Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
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 Language, for they
themselves knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it
fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical
Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be
manufactured at Nurnberg 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; Thought 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 Professors 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 Hod-man is
discharged, or reduced to hod-bearing; and an Architect is hired, and on
all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover,
not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by
Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by
Gunpowder; that with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, there
should be world-honored Dignitaries, and were it possible, true
God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears
openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have
travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool: nay,
were he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom
expected honor, 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 innumerable
silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word,
NEVER! now first showed its meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow got
vent; but in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in
silent desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life is
so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death: these stern
experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there to a
whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; waving, with not unmelodious
sighs, in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through long years
of youth:--as in manhood also it does, and will do; for I have now
pitched my tent under a 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!"
Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored 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 concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother Gretchen
revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred; or
indeed of any kindred, having come into historical existence in the way
already known to us. "Thus was I doubly orphaned," says he; "bereft not
only of Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Wonder,
here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant fruit. Such a
disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots through my whole
nature: ever till the years of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole
thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams
grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic
depression, it naturally imparted: _I was like no other_; in which
fixed idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener to 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 subsequent, years; much
more, to decipher therein any illustrative 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 endowment, 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; discouragements,
entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps
are even pecuniary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who in
spite of 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 Humor
of that young Soul, what character is in him, first decisively reveals
itself; and, like strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of
colors, 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 Paper-bag, 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 remembrance, 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 circumstances, may it not sometimes be safer,
if both leader and led simply--sit still? Had you, anywhere in Crim
Tartary, walled in a square enclosure; furnished it with a small,
ill-chosen Library; and then turned loose into it eleven hundred
Christian striplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to
seven years: certain persons, under the title of Professors, being
stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, and
exact considerable admission-fees,--you had, not indeed in mechanical
structure, yet in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of our
High Seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical structure was
quite other, so neither was our result altogether the same: unhappily,
we were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of
smoke and sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, without far
costlier apparatus than that of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration
aloud, you could not be sure of gulling.
"Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are; and gulled,
with the most surprising profit. Towards anything like a _Statistics
of Imposture_, indeed, little as yet has been done: with a strange
indifference, our Economists, nigh buried under Tables for
minor Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the grand
all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch; as if our whole arts of Puffery, of
Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and
mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at all!
Can any one, for example, so much as say, What moneys, in Literature and
Shoeblacking, are realized by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish;
what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying,
in distinct items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements,
incomings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? But
to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely complected departments
of social business, in government, education, in manual, commercial,
intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's Want is supplied by true
Ware; how far by the mere Appearance of true Ware:--in other words, To
what extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various times and
countries, Deception takes the place of wages of Performance: here
truly is an Inquiry big with results for the future time, but to which
hitherto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the present, in
our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware 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 probably not far from
the mark),--what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated,
as the _Statistics of Imposture_ advances, and so the manufacturing of
Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction
therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but wholly
unnecessary!
"This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, for the present
brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as in Education, Polity,
Religion, where so much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can