國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
by German idealists while Mill by French Positivists; Carlyle is religious as well as spiritual while Mill scientific as well as materialistic. Within the two streams of thoughts, suggested by the metaphor of “Heaven and Hell,” dwells bare interrelation but an unbridgeable gulf. Metaphorically, then, Neff asserts an ever confronting force of science in contrast to religion, matter to spirit, as well as a scientist to a religious philosopher. This assumption obviously takes for granted the binaries of
science/religion, matter/spirit, and scientist/philosopher in Carlyle’s age.
Though first printed in 1926, Neff’s Carlyle and Mill was still influential in the mid-twentieth century and had its reprints in 1952, 1964, and 1974. The success of the Neffian study indicated that the assumptions of the breaks between science-religion, matter-spirit, and scientists-philosophers in the early nineteenth century were
undoubtedly realities and generally agreed among scholars. In the twentieth-century researches, Carlyle unquestionably stood for the “philosopher” of “religion” and
“spirit”—the keywords that could be synthesized by the term, transcendentalism—in contrast with the “scientist” of “science” and “matter.”
III. Carlyle in M.A. Abrams’s Natural Supernaturalism
Not merely belonging to the camp of religion in Neffian dualism, Carlyle also represents an artist to inherit the theological tradition of Christianity in M.A.
Abrams’s Natural Supernaturalism (1971). By applying Carlyle’s term in Sartor Resartus, Abrams titles his remarkable study on Romanticism as Natural
Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. With Carlyle’s paradoxical phrase, Abrams analyzes the common significance among Romantic poets and philosophers in both England and Germany. “Natural Supernaturalism”
henceforth signifies a specific terminology to demonstrate the Romantic spirit—“to naturalize the supernatural and to humanize the divine” (68)—and to link the
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
revolutionary spirit of Romanticism with the Christian tradition in literature.
To categorize Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus in the trend of Romanticism, Abrams supposes that Carlyle’s protagonist, as other Romanticists do, undergoes a similar
“self-formative educational journey” (Abrams 309). Like the Romantic poets,
Teufelsdrockh wanders in the wild nature, “the solitude of the North Cape” (SR 135), to seek spiritual healings. Troubled by the spiritual crisis in a sense of insecurity between the outward chaos and the inner desire, the Romantic pilgrim journeys to quest possible reconciliations between the exterior disorder and interior harmony. In such interpretation, Teufelsdrockh’s biography culminates at the moment of “The Everlasting Yea,” in which, religiously, he perceives an ultimate omnipotent power that governs the order and harmony of the entire universe.
Purposefully, Abrams aims to apply Carlyle’s “natural supernaturalism” to interpreting Romantic poets’ secularized theology—Romantics unconsciously inherit the theological tradition of Christianity and transfer the religious concepts, images, and patterns to the secularized form in nature. Interpreted in this way, Carlyle’s “The Everlasting Yea” is conceived as “a secularized form of devotional experience”
(Abrams 65). To align religion with Romanticism, Abrams is contributive to revealing the “assimilation of Biblical and theological elements to secular or pagan frames of reference” (66) in Romantic poets. He argues that though considered hostile to Christian religion, the Romanticists could never escape the “religious formulas” that had been “woven into the fabric of our language” (66). In his analysis, “natural supernaturalism” hence represents a cardinal term to manifest the unbreakable Christian tie woven in the works of Romanticists as well as of Carlyle.
IV. Some Inquiries about the Studies of Carlyle and Sartor Resartus Due to the science-religion conflict assumption (in Neff’s study for instance) as
‧
well as the unbreakable Christian tie woven in Carlyle’s work (such as in Abrams’), the twentieth-century studies about Sartor Resartus usually explicitly or implicitly related the issue of transcendentalism to the work’s unbreakable bond to Christianity.3 Due to the work’s umbilical cord linking religion and religion’s hostile relation to science, the famous “Torch of Science” (SR 1) in the opening of Sartor thence turned to be a target of Carlyle’s criticism. For instance, the “‘Torch of Science’ expels Mystery and reduces Creation to a material process,” comments Tess Cosslett in The
‘Scientific Movement’ and Victorian Literature (1982: 1). In her analysis, Cosslett assumes that “science” is synonymous with rationalism and materialism. The mechanistic powers of reason and matter efface the intrinsic force originating from intuition and soul. The “Torch of Science” hence murders the Mystery of the Creation Myth in Christianity. Tantamount to a religious declaration, Sartor Resartus in
Cosslett’s analysis therefore aims to go for science, reason, matter, and mechanism.
Instead of an exception, Cosslett’s assumption was generally the agreement hinted or declared in the twentieth-century studies—Carlyle the transcendental philosopher should be of a Christian origin, devoting himself to criticizing science, matter, as well as the scientist.
However, as investigated by Lucas and Livingstone, if in reality there was neither apparent break nor vehement hostility but merely a fabrication of conflicts
3 The issues of transcendentalism or religion can be discovered in the studies as follows:
“Transcendence through Incongruity: the Background of Humor in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus.” (Abigail Burnham Bloom. The Victorian Comic Spirit: New Perspectives. Ed. Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor.
Aldershot, England: Ashgate: 2000. PP153-72.) Bloom’s article is about Carlyle’s usage of irony to reveal his idea of transcendentalism. “Coleridge in Sartor Resartus.” (James Treadwell. Wordsworth Circle. 1998 Winter; 29(1): 68-71). This essay is about Carlyle’s transcendentalism in relation to Coleridge’s Romantic thought. “Sartor Resartus: A Philosophy of a Mystic.” (Yukihito Hijiya. The Carlyle Society Papers-Session 1991-92. Edinburgh: Carlyle Soc..; 1992. PP41-50). Hijiya’s article is on Carlyle’s Romantic spirit, about the pilgrim’s self consciousness and inner life. “‘Shadow-Hunting’:
Romantic Irony, Sartor Resartus, and Romanticism.” (Janice L. Haney. Studies in Romanticism. 1978;
17:307-33). “Adam-Kadmon, Nifl, Muspel, and the Biblical Symbolism of Sartor Resartus. (Joseph Sigman. ELH 1974Summer; 41 (2): 233-56). “The Pattern of Conversion in Sartor Resartus.” (Walter L. Reed. ELH1971 Sept; 38(3): 411-31.) And “Sartor Resartus and the Problem of Carlyle’s
‘Conversion.’” (Carlisle Moore. PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 1955 Sept; 70(4): 662-81.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
between science and religion in the early nineteenth century, did Carlyle assuredly intend to design a story that simply targets science? If Carlyle indeed aimed to criticize science per se, why did he state definitely that he could not find any solution in either English or French philosophies but have to turn to the “scientific
watch-tower” (SR 2) of the German to look for the key to straighten out his
contemporary spiritual crisis? Or, if Carlyle indeed deemed that the modern science in his age was guilty of spoiling his contemporaries’ spiritual progress, why did he declare his belief of an integration of man and nature as well as being and nothingness by stating, “This [the integration] is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact” (199)?
Furthermore, if science was unquestionably in opposition to spirit and religion during his age, entirely synonymous to mechanism and materialism, why did Carlyle praise Teufelsdrockh’s philosophy in one of the concluding chapters of Sartor with the phrase, “this [Science of Clothes] is a high one, and may with infinitely deeper study of thy part yield richer fruit” (203).
According to the evident passages found in Carlyle’s own work, I opine that what Carlyle intended to criticize should not be the “Torch of Science” itself.
Provided that Carlyle took his philosophy of clothes as a “science” and considered the philosophy to integrate the microcosm with macrocosm as a “scientific fact,” the conception of “science” in Sartor should stand for a more positive and prominent meaning. The tendencies to take the “Torch of Science” as a negative term and as Carlyle’s object of ridicule might probably be correspondent to the twentieth-century assumption of the science-religion struggle in the past centuries. The binary
opposition of science and religion thus severed Carlyle the Christian philosopher from the “Torch of Science,” simultaneously tagging religion with spirit and science with matter. The past analogy of religion with spirit and science with matter, gradually, caused the word “science” in Sartor an ambiguous term and made the reading of
‧
Sartor a torturous journey. The warfare assumption in fact hardly helped understand the difficult work but incidentally created more obstacles to entangle the reader in the whirlpool of Carlyle’s thoughts.
Therefore, what if there was not warfare relation between science and religion, matter and spirit, as well as scientists and philosophers/religionists during Carlyle’s early age? What if in reality Carlyle did not directly aim at attacking “science” in Sartor but others? And what if during Carlyle’s age there was positive correspondence than hostile belligerence between science and religion? To get rid of the haunting assumption of the warfare theory, I then intend to examine Carlyle’s Sartor from a more positive viewpoint to treat the science-religion interrelation. With this new aspect, the Neffian binaries represented by Carlyle and Mill supposedly may be shattered, and Carlyle’s imagination of an “Amalgamation” of “Heaven and Hell”
may turn to be possible.
During the late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, doubting the conflict thesis, some scholars have started to reexamine the warfare assumption and expanded new discourses concerning the science and religion interrelationships.4 Recent significant publications about interactions between science and religion include: “Dispelling Some Myths about the Split between Theology and Science in the Nineteenth Century” (1996) by Claude Welch, Victorian Science in Context (1997)
4 Nowadays, there are many academic institutes working on the subject of “science and religion interrelation.” For instance, Metanexus Institute in the United States is a global institute assembling scholars from departments of theology, history and philosophy of science, medical ethics, chemistry, and so on to deal with the subject of science-religion relationship. The website is
http://www.metanexus.net/. In Cambridge University in England as well, there is The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion ( http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/ ). Other scholarly searches for the issue of “Science and Religion” can be found on the following websites: “Counterbalance: Science and Religion Project” (http://www.counterbalance.org/), “The Center for Theology and Science”
(http://www.ctns.org/), “Science and Religion: Scholarly Organization and Resources”
(http://www.religiousworlds.com/science.html), “Integral Science Organization: Individuals and their Works Relating to Integral Science” (http://www.integralscience.org/), “Science and Religion Forum:
Seeking both Intelligibility and Meaning” (http://www.srforum.org/), “Institute of Religion, Science, and Social Studies” (http://www.religion.sdu.edu.cn/), “Global Perspectives: on Science and Spirituality” (http://www.uip.edu/gpss_major/), and “The Boston Theological Institute: Science and Religion” (http://www.bostontheological.org/programs/science_and_religion.htm).
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
edited by Bernard Lightman, Science and Theology (1998) by John Polkinghorne, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) by E. O. Wilson, both The Foundations of Dialogue between Science and Religion (1998) and Science and Religion: An Introduction (1999) by Alister McGrath, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999) by Stephen Jay Gould, Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction (2002) edited by Gary Ferngren, Science and Religion 1450-1900: From Copernicus to Darwin (2004) by Richard G. Olson, etc.
Generally, among these studies, there are general similarities. Firstly, they expect to discover new discourses within the supposed unbridgeable gulf between science and religion. Rather than oversimplifying the science-religion relation as severe hostility as the previous studies have done, the new studies intend to disclose possibilities and complexities between the two disciplines. Secondly, the new science-religion scholars unanimously believe that before the end of the nineteenth century, science and religion shared a mutual relation, supporting and corresponding to each other. In other words, between the two disciplines, there were harmony and interaction rather than malice and belligerence. Thirdly, these studies all agree that, instead of a reality, the conflict theory is more of a socially constructed discourse during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. About a hundred years, the misconception of science-religion struggles has occupied our conception of the science-religion relation and misled our understanding of the past history. The new studies hence propose to expel the myth of the conflict assumption for the purpose of collapsing the disciplinary boundaries, looking for mutual interrelations among different fields of studies, and reexamining the past studies misled by the warfare thesis.
In this dissertation, the new study about the mutual interrelation between science and religion thus will be introduced to reexamine “the Torch of Science” in Carlyle’s
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Sartor. Rather than getting bogged into the conflict discourse and simply criticizing science and matter based on the Neffian binary opposition, this study will have Sartor been analyzed by demolishing the borderlines between science/religion, matter/spirit, and scientist/philosopher in order to represent more faithfully Carlyle’s concepts of
“science,” “matter,” and “scientist.” I will argue that, more than criticizing science, matter, and the man of science, Carlyle in truth perceives and foresees the danger of the possible breaks of the harmonious relations between science/religion, matter/spirit, and the literary man/the scientific man. By fabricating a Clothes Philosophy, in a ridicule tone, he then proposes to remind his contemporaries of the intrusion of materialism, mechanism, and utilitarianism that will bring about gaps and ruptures to break the integrated unity into two poles. Carlyle never aims at strengthening the break between science and religion or matter and spirit. Instead, anticipating and worrying the probable breaks of science from religion, matter from spirit, and the man of science from that of classics/religion, Carlyle in fact, on one hand, purports to criticize the utilitarian use of science as well as the materialization of religion among his contemporaries and, on the other, prospects to inform his readers of the true meanings, values, and uses of “science” and “religion.”
There will be four chapters in this dissertation. The first chapter includes a literature review and an introduction of theoretical bases. From the review, this study will reveal the problems of the past analyses in reference to Carlyle and Sartor, that is, the beliefs in the sage theory and in the unity myth. From the theoretical discourses of Roland Barthes and Michael Foucault, the myth of Carlyle as a transcendentalist sage will be questioned and Sartor as an aesthetic unity to center the themes of spirit and religion will be dispelled. Freed from the sage and unity myths, both Carlyle and Sartor then will become texts and discursive sites to transmit the confrontations, transitions, as well as vicissitudes of diverse thoughts.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The second chapter will aim at justifying Carlyle’s “Torch of Science” and revealing the “Torch’s” religious significances. Via the reexamination of the new studies to assert the mutually productive relation between science and religion in the nineteenth-century England, the main target that Carlyle intends to criticize in Sartor will appear: it is not the “Torch of Science” per se but its status quo. In other words, instead of intrinsically problematic, science is criticized by Carlyle because his contemporaries use science improperly with their intentions dominated by utilitarianism and mechanism. For Carlyle, the “Torch of Science” is of religious powers. Rather than destroying religious faith, the Torch of Science” serves as a sacred vehicle to explore not only the exterior/material world but also the
interior/spiritual universe. Accordingly, Carlyle never intends to avoid and criticize the “Torch;” instead, he encourages the proper use of science and even takes the
“Torch” as a potent vehicle to restore and reform the spiritual world.
In the third chapter, the inseparable interrelation between spirit and matter as well as the indivisible mutuality between the visible and the invisible in Sartor will be explored. To analyze from the concept of natural theology that was once popular during Carlyle’s early age, I will argue that Carlyle deems the spiritual and the material as the two sides of a unity—“a whole,” or God—that always correspond to and support each other. Through his theory of “natural supernaturalism,” Carlyle thus proclaims his faith in a mutually productive relation between the matter in the
physical world and the spirit in the metaphorical world. Instead of a break between matter and spirit, from the matter in “nature” and the spirit in the “supernatural”
Carlyle perceives the philosophy of a “whole.” Matter should not be jettisoned; yet, the seer has to open his inner eye to penetrate the true philosophy clothed in matter.
Since matter is significant to be the “purse” to cloak the spirit, Carlyle never advises to take off the Clothes or to break off from matter; rather, he instructs his reader to
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
open the inner eye and to be wise for seeing into the truth of the “whole.”
In the fourth chapter, I intend to examine Teufelsdrockh the protagonist in relation to “science” by references of Carlyle’s personal experiences, “science” as a vocation in the 1820s and 1830s, and the philosophy of science and the scientist advocated by William Whewell (1794-1866). As long as Carlyle opens Sartor with the “Torch of Science,” the protagonist named Teufelsdrockh supposedly represents the holder of the Torch to propagate Science. If Teufelsdrockh is highly related to science, then, who is he? More than a literary man or a philosopher, Teufelsdrockh should be a proto-scientist, an ideal scientist to be moral, spiritual, religious, and philosophic simultaneously. As the mutual relation between science and religion, the relation between the literary/religious man and the scientific man is harmonious and correspondent as well. For the ideal man of science, the purpose of the scientific study, hence, is not for utilitarian application but religious exploration and spiritual
improvement. In such circumstances, as a religious scientist, Teufelsdrockh reveals that, on one hand, science is moral and religious during Carlyle’s early age, and on the other, a scientist’s task is to discover the principle of God’s law in nature and to practice His love and wisdom hinted in the principles.
In Coda, there will be concluding remarks about struggles and negotiations of the thoughts in “Carlyle” and “Sartor.” First, not simply a Victorian sage to seek religious solace and spiritual progress by creating Teufelsdrockh, “Carlyle” as a proper name indicates the confrontations, conflicts, and compromises of the ideas of
science/religion, spirit/matter, as well as the literary/religious man/the scientific man in the 1820s and 1830s. Secondly, more than an aesthetic unity to illuminate
transcendentalism, Sartor as a discursive museum exhibits the quarrels and alterations of the conflicting ideas in reference to science/religion and matter/spirit. As indicated by G. B. Tennyson that “Carlyle’s scientific inclinations have never been very
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
thoroughly explored” (21 note), hopefully, this study will provide new insights into
“Carlyle’s scientific inclinations” and new thoughts on science and religion around 1820s and 1830s in England through the perspective on the nineteenth-century science-relation relations.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Chapter One
Carlyle, a Victorian Sage?
In English departments in particular…it has been unthinkable entirely to ignore the prose writings of figures such as Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, and company. But at the same time, it has been hard to know quite what to do with them. (Collini 14)
[It is] language which speaks, not the author. (Barthes 168)
[A] text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody,
contestation. (Barthes 171)
I. Introduction
Walter Whitman highly praised Thomas Carlyle as “a representative author, a literary figure” (par. 2) of the nineteenth century in an elegiac prose. For Whitman, it was not merely Carlyle’s “literary merit” but his “touch of the old Hebraic anger and prophecy” (par. 5) that made him a great poet of his age. Whitman then added further
Walter Whitman highly praised Thomas Carlyle as “a representative author, a literary figure” (par. 2) of the nineteenth century in an elegiac prose. For Whitman, it was not merely Carlyle’s “literary merit” but his “touch of the old Hebraic anger and prophecy” (par. 5) that made him a great poet of his age. Whitman then added further