independent Germanism and Philanthropy (derber Kerndeutschheit und Menschenliebe) ; which will not, assuredly, pass current without opposition in high places; but must and 6 SARTOR RESARTUS will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honor. Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Profes- sor, 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: Mochte es (this remarkable Treatise) auch im Brittischen Boden gedeihenl 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 contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients. Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first delib- erate 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 Individual- ity, an almost unexampled personal character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 7 both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we resolved to master the significance. But as man is emphatically a proselytizing creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly attempted, than the new ques- tion 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 Philoso- phy, be brought home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our own English Nation? For if new- got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more may new truth. Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought naturally was to publish Article after Article on this 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 the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except Fraser's Magazine? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding distractively and destruc- tively, 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! Be- sides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without some- thing of his personality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension? Now for Biography, had it 8 SARTOR RESARTUS been otherwise admissible, there were no adequate docu- ments, no hope 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 con- strained to resolve them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. So had it lasted for some months; and now the Vol- ume on Clothes, read and again read, was in several points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent, — when altogether unex- pectedly arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heusch- recke, our Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously cor- responded. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the ' agitation and attention ' which the Philosophy of Clothes was excit- ing 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 dis- tant 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 disposed to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requisite Documents. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES 9 As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evaporating, but would not crystallize, instantly when the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystalli- zation commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united itself with like in definite arrangement: and soon either in actual vision and pos- session, 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 interview, 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 offer of Documents we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our task begun; and this our Sartor Re- sartus, which is properly a ' Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh/ hourly advancing. Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for medi- tation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of cant; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, 10 SARTOR RESARTUS and even insignificant : 1 it is a voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly a Spirit ad- dressing Spirits : whoso hath ears, let him hear. On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give warning: namely, that he is animated with 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 view to such defense that he engaged in this undertak- ing. To stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the logical wear. 