Resartus. And as well in the Essays as in Sartor the influence of Fichte is apparent. In the former, as Mazzini said, 'the standard of the Ideal is unfurled at least as boldly' as in the subsequent, and more ambitious, writings of the author; and to those who have any acquaintance with German philosophy, the standard under which Carlyle fights is manifestly that of Fichte. The same is true, still more obviously, of Sartor. The doctrine of 'the Everlasting Yea', of 'Natural Supernaturalism', of 'Organic Filaments', of the seen world as the 'time-vesture' of the unseen and eternal, all these are evidently Carlyle's version of the idealism of Fichte. And these are the doctrines which lie at the root of the whole 'Philosophy of Clothes'. And, however much they may have subsequently sunk beneath the surface, they are the doctrines which continued to lie at the root of Carlyle's teaching to the very end.
That they did sink beneath the surface, must at once be admitted. And that his conscience was not quite easy on the matter, that he reproached himself with the 'difficulty' he found 'in getting his poor message'—'things I imperatively need still to say'—'delivered to the world in this epoch,' is abundantly clear from an unfinished fragment, to which he gave the name of Spiritual Optics, written in 1852, and published in his Life.
'The effects of optics' he writes, 'in this strange camera obscura of our existence are most of all singular. The grand centre of the modern revolution of ideas is even this we begin to have a notion that all this' (i. e. the belief in miracles) 'is the effect of optics, and that the intrinsic fact is very different from our old conception of it. Not less "miraculous", not less divine, but with an altogether totally new (or hitherto unconceived) species of divineness; a divineness lying much nearer home than formerly; a divineness that does not come from Judaea, from Olympus, Asgard, Mount Meru, but is in man himself, in the heart of every one born of man.'[1]
- ↑ Life, ii. pp. 10, 11, 15, 16.
