Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History | Page 4

brings, fidelity to
the right as we know it. Such, in broad statement, is the substance of
Carlyle's religious convictions and moral teaching. Like Kant he takes
his stand on the principles of ethical idealism. God is to be sought, not
through speculation, or syllogism, or the learning of the schools, but
through the moral nature. It is the soul in action that alone finds God.
And the finding of God means, not happiness as the world conceives it,
but blessedness, or the inward peace which passes understanding.
The connection between the transfigured autobiography which serves
to introduce the directly didactic element of the book and that element
itself, will now be clear. Stripped of its whimsicalities of phraseology
and its humorous extravagances, Carlyle's philosophy stands revealed
as essentially idealistic in character. Spirit is the only reality. Visible
things are but the manifestations, emblems, or clothings of spirit. The
material universe itself is only the vesture or symbol of God; man is a
spirit, though he wears the wrappings of the flesh; and in everything
that man creates for himself he merely attempts to give body or
expression to thought. The science of Carlyle's time was busy
proclaiming that, since the universe is governed by natural laws,
miracles are impossible and the supernatural is a myth. Carlyle replies
that the natural laws are themselves only the manifestation of Spiritual
Force, and that thus miracle is everywhere and all nature supernatural.
We, who are the creatures of time and space, can indeed apprehend the
Absolute only when He weaves about Him the visible garments of time

and space. Thus God reveals Himself to sense through symbols. But it
is as we regard these symbols in one or other of two possible ways that
we class ourselves with the foolish man or with the wise. The foolish
man sees only the symbol, thinks it exists for itself, takes it for the
ultimate fact, and therefore rests in it. The wise man sees the symbol,
knows that it is only a symbol, and penetrates into it for the ultimate
fact or spiritual reality which it symbolises.
Remote as such a doctrine may at first sight seem to be from the
questions with which men are commonly concerned, it has none the
less many important practical bearings. Since "all Forms whereby Spirit
manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination, are
Clothes," civilisation and everything belonging to it--our languages,
literatures and arts, our governments, social machinery and institutions,
our philosophies, creeds and rituals--are but so many vestments woven
for itself by the shaping spirit of man. Indispensable these vestments
are; for without them society would collapse in anarchy, and humanity
sink to the level of the brute. Yet here again we must emphasise the
difference, already noted, between the foolish man and the wise. The
foolish man once more assumes that the vestments exist for themselves,
as ultimate facts, and that they have a value of their own. He, therefore,
confuses the life with its clothing; is even willing to sacrifice the life
for the sake of the clothing. The wise man, while he, too, recognises the
necessity of the vestments, and indeed insists upon it, knows that they
have no independent importance, that they derive all their potency and
value from the inner reality which they were fashioned to represent and
embody, but which they often misrepresent and obscure. He therefore
never confuses the life with the clothing, and well understands how
often the clothing has to be sacrificed for the sake of the life. Thus,
while the utility of clothes has to be recognised to the full, it is still of
the essence of wisdom to press hard upon the vital distinction between
the outer wrappings of man's life and that inner reality which they more
or less adequately enfold.
The use which Carlyle makes of this doctrine in his interpretation of the
religious history of the world and of the crisis in thought of his own day,
will be anticipated. All dogmas, forms and ceremonials, he teaches, are

but religious vestments--symbols expressing man's deepest sense of the
divine mystery of the universe and the hunger and thirst of his soul for
God. It is in response to the imperative necessities of his nature that he
moulds for himself these outward emblems of his ideas and aspirations.
Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all other human things, they
partake of the ignorance and weakness of the times in which they were
framed, it is inevitable that with the growth of knowledge and the
expansion of thought they must presently be outgrown. When this
happens, there follows what Carlyle calls the "superannuation of
symbols." Men wake to the fact that the creeds and formulas which
have come down to them from