STERLING ON SARTOR RESARTUS.

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THE MAIN PRINCIPLE OF SARTOR RESARTUS.

This principle I seem to myself to find in the state of mind which is attributed to Teufelsdröckh; in his state of mind, I say, not in his opinions, though these are, in him as in all men, most important-being one of the best indices to his state of mind. Now what distinguishes him, not merely from the greatest and best men who have been on earth for eighteen hundred years, but from the whole body of those who have been working forward toward the good, and have been the salt and light of the world, is this: That he does not believe in a God. Do not be indig nant, I am blaming no one ;-but if I write my thoughts, I must write them honestly.

Teufelsdröckh does not belong to the herd of sensual and thoughtless men: because he does perceive in all existence a unity of power; because he does believe that this is a real power external to him, and dominant to a certain extent over him, and does not think that he is himself a shadow in a world of shadows. He has a deep feeling of the beautiful, the good, and the true; and a faith in their final victory.

ness.

At the same time, how evident is the strong inward unrest, the Titanic heaving of mountain on mountain: the storm-like rushing over land and sea in search of peace. He writhes and roars under his consciousness of the difference in himself between the possible and the actual, the hopedfor and the existent. He feels that duty is the highest law of his own being; and knowing how it bids the waves be stilled into an icy fixedness and grandeur, he trusts (but with a boundless inward misgiving) that there is a principle of order which will reduce all confusion to shape and clearBut, wanting peace himself, his fierce dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt, and imperfect around him; and, instead of a calm and steady co-operation with all those who are endeavoring to apply the highest ideas as remedies for the worst evils, he holds himself aloof in savage isolation; and cherishes (though he dare not own) a stern joy at the prospect of that catastrophe which is to turn loose again the elements of man's social life, and give for a time the victory to evil; in hopes that each new convulsion of the world must bring us nearer to the ultimate restoration of all things; fancying that each may be the last. Wanting the calm and cheerful reliance, which would be the spring of active exertion, he flatters his own distemper by persuading himself that his own age and generation are peculiarly feeble and decayed; and would even, perhaps, be willing to exchange the restless immaturity of our self-consciousness, and the promise of its long throe-pangs, for the unawakened un

doubting simplicity of the world's childhood; of the times in which there was all the evil and horror of our day, only with the difference that conscience had not arisen to try and condemn it. In these longings, if they are Teufelsdröckh's, he seems to forget that, could we go back five thousand years, we should only have the prospect of travelling them again, and arriving at last at the same point at which we stand now.

Something of this state of mind I may say that I understand; for I have myself experienced it. And the root of the matter appears to me: A want of sympathy with the great body of those who are now endeav oring to guide and help onward their fellow-men. And in what is this alienation grounded? It is, as I believe, simply in the difference on that point: viz., the clear, deep, habitual recognition of a one Living Personal God, essentially good, wise, true, and holy, the Author of all that exists; and a reunion with whom is the only end of all rational beings. belief...

This

What means the break? Has the manuscript been torn, or mouse-bitten, or does the stream of discourse run on into drivel, meriting to be curtailed with scornful abruptness? What is perfectly clear is that Sterling has been working up to his point, and that now he believes himself to have reached it. The grand defect which he signalizes in Sartor Resartus is absence of recognition of a Living Personal God, and the moment he begins to show why a Living Personal God is worthier to be accepted than a vague looming of pantheistic deity through the universe, Carlyle thrusts the gag between his teeth. "There follow now," says the biographer, "several pages on 'Personal God' and other abstruse, or, indeed, properly unspeakable matters; these, and a general postscript of qualifying purport, I will suppress."

Can we doubt that, were it possible to consult Sterling on this procedure of his biographer, he would declare that Mr. Carlyle had omitted precisely those pages which, of all he had ever written, whether in book or in letter, he should least like to be suppressed? The literary criticism on Sartor Resartus which Mr. Carlyle prints is good enough of its kind, but not better than may be looked for in a dozen magazines any

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month in the year; the criticism on the ethical tone and general moral character of the book, even when judged by this truncated specimen, can be seen to be masterly. Let us examine it a little.

