Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle

Author:Thomas Carlyle
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Germany -- Fiction, Humorous stories, Conduct of life -- Fiction, Satire, Philosophers -- Fiction, Clothing and dress -- Fiction, Didactic fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017-06-13T17:04:28+00:00

VII The Everlasting No

Under the strange neb­u­lous en­vel­op­ment, wherein our Pro­fessor has now shrouded him­self, no doubt but his spir­itual nature is nev­er­the­less pro­gress­ive, and grow­ing: for how can the “Son of Time,” in any case, stand still? We be­hold him, through those dim years, in a state of crisis, of trans­ition: his mad Pil­grim­ings, and gen­eral solu­tion into aim­less Dis­con­tinu­ity, what is all this but a mad Fer­ment­a­tion; where­from, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve it­self?

Such trans­itions are ever full of pain: thus the Eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to at­tain his new beak, must harshly dash-off the old one upon rocks. What Stoicism so­ever our Wan­derer, in his in­di­vidual acts and mo­tions, may af­fect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of an­archy and misery ra­ging within; co­rus­ca­tions of which flash out: as, in­deed, how could there be other? Have we not seen him dis­ap­poin­ted, be­mocked of Destiny, through long years? All that the young heart might de­sire and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the last worst in­stance, offered and then snatched away. Ever an “ex­cel­lent Passiv­ity”; but of use­ful, reas­on­able Activ­ity, es­sen­tial to the former as Food to Hun­ger, noth­ing gran­ted: till at length, in this wild Pil­grim­age, he must for­cibly seize for him­self an Activ­ity, though use­less, un­reas­on­able. Alas, his cup of bit­ter­ness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first “ruddy morn­ing” in the Hin­ter­sch­lag Gym­nas­ium, was at the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Tow­good-and-Blu­mine busi­ness, it runs over, and even hisses over in a de­luge of foam.

He him­self says once, with more justice than ori­gin­al­ity: “Man is, prop­erly speak­ing, based upon Hope, he has no other pos­ses­sion but Hope; this world of his is em­phat­ic­ally the Place of Hope.” What, then, was our Pro­fessor’s pos­ses­sion? We see him, for the present, quite shut out from Hope; look­ing not into the golden ori­ent, but vaguely all round into a dim cop­per firm­a­ment, preg­nant with earth­quake and tor­nado.

Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet dream of! For, as he wanders wear­i­somely through this world, he has now lost all tid­ings of an­other and higher. Full of re­li­gion, or at least of re­li­gi­os­ity, as our Friend has since ex­hib­ited him­self, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly ir­re­li­gious: “Doubt had darkened into Un­be­lief,” says he; “shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, star­less, Tartarean black.” To such read­ers as have re­flec­ted, what can be called re­flect­ing, on man’s life, and hap­pily dis­covered, in con­tra­dic­tion to much Profit-and-loss Philo­sophy, spec­u­lat­ive and prac­tical, that Soul is not syn­onym­ous with Stom­ach; who un­der­stand, there­fore, in our Friend’s words, “that, for man’s well-be­ing, Faith is prop­erly the one thing need­ful; how, with it, Mar­tyrs, oth­er­wise weak, can cheer­fully en­dure the shame and the cross; and without it, world­lings puke-up their sick ex­ist­ence, by sui­cide, in the midst of

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