Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History | Page 7

68 III. PEDAGOGY 76 IV. GETTING
UNDER WAY 90 V. ROMANCE 101 VI. SORROWS OF
TEUFELSDRÖCKH 112 VII. THE EVERLASTING NO 121 VIII.
CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE 128 IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA

138 X. PAUSE 149
BOOK III
I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY 156 II. CHURCH-CLOTHES
161 III. SYMBOLS 163 IV. HELOTAGE 170 V. THE PHOENIX 174
VI. OLD CLOTHES 179 VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS 183 VIII.
NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM 191 IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE 201
X. THE DANDIACAL BODY 204 XI. TAILORS 216 XII.
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,