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Till, wi' a rowstin' skelp,34 he's taen
An' shoo'd to bed-

The ither bairns a' fa' to play'n,
As gleg's a gled.35

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This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Thomas Carlyle

1795-1881

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES1

(From Sartor Resartus, 1831)

5

"Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there." Thou thyself, O cultivated reader,

1 2 Two small islands in the Hebrides.

1 The "Philosophy of Clothes," by which Carlyle meant the true significance of the relations in which outward, visible, and material things stand to the inner or underlying world of reality or spirit, is the theme of the book Sartor Resartus (the tailor patched or restored. Carlyle regarded the whole world of the senses-Nature, man's history, institutions, and customs-as the vesture, or clothes, of the spirit beneath. This philosophy he puts in the mouth of an imaginary German professor, Herr Teufelsdröckh, whose "Life and Opinions" are supposed to be set forth by his friend the editor, "a young and enthusiastic Englishman." Teufelsdröckh is described as professor of Allerlei Wissenschaft (all sorts of knowl edge) at Weissnichtwo (Don't know where), a name which is the equivalent of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. 2 Psalms, cxxxix. 9-10.

who too probably art no psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where at least Force is not? The drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but tomorrow thou findest it swept away; already on the wings of the North-wind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there is aught motionless; without Force, 10 properly Clothes, thought-woven or handand utterly dead?

seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable 5 as we think them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all Emblematic things are

"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: That little fire which glows star-like across the dark growing (nachtende)

woven: must not the Imagination weave Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and inspirations of our Reason, are, like Spirits, revealed, and first

often see, the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the outward eye?

moor, where the sooty smith bends over his 15 become all-powerful;-the rather if, as we anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithyfire was primarily kindled at the Sun; is fed 20 by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog-star; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and victories of Force brought 25 light-particle, down from Heaven? Thus is

about; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if thou will, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the bosom of the All; whose iron sacrifice,

"Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible Garment for that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a

he said also to be clothed with a Body.

"Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body of Thought. I said

whose iron smoke and influence, reach quite 30 that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment;

through the All; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force; nay, preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet from

and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or

the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's 35 no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or

Force, commanding, and one day to be allcommanding.

"Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto was ever

now solid-grown and colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language, then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues, and living

stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a 40 integuments. An unmetaphorical style you withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, 45 though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as win- 50 dows, through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself."

Again leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, what vacant, high-sailing airships are these, and whither will they sail with us?

“All visible things are emblems; what thou The Black Forest.

• In a manner intelligible to the uninitiated, the public.

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shall in vain seek for; is not your very Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (Putz-Mäntel), and tawdry woolen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,-and burn them."

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisDried up with heat, dry-as-dust.

ingly metaphorical? However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues:"Why multiply instances? It is written, the Heavens and the earth shall fade away like a Vesture: which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid

lection and adjustment, shall study to do

ours:

"Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," thus quietly begins the Professor; 5"far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Meanwhile the question of questions were: What specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle; whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and phial

off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of 10 of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle.

Clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in the Philosophy of Clothes."

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM

(From the same)

To my Horse again who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical 'Open sesame' every time I please to pay twopence, and open for him an 15 impassable Schlagbaum, or shut Turnpike?

"But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws of Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by this new question: What are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the rising 20 of one from the dead were no violation of these Laws, but a confirmation; were some far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force.

25

It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cobwebs," of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not: yet still did he courageously pierce through. 30 Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, worldembracing Phantasms, TIME and SPACE, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends 35 asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away; and now, to his rapid vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed.

2

"Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment: On what ground shall one, that can make Iron swim,5 come and declare that therefore he can teach Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept enough; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of meaning.

"But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be constant?" cries an illuminated class: 'Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules?' Probable enough, good friends: nay, I too must believe that the God, whom ancient, inspired men. assert to be 'without variableness or shadow 40 of turning,' does indeed never change; that Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be?

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Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism;1 this last leap, can we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be considered as beginning. "Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous "They stand written in our Works of Science, Section we, after long painful meditation, say you; in the accumulated records of man's have found not to be unintelligible; but on the 50 Experience?-Was Man with his Experience contrary to grow clear, nay radiant, and allilluminating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his part; as we, by judicious sePalm., cii. 26-27.

