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III. Matter in Sartor Resartus (1) Natural Theology and Matter
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 thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years.... It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. (SR 193-94)
In a representative chapter of Sartor Resartus, “Natural Supernaturalism,” the concept of natural theology, akin to Paley’s watch analogy, seems to loom. Between nature and the supernatural, there is neither conflict nor incongruity but congenial harmony and mutual relations. Under the temporal (“Thousands of Years”) and spatial (“Solar Systems”) structures, every being and object in the universe imply God’s wisdoms and words. Any observation of the visible nature, where God leaves his
“hieroglyphs,” leads towards the invisible God. The Book of Nature weighs as significantly as the Book of Scripture because both books are the media of man to God. Realizing the symbolic worth of the Book of Nature, wise prophets such as Teufelsdrockh and Carlyle feel joyous to read God’s words and wisdom hidden in
“the Volume of Nature,” that is, the “true Sacred-writing.” Namely, in the material form of the world, “the Volume of Nature,” the Carlylean prophets never nose out shadows to hide God’s light but feel enlightened by God’s physical evidence. Material nature coexists harmoniously with the spiritual supernatural in the eyes of the wise prophets. The spiritual does not supersede the material, and neither the supernatural exceeds the natural. Instead, nature is the key of man to God, and matter is the
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medium of mind to spirit.
Since the spiritual and the material interrelate with each other, as does the supernatural and the natural, “every star,” “every grass-blade” and “every Living soul” (SR 198) are the proofs of God’s existence. The Book of Nature corresponds to the Book of Scriptures for the young Carlyle: “Then sawest thou that this fair
Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God” (198). Similar to Paley who uses the watch analogy to explain the nature-God relation, Carlyle takes the natural world as God’s “celestial hieroglyphs” to imply God’s profound wisdom hid in nature. In this regard, apart from reading the Bible, reading nature can also help to grasp God’s light and virtue, according to Carlyle’s
“hieroglyph” analogy. Matter in the physical world in Carlyle’s “natural supernatural”
theory, like that in Paley’s and Paine’s natural philosophies, shows the sagacity of God in the spiritual and the supernatural.
In the Carlylean cosmos, there are two layers of the universe. One is the visible and material world, i.e. nature, where living beings and inanimate objects dwell in.
More correctly, the concept of nature here, different from the wild nature of bushes and animals, is the nature of every behavior, construction, and institution of all beings and objects. This nature thus includes the social lives of human beings because all that can be perceived by the “body’s eye” (SR 199) belong to the category of nature.
Nature in the Carlylean cosmos contains matter of both the organic and the mechanic, of both beings and objects. The other layer of the Calylean universe is the invisible and spiritual world, i.e. God’s supernatural world, which contains everything about the spirit, soul, virtue, and morals. Things cannot be perceived by the “body’s eye”
belong to the category of the supernatural.
Based on the natural-theological concept between the Carlylean nature and supernatural, visible and invisible, there is never hostility or incompatibility, but
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mutually productive interrelations. The invisible and supernatural God presents His wisdom in material nature, and man’s reading of the visible and material nature can help apprehend the truth of the invisible God. Teufelsdrockh’s “properly the higher and new Philosophy of Clothes” (38) suggests this natural-theological theme because of the link between “clothes” with “philosophy” hints at the intimate combination of the physical with the metaphysical. Clothes are of philosophy, and God’s vesture, namely, nature, contains God’s soul, the supernatural.
Because God’s clothes, nature, are of connotative significances within, matter weighs heavily in the Carlylean natural supernaturalism. Matter is the “Symbol” (SR 163) of God. Too ungraspable and too unrealizable, the mysterious God needs to cast His wisdom, morality, and principles into physical substances, from which man can discover God’s token. Nature, or matter, hence does not mean pettiness, humbleness, or worthlessness, but the vesture of God, functioning as the vehicle for man to reach God. With the symbolic vestures, man is able to “see” God and to comprehend His lessons, because “the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there” (165). The infinite merges with the finite, and the invisible hides in the visible. The material vesture of God exhibited in nature, hence, becomes so indispensable because every matter is “the visible embodiment of a Thought,” to “[bear] visible record of invisible things…in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real” (165-66). In other words, the visible and material universe
“is but one vast Symbol of God” and “what man himself is but a Symbol of God” as well (165). Physical matter, in the Carlylean cosmos, weighs importantly to signify God and to make concrete the invisible.
Worrying that his readers may be misguided by the subjects of transcendentalism and supernaturalism to scorn and overlook the significances of the visible and the material, Carlyle advocates, from Teufelsdrockh’s voice, the value of matter in the
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physical world in the “Adamitism” of Book First. In this chapter, Teufelsdrockh declares that he is neither an “Adamite” (SR 44) nor given to “Sansculottism” (48).
For the radical Adamites, the possibility to return to Adam’s innocent age means to pass through the ceremony of taking off all the material forms of the clothes. Doffing matter, symbolically, indicates taking off secular burdens and transcending the mundane world simultaneously. With this nostalgic gesture, the Adamites expect to recall the truth and virtue in the remote ancient times. Like Adamites, Teufelsdrockh realizes that the soul is concealed in matter. However, by contrast, he does not agree that the gesture of disposing of all the material symbols can summon up past virtues.
Teufelsdrockh, in fact, is positive toward the function of the clothes in the secular world. Clothes are signs to stabilize and to maintain social orders.
Conservative in the concept of social structure, Teufelsdrockh believes that social orders are the precious fruits of historical evolution and are always promoting the improvement of human culture and society. Therefore, order cannot be destroyed simply in the name of Adamite nostalgia, which may probably lead backward to barbarism. Denying the gesture of taking off all the clothes as the only means to recall past values, Teufelsdrockh argues that the active abandonment of matter in fact cannot bring back heavenly innocence and spiritual freedom. To the contrary, instead of discarding the established order, man should revive his inherent capacity of “the mystic faculty” (SR 196) that can pierce the material form of the clothes, open the inner eye, and reveal the invisible spirit already hidden inside. In other words, different from his contemporary “Sansculottist” who demand a social revolution, Teufelsdrockh advocates an inward revolution. To witness the bloody French Revolution, Carlyle does not consent to the radical manner to destroy the present system to gain equality. Compared with destruction, Carlyle prefers to reform inwardly from the heart by awakening man’s intuition than to tear off the symbolic
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clothes and to demolish the already-existing order outwardly.
The visible matter never spoils Teufelsdrockh’s plan of spiritual reform but backs man’s improvements in varied aspects and achieves man’s superiority among all beings. Matter is man’s tool to alter life, and “Clothes are but one example” (SR 31) among all of the man-created tools. Moreover, man’s body is a form of the material tool to carry spirit, too: “without Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, soul’s seat, and true pineal gland of the Body Social” (48). Matter for spirit or body for soul is not an obstacle but a carrier. The human body carries the soul and matter sustains the social. As clothes are the matter to bracket spirit, so are bodies the “PURSE[s]”
(48) to contain soul. Furthermore, to avoid the reader misconceiving matter as litter, Teufelsdrockh argues that man’s gift to use matter can promote man aloft over his physical limits:
Weak in himself, and of small stature, he [man] stands on a basis…insecurely enough.... Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are in his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools;
without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all. (30 italics mine)
“Man is a tool-using Animal” (30), the most influential and powerful animal among all beings. Man’s ability to manipulate tools helps him to create all kinds of
possibilities and conquer all difficulties. With tools, hence, “progress he has made”
(31). Matter—such as “the first wooden Dibble …those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons” (31)—are signs of man’s intellect and progress, and
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then, should not be abandoned.
Clothes, one of the widespread man-created tools, function technically and socially. On one hand, clothes are “for defence” (43). In clothes, man is “as in a warm movable House …wherein that strange THEE of thine sat sung, defying all variations of Climate” (43). On the other, “Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us” (30). The concept of class distinction in Carlyle’s philosophy stands not for opposition like that in French Revolution or Marxism, but represents order, regularity, and “individuality.” Clothes are symbols of social position to signify each person’s responsibility in a cooperative society. Social order distinguishes duties and creates stability; hence, Teufelsdrockh exclaims:
“Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth”
(45).
(2) Matter and Spirit, Nature and the Supernatural, as well as Visible and the Invisible
The most obvious example to depict Carlyle’s positive attitude towards the concept of tool—matter—appears, surprisingly, in the “Center of Indifference” of Part II, that is, in the turning point of Sartor Resartus. While wandering “in the solitude of the North Cape” (SR 135), Teufelsdrockh confronts “a man, or monster… [who is]
shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear” (136). At this critical moment, this monstrous and barbarous stranger,
counting doubtless on his superior statue, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it with murder, continues to advance; ever assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What
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argument will avail? On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham
Horse-pistol, and say, “Be so obliging as retire, Friend… and with promptitude!”
this logic even the Hyperborean understands; fast enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and expect for suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not return. (136 italics mine)
Right at the moment being face to face with the “thick Hyperborean,” any sweet or threatening reasoning takes no effect. Only by “deftly” taking out the
“sufficient…pistol” from his “interior reservoirs” does Teufelsdrockh save himself from the peril of nature—the Hyperborean Bear as well as the deep Sea.
His successful escape from the danger of nature, Teufelsdrockh explains, should be attributed to his deft use of a tool—the pistol. “Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall” (SR 136). With the help of the matter, pistol, Teufelsdrockh overcomes his physical weakness, symbolically taller than the Hyperborean Bear. Teufelsdrockh hence concludes that, “savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all” (136). This deduction expresses two significances of Teufelsdrockh’s Clothes Philosophy. First, as discussed earlier, Teufelsdrockh claims that he is by no means an Adamite who advocates the return to the age of the fig leaf, as emblemized by the Hyperborean Bear image. Though as huge as a bear, without any tools, the Hyperborean’s bully merely gives himself airs. The most threatening weapon, for Teufelsdrockh, lies not in the superficial figure, but dwells inside the
“interior reservoir.” Man’s dexterous use of tools helps him leave Adamite nudity, barbarous ignorance, and dull irrationality. To hand the pistol rationally, men are of more power to conquer exterior difficulties and to rescue his life. The Hyperborean
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metaphor hence implies Teufelsdrockh’s doubt of the return to the Adamite society, which in fact not necessarily enhances man’s spiritual improvement but probably causes man’s socio-cultural recession.
Secondly, and more importantly, Teufelsdrockh’s ingenious combination of the pistol with the “interior reservoir” successfully insinuates his theme of spiritual progress founded on the deft use of a material tool. The pistol is more than a simple material tool; its location, the “interior reservoir” suggests its spiritual significance.
Teufelsdrockh’s pistol from the interior reservoir is so powerful to intimidate the Hyperborean Bear because his pistol contains inner powers. The material pistol is of enclosed spiritual forces, and this spirit appears to be visible as long as its power is displayed in the material form of the pistol. The matter is of a soul within, and the soul manifests through the appearance of matter.
The inner power wrapped in the material pistol implies Teufelsdrockh’s attitude toward using the tool-using principle. Instead of manipulating tools arbitrarily, technically, and intentionally, one should use the tool—matter—piously, spiritually, and morally. To ally the pistol with the inner reservoir, Teufelsdrockh justifies “the cunningest mechanism” (SR 137) with the “inner” image. The matter can be spiritual as long as the manipulator uses it with a spiritual and moral aim. In other words, matter is by no means guilty; it is problematic only when the user neglects the
“interior reservoir.” Without a soul within, any man-created matter can produce negative consequences, but with noble spirit, matter may bring out positive meanings.
In Teufelsdrockh’s term, “inventive Spiritualism is all.” The “inventive Spiritualism”
implies Teufelsdrockh’s main thesis of his Clothes Philosophy—any manipulation of man-made matter should depend on transcendental spiritualism. Man-created matter, like God’s Creation of the physical universe, should rely on the use of the spirit.
Between spirit and matter, there are therefore mutually productive interrelations: the
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spirit supports matter and the matter demonstrates the spirit. This argument echoes Paley’s “watch analogy,” aesthetically delineating the productive relationship between matter and spirit in the scheme of natural philosophy.
In Sartor, another vital aesthetic metaphor that implies the harmony of matter and spirit, nature and the supernatural, as well as the visible and the invisible appears in Chapter One and Two, “Genesis” and “Idyllic” of Book Second. A
semi-autobiography of Carlyle, Book Second records the growth of Teufelsdrockh from infancy to youth, from childhood innocence, adolescent agonies, to his young spiritual loss caused by unsuccessful job-hunting and romance. Finally, spiritually wandering through the inner hell of “The Everlasting No,” Teufelsdrockh overcomes his mind’s devil in “The Center of Indifference.” Suddenly to have an epiphany in
“The Everlasting Yea,” he transcends the inner darkness to come across God’s light and to gain a spiritual rebirth.
Entitled “Genesis” and “Idyllic,” the two chapters are emblems of
Teufelsdrockh’s happy boyhood in “Celestial Nepenthe” (SR 68) where he feels no sorrow, no pain, no worry, no pressure, but harmony. To organize Teufelsdrockh’s disorderly material, the English Editor discovers that all of the materials concerning this Eden-like period are enveloped in a bag with a tag, “the Libra Bag” (SR 61).
Libra, a symbol of harmony, to note the beginning of a prophet’s birth, parallels
“Genesis” in the Bible that records the beginning of the universe. Symbolically, the Libra metaphor signifies Carlyle’s cosmic view of the beginning of the universe, that is, to begin with harmonies between spirit and matter, man and God, nature and the supernatural.
The harmony between nature and the supernatural is apparent in Carlyle’s
“Genesis,” which details Teufelsdrockh’s mysterious birth. By no means an ordinary person born from mortal parents, Teufelsdrockh was brought by “a Stranger” (SR 62)
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to a childless couple. The baptized “red-coloured Infant” in a “green-silk Basket”
appeared to be “an invaluable Loan” (63) to fulfill the expectant parents. Similar to the miracle of the Virgin Mary’s birth, the childless parents mysteriously had a baby, whose real father was God. Teufelsdrockh’s “true Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily eye [he] shalt never behold, but only with the spiritual” (65).
This statement on one hand informs the origin of the prophet and on the other hints his mundane duties to propagate the way of man to God by “the mind’s eye” (199).
Even if born from God the Father, in fact, Teufelsdrockh is nurtured by the Mother Earth. “Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that visitest the poor man’s jut with auroral radiance; and for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein [Teufelsdrockh] waxes, and slumbers,
danced-round…by sweetest Dreams!” (SR 68) The symbolic mother of Teufelsdrockh, then, is the physical nature that gives warm embraces and enriches the youth’s soul.
The young Teufelsdrockh’s early happiness hence derives from not merely the inherent innocence descending from God the Father but also the material plentitude nursed by the Mother Earth. In other words, right at the beginning of the universe, there is libration between heaven and earth, Father and Mother, Soul and Body, as well as Nature and the Supernatural. The “Genesis” of Sartor therefore represents a realistic picture of Paley’s natural theology in portraying the integration of celestial spirit and terrestrial nature. Heaven and Earth, both cradling life, collaborate to “breed a fresh Soul” and to [breed] a fresh (celestial) Egg” (66). The “fresh Soul” has settled in the physical “Egg,” the heavenly spirit is wrapped up in hospitable nature, and supernatural vigor dwells in the corporal body. In Teufelsdrockh’s “Libra” bag hides the secrets of the beginning of universe and life: the mutually productive collaboration of heaven and earth, Mother and Father, body and soul, matter and spirit, as well as
The young Teufelsdrockh’s early happiness hence derives from not merely the inherent innocence descending from God the Father but also the material plentitude nursed by the Mother Earth. In other words, right at the beginning of the universe, there is libration between heaven and earth, Father and Mother, Soul and Body, as well as Nature and the Supernatural. The “Genesis” of Sartor therefore represents a realistic picture of Paley’s natural theology in portraying the integration of celestial spirit and terrestrial nature. Heaven and Earth, both cradling life, collaborate to “breed a fresh Soul” and to [breed] a fresh (celestial) Egg” (66). The “fresh Soul” has settled in the physical “Egg,” the heavenly spirit is wrapped up in hospitable nature, and supernatural vigor dwells in the corporal body. In Teufelsdrockh’s “Libra” bag hides the secrets of the beginning of universe and life: the mutually productive collaboration of heaven and earth, Mother and Father, body and soul, matter and spirit, as well as