Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh
Putting which four singular Chapters together, and alongside of them
numerous hints, 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, needfully and needlessly; till now
it is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long pining, diabetic,
consumptive, can be regarded as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic
sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will they endure, galvanize 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 neighbor, turned against his neighbor, 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 cunninger sort,
can be employed? Where Friendship, Communion, has become an 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 faire_; 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 Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly,
of Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length,
without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor,
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 STATE fallen
speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a
Police-Office, straitened to get its pay!"
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.'
Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leech
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?"
But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, to the state of
Nature? "The Soul Politic having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, "what
can follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid
putrescence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching
with its bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral pile,
where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from the most,
the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that these men,
Liberals, Utilitarians, 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 Mechanizers are a
sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative 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 in 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 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; beleaguered by that boundless "Armament of
Mechanizers" 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
watch-coat 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 Time: 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? Did 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 vobis_
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 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, foot-shackles,
and every conceivable modification of rope, should go forth 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 reaching 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 already 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'age d'or, qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusqu'ici 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 Phoenix 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 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, depends on unseen
contingencies.--Meanwhile, would Destiny offer 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 heaven-born young one
will rise out of her ashes! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of
Indicator, shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious
reader shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in
anger, say or think: From a _Doctor utriusque Juris_, titular Professor
in a University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, Society,
bad as she is, has given not only food and raiment (of a kind),
but books, tobacco and gukguk, 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 Enthusiast, than of a solid
householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country.
CHAPTER VI. OLD CLOTHES.
As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, 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 sunlight,
making a rosyfingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds;
nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold vapor, as from the
crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he