1 i. e. succeeds in passing beyond the world of appearance woven by the senses on the loom of "Time and Space," to the world of the Real, the Essential which transcends the visible and tangible.

The new birth, the regeneration.
Diogenes Teufelsdröckh.

present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged everything there? 55 Did the Maker take them into His counsel; that they read His ground-plan of the incomIn the tale of Ali Baba, in The Arabian Nights, Open Sesame, was the magic phrase by which the robbers' cavern was opened..

V. II Kings, vi. 6.

prehensible All; and can say, This stands marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, not in any wise! These scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we also are; have seen some handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore.

descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in 5 the true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science they strive bravely; and from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably

"Laplace's Book on the Stars," wherein he exhibits that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate 10 intertwisted hieroglyphic writing, pick out by

dexterous combination, some Letters in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than

and in a course, which, by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting, is to me as precious as to another. But is this what thou namest 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the World;' 15 some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or

this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen-thousand Suns' per minute, being left out, some paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been-looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal way-bill; 20 so that we can now prate of their Whereabout; their How, their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless Inane?

huge well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest dream.

"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth make dotards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the greatest of Weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the Spirits of the Universe; whereby indeed these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and workshops; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, for ever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our

"System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite 25 infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and all Experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries, and measured squaremiles. The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially 30 very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as known to us; but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycles revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native 35 to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and

Creek may have become familiar: but does the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all which the

we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort

so become Transcendental?

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that

condition of its little Creek is regulated, and 40 the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases

to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live: for man must work as well as wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond

may, from time to time, (unmiraculously
enough), be quite overset and reversed? Such
a minnow is man; his Creek this Planet Earth;
his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Mon-
soons and periodic Currents the mysterious 45 foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish

Course of Providence through Aeons of Aeons.
"We speak of the Volume of Nature: and
truly a Volume it is,-whose Author and
Writer is God. To read it! Dost thou, does
man, so much as well know the Alphabet 50
thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand

Laplace, a noted French astronomer (1749-1827), wrote Mécanique Celeste, and Exposition du Systeme du Monde, to which Carlyle refers in the next sentence.

7 Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), the discoverer of

nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, or twohundred or two-million times? There is no reason in Nature or in Art why I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to

the planet Saturn, erected a great telescope (completed 55 the Steam-engine; a power whereby cotton in 1789), by means of which he greatly extended our knowledge of the heavens and enlarged our conception of the vastness of the universe. Carlyle means, that in every minute of time, 15,000 stars rise and begin their westward course across the sky.

A cycle moving upon another cycle.

might be spun, and money and money's worth
realised.
"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere,
i. e. the common writing, legible to all.

torically present in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, 5 who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that late time!

"Or thinkest thou, it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only

wilt thou find the potency of Names; which indeed are but one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic 10 future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil10 less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every, the wisest 15 Soul, lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery 20 findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Earth-rind.

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as 25 spun and woven for us before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,-lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, 30 weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavour to strip them off; you can at best but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earthblinded summonest both Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of Tomorrow roll up; but Yesterday and Tomorrow both are. Pierce through the Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou

Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there: that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God; that with God as it is a universal HERE, so is it an everlasting NOW.

"And seest thou therein any glimpse of IMMORTALITY? O Heaven! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone,— but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are Here

"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when 35 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 for ever. This, should it

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 40 unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at

himself in the Wahngasse11 of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world we should have of it! Still stranger, should, on the opposite side of the

thy leisure; for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries: believe it thou must; understand it thou canst not.

"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time,

street, another Hatter establish himself; and, 45 wherein, once for all, we are sent into this

as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilat ing hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen;12 but chiefly of this latter. To clap on

Earth to live, should condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether fit, just and unavoidable. But that they should

your felt, and, simply by wishing that you 50 furthermore, usurp such sway over pure spirit

were Anywhere, straightway to be There! Next to clap on your other felt, and, simply by wishing that you were Anywhen, straightway to be Then! This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the 55 World, to its Fire-Consummation; here his

10 The devil was so real to Luther, that according to the story, he once threw his ink pot at him. 11"Illusion Street."

12 A small German coin.

ual 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?

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