9 Adamitism 43
10 Pure Reason 47
11 Prospective 52
BOOK II
1 Genesis 61
2 Idyllic 68
3 Pedagogy 76
4 Getting under Way 90
5 Romance 101
6 Sorrows of Teufelsdröckh 112
7 The Everlasting No 121
8 Centre of Indifference 128
9 The Everlasting Yea 138
10 Pause 149
BOOK III
1 Incident in Modern History 156
2 Church-Clothes 161
3 Symbols 163
4 Helotage 170
5 The Phœnix 174
6 Old Clothes 179
7 Organic Filaments 183
8 Natural Supernaturalism 191
9 Circumspective 201
10 The Dandiacal Body 204
11 Tailors 216
12 Farewell 219
Appendix—Testimonies of Authors 225
Summary 231
ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY
LECTURE I
The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology 239
LECTURE II
The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam 277
LECTURE III
The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakspeare 311
LECTURE IV
The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism 346
LECTURE V
The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns 383
LECTURE VI
The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism 422
Index 469
SARTOR RESARTUS
BOOK FIRST
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY
Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five-thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated—it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the subject of Clothes.
Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough: what with the labours of our Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom the question, How the apples were got in, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? Man’s whole life and environment have been laid open and elucidated; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards: every cellular, vascular, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichâts.
How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science—the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which Man’s Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some straggling, broken-winged thinker has cast an owl’s-glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.
But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, there should be one country where abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his Höret ihr Herren und lasset’s Euch sagen; in other words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, what o’clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans