THE VICTORIAN AGE THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) FROM SARTOR RESARTUS should be carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it as we THE EVERLASTING YEA. FROM BOOK II, choose: with or without visible Devil, whether CHAPTER IX* "Temptations in the Wilderness!'' exclaims Teufelsdröckh: "Have we not all to be tried with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force; thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in Welldoing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean2 Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,-must there not be a confusion, a contest, before the better influence can become the upper? in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness, to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!-Our Wilder ness is the wide World in an Atheistic Cen tury; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into the higher sunlit slopes-of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only!" him: He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious "To me nothing seems more natural than that figure; as figures are, once for all, natural to the Son of Man, when such God-given man"Has not thy Life been that of most date first prophetically stirs within him, and sufficient men (tüchtigen Männer) thou hast the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish,-known in this generation? An outflush of fool 1 See Luke, iv, 1, 2. ish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs: 2 The name of Prometheus, the fabled defender of this all parched away, under the Droughts of man against Jupiter's tyranny, means "fore- practical and spiritual Unbelief, as Disappointthought." * Sartor Resartus, or "The Tailor Re-Tailored," is ment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave nominally a work on clothes; in reality, it is rise to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into a philosophy, or rather gospel, of life. Carlyle poses as the editor merely, professing to Denial! If I have had a second-crop, and now have received the work in manuscript from a see the perennial greensward, and sit under certain German Professor "Teufelsdrückh" of the University of "Weissnichtwo" (see Eng. umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought Lit., pp. 345-346). In the Second Book he (and Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens assumes to give the physical and spiritual biography of the author as culled from imag- praised, I am not without examples, and even inary "Paper-bags"-bundles of loose docu- exemplars." ments-derived from the same source. The Professor, afflicted with personal sorrows, and So that, for Teufelsdröckh also, there has beset by religious and speculative doubts, has been a "glorious revolution: " these mad shadset forth on a world-pilgrimage. In his men tal struggle he passes from the "Everlasting ow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of No," a period of doubt and denial, through his were but some purifying "Temptation in the "Centre of Indifference" to the "Everlast- the Wilderness," before his apostolic work ing Yea." lies cast aside here on "the high table-land;" and indeed that the repose is already taking wholesome effect on him? If it were not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could have expected! However, in Teufelsdröckh, there is always the strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitarmusic, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece entire: (such as it was) could begin; which Tempta- | ing passage refers to his Locality, during this tion is now happily over, and the Devil once same "healing sleep; " that his Pilgrim-staff more worsted! Was "that high moment in the Rue de l'Enfer,' '3 then, properly, the turning point of the battle; when the Fiend said, Worship me, or be torn in shreds, and was answered valiantly with an Apage Satana?4Singular Teufelsdröckh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain words! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative crotchets: a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. "How paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my "what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's skyey Tent, musing and meditating; on the Soul; in what words, known to these profane high table-land, in front of the Mountains; times, speak even afar off of the unspeakable?" over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around We ask in turn: Why perplex these times, me, for walls, four azure flowing curtains,— profane as they are, with needless obscurity, namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose by omission and by commission? Not mystical | bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And only is our Professor, but whimsical; and in- then to fancy the fair Castles, that stood shelvolves himself, now more than ever, in eye- tered in these Mountain hollows; with their bewildering chiaroscuro.5 Successive glimpses, green flower lawns, and white dames and damohere faithfully imparted, our more gifted read- sels, lovely enough: or better still, the strawers must endeavour to combine for their own roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother behoof. baking bread, with her children round her :He says: "The hot Harmattan-winds had all hidden and protectingly folded-up in the raged itself out: its howl went silent within valley-folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if me; and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the I paused in my wild wanderings; and sat me nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my down to wait, and consider; for it was as if mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: Fly, with metal tongue; and, in almost all weather, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase you proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smokeno more, I will believe you no more. And ye clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for might read the hour of the day. For it was you; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at here: for I am way-weary and life-weary; I morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their will rest here, were it but to die: to die or to husbands' kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose live is alike to me; alike insignificant."-And up into the air, successively or simultaneously, again: "Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as of INDIFFERENCE; cast, doubtless by benignant smoke could say: Such and such a meal is upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy getting ready here. Not uninteresting! For dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to you have the whole Borough, with all its lovea new Heaven and a new Earth. The first pre-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and liminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self contentments, as in miniature, and could cover (Selbst-tödtung), had been happily accom- it all with your hat.-If, in my wide Wayfarplished; and my mind's eyes were now un-ings, I had learned to look into the business sealed, and its hands ungyved." Might we not also conjecture that the follow : of the World in its details, here perhaps was the place for combining it into general propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 3 Described in a previous chapter as a "dirty little" street in the French Capital where "Often also could I see the black Tempest fresh courage had suddenly come to him. This marching in anger through the Distance: passage Carlyle admitted to be autobiograph-round some Schreckhorn,s as yet grim-blue, ical, and the street was Leith Walk, Edinburgh. would the eddying vapour gather, and there 4 "Get thee hence, Satan." Matthew, iv, 10. 5 light and shade 6 A withering wind of West Africa; here figurative 7 laughing gayety for Doubt. 8 "Peak of Terror." witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, 66 tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad "A vain interminable controversy," writes he, "touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a few, some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, too, such Solution comes out in different terms; and ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his Dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would. The authentic Church-Catechism of our present century has not yet fallen into my hands: meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Min"With other eyes, too, could I now look isters and Upholsterers and Confectioners of upon my fellow man; with an infinite Love, an modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock cominfinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! | pany, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! -Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one: like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that Sanctuary of Sorrow;' by strange, steep ways, had I too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the Divine Depth of Sorrow' lie disclosed to me. The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, and was free. *Carlyle got the suggestion for his comparison from the journal of William Barentz, a Dutch navigator who was shipwrecked in the winter of 1596 on these Arctic islands, where the sun returns only after weeks of darkness. Compare the third note on Addison's paper on "Frozen Words," p. 298. than his Stomach: and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God's infinite Universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus:2 speak not of them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.-Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves. "But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint: only such overplus as there may be do we account Happiness; any deficit again is Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, and 1 Hock. 2 See Par. Lost, II, 708. what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but horne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. FROM BOOK III, "So true it is, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless my "But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim of your two grand fundamental world-enveloping wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our times and woven for us from before Birth itself, to write: 'It is only with Renunciation clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and (Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, can yet to blind it,-lie all-embracing, as the unibe said to begin.' versal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all "I asked myself: What is this that, ever minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, since earliest years, thou hast been fretting weave and paint themselves. In vain, while and fuming, and lamenting and self-tormenting, here on Earth, shall you endeavour to strip on account of? Say it in a word: is it not them off; you can, at best, but rend them because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU asunder for moments, and look through. (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to cat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron;4 open thy Goethe." Still "Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo," and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! stranger, should, on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilat"Es leuchtet mir cin, I see a glimpse of it!" ing Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both cries he elsewhere "there is in man a HIGHER would I purchase, were it with my last than Love of Happiness: he can do without groschen; but chiefly of this latter. To clap Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessed-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you ness! Was it not to preach-forth this same were Anywhere, straightway to be There! Next HIGHER that sages and martyrs, the Poet and to clap on your other felt, and simply by wishthe Priest, in all times, have spoken and suf-ing that you were Anywhen, straightway to be fered; bearing testimony, through life and Then! This were indeed the grander: shooting through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, at will from the Fire-Creation of the World and how in the Godlike only has he Strength to its Fire-Consummation; here historically and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine present in the First Century, conversing face to art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heav-face with Paul and Seneca;* there prophetens! and broken with manifold merciful Af- 5 The hero of a popular modern legend. flictions, even till thou become contrite, and "Dream-lane of Know-not-where." learn it! O thank thy Destiny for these; 3 Goethe. 4 Byron's verse is full of his personal grievances. See Eng. Lit., p. 251. See intro A very small silver coin of Germany, now obsoductory note. lete. Certain spurious letters have come down to us which were said to have passed between Paul and Seneca. 66 ically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of yet stand hidden in the depth of that late Time! | distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight; "Or thinkest thou, it were impossible, un- and not to see that the true inexplicable Godimaginable? Is the Past annihilated, then, or revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch only past; is the Future non-extant, or only forth my hand at all; that I have free Force to future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Mem-clutch aught therewith? Innumerable other of ory and Hope, already answer: already through this sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded stupefactions, which Space practices on us. summonest both Past and Future, and com- "Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your munest with them, though as yet darkly, and grand anti-magician, and universal wonderwith mute beckonings. The curtains of Yes-hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but terday drop down, the curtains of To-morrow the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both are. only, we should see ourselves in a World of Pierce through the Time-Element, glance into Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thauthe Eternal. Believe what thou findest written maturgy, and feats of Magic, were outdone. in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all But unhappily we have not such a Hat; and Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and there: that Time and Space are not God, but scantily help himself without one. creations of God; that with God as it is a "Were it not wonderful, for instance, had universal HERE, so is it an everlasting Now. Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes "And seest thou therein any glimpse of IM- by the mere sound of his Lyre?8 Yet tell me, MORTALITY?-O Heaven! Is the white Tomb Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo; sumof our Loved One, who died from our arms, moning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance and had to be left behind us there, which rises along from the Stein-bruch (now a huge in the distance, like a pale, mournfully reced- Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled ing Milestone, to tell how many toilsome un-pools); and shape themselves into Doric and cheered miles we have journeyed on alone,- Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses, and noble but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend streets? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the mysteriously with God!-Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily seem new, thou mayst ponder at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not. divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilising man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody,10 flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth. sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accomplishments, and rich symphonies, through all our hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that "That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, a wonder, which happens in two hours; and wherein, once for all, we are sent into this does it cease to be wonderful if happening in Earth to live, should condition and determine two million? Not only was Thebes built by the our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, music of an Orpheus; but without the music and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay, even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of Realities: and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand, and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing built, no work that man glories in ever done, "Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause, to its far-distant Mover: The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? Oh, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of 8 An ancient tradition. Cp. p. 228, note 30. 10 See p. 321, note 8. 9 stone-quarry |