Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
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 Shoemaker,
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 Ignorance 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, nevertheless, 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, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and
an honorable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of
Thirdborough 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 Splendors and Terrors;
for this poor Cordwainer, 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 neighborhood, the ordained Watchers and Interpreters
of that same holy mystery, listened with un-affected 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 what 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 AEtna, had been
heaped over that Spirit: but it was 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 the 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 high, and Hell is deep: Man! bethink thee,
if thou hast power of Thought! Why not; what binds me here? Want,
want!--Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon 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 practiced; therefore shall I not decide whether this subject
were easy of execution on the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as
if such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to 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-board 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 Moderns, and greater than Diogenes
himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood,
casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride,
undervaluing the Earth; 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 Worship, 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 partisanship: 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 earnestness and Boeotian simplicity (if indeed there be not an
underhand satire in it), with which that "Incident" is here brought
forward; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as
he durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! Does Teufelsdrockh
anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any considerable 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 hoodwinked
sufficiently,--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 daydream, 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 realized.
Would 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 re-established?
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-Clothes_, which has
the farther distinction of being 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 _Vestures_, 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 practically 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, however 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 Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking heavenward:
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 we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible.
How true is that of Novalis: 'It is certain, my Belief gains quite
_infinitely_ 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 the 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!
"Thus 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 prophesying
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
Chapter-houses 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
recognized 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, of hand or of head, are the
Fleshly Clothes, the muscular 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
rawhide; and Society itself a dead carcass,--deserving to be buried. Men