The reference made by Sterling to the want, in Sartor Resantus, of healthy sympathy "with the great body of those who are now endeavoring to guide and help onward their fellowmen," is a glance that penetrates to the profoundest roots, not only of what is faulty in Sartor Resartus, but of what has been questionable, uneasy, and, on the whole, lamentable in Mr. Carlyle's life, and particularly in his relation to the Christian Churches, and to the workers in the many divisions of the great army of social improvement. Sterling boldly lays his hand on what he conceives to be the tap-root of the evil. Carlyle's hero, he says, "does not believe in a God." The statement requires explanation, for there are few books in the English language, if any, in which the name of God is more constantly introduced, and the existence of all things in God, and of God in all things, is more constantly asserted, than in Sartor Resartus. In fairness not only to Sterling, but to the readers of so startling an assertion, every word in which he explained and defended his position should be laid before us. Sterling maintains that the verbal recognition of God in the book-the shimmering, so to speak, of God-light through its leaves-is vague, ineffectual, practically equivalent to unbelief. I would give all I have ever seen from Sterling's pen for a sight of what he said in elucidation and support of this thesis. But his biographer, who permits him to descant at any length on the grammatical peculiarities of Thomas Carlyle, shuts his mouth instantly when he begins to speak of a Personal God.

Not only in Sartor Resartus, but in a vast proportion of the most brilliant, original, and fascinating literature of the last hundred years, including the poetry of Goethe, there is that

6*

"abundant use of the name of God," which is affirmed by Sterling to be neither satisfactory in itself, nor equivalent to belief, calm, solemn, and steadfast, in "one Living Personal God." The pantheistic gleaming and glittering in those books, like lightning along cloud-edges in a stormy sky, is splendid in an imaginative point of view, and has an effect which can hardly be described except as a kind of consecration; but it has not the same power to make spiritual corn grow and spiritual fruit ripen which is possessed by the light. of the central Sun.

There are matters which, though unspeakable and unknowable as mysteries, may, nevertheless, be facts, and may admit of being spoken of, or imperatively require to be spoken of, in their character as facts. Such is the Divine Personality. Sterling's mind was eminently clear. He was exactly the man to discern between the essentials of faith in God and the nonessentials, and to avoid the error of supposing that it is possible for us to comprehend or to explain either God's life or His personality. I do not presume to guess at Sterling's line of argument in the suppressed passage; but the soundness of his main position, namely, that life and personality are inseparable from a God believed in to any practical effect, may, I think, be established by the simple consideration that, as it is impossible for us to define the human personality, while nevertheless we cannot believe in the existence of any one without individualizing him as a person, so it is impossible for us, though unable to comprehend and explain the Divine personality, to believe in God to any practical effect, unless we regard Him as a person. The finite personality, the finite spirit, whether in myself or in my neighbor, I cannot understand. I never saw a spirit, never touched, never heard a spirit, never by any of my senses perceived one; and yet, when my friend speaks, I am quite sure that I hear him, and that he who speaks is a person, distinct from all other persons and things, and that

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I who hear am a person distinct from all other persons and things. This is the essential condition of my having any benefit from my friend, or of my friend's having any benefit from me, or of our in any practical sense knowing each other. His unity, his personality, may be totally indefinable by me, but while I am clear as to its being a fact, or while, without asking any questions, I proceed upon it as a fact, all relations between us are placed upon a clear practical basis. But if, in my endeavor to penetrate the mystery of my friend's personality, I lose hold of it as a fact, and begin to think of him as a tincture or essence of friend diffused throughout the universe, am I not likely to forfeit clearness of idea as to my obligations to him and his regard for me?

John Sterling suggests precisely that rectification of Carlyleism which it seems to me to stand supremely in need of. The vagueness of pantheism is peculiary ill-fitted to harmonize with much that is most vehemently inculcated by Carlyle. He asserts the infinite nature of duty, the infinite difference between good and evil. He enjoins and exemplifies unappeasable fury as the sentiment with which good men ought to regard bad men. Always when he is in this mood—and he is in it very often-he has the name of God on his lips, and it is the justice of God he invokes. His tone is that of one who not only believes in the power and government of God, but believes in them with the intensity of an Elijah calling down fire from Jehovah to confound the worshippers of Baal. And yet, in this very Life of Sterling, he uses language which might lead us to infer that he would pronounce all such paroxysms of indignation the mere stamping and raving of fanaticism. He cites from Sterling these words, "I find in all my conversations with Carlyle that his fundamental position is, the good of evil: he is forever quoting Goethe's epigram about the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow." On which Carlyle comments as follows:-" Even so: