Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
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 transfigured 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 recognize a present God, and worship the
Same: I mean religious Symbols. Various enough have been such religious
Symbols, what we call _Religions_; as men stood in this stage of culture
or the other, 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 therefrom. 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, 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
distance, if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like
a receding 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 _was_ 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 Conjurer
might I name 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 Arithmetical 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 [*] I was preparing," concludes this
wonderful Professor, "I read in their Newspapers that the 'Champion of
England,' he who has to offer battle to the Universe for his new King,
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 superannuated 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
suffocation?"
* That of George IV.--ED.
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 the
Repression of Population_; which lies, dishonorably 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
Malthus; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally
eats him up. A deadly fear of Population 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 himself 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.
First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative Radical,
has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zahdarm palaces and
courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the
blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly
engrossed:--
"Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn 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, indefeasibly 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. Oh, 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
fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created
Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the
thick adhesions and defacements of Labor: 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 honor, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling
for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of
Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavoring towards inward Harmony;
revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavors,
be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward
endeavor 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 for him in return, that he have Light, have
Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?--These two, in all their degrees, I
honor: all else is chaff 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 outwardly 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 splendor of
Heaven spring forth from the humblest 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 envelops 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?"
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 shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty
to a hundred Horses!"
"True, thou Gold-Hofrath," cries the Professor elsewhere: "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 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 Hengsts 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 Valor; 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 PHOENIX.