Sartor Resartus: the life and opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh

What is the use of health, or of life, if not to do some work there­with?

I said that Ima­gin­a­tion wove this Flesh-Gar­ment; and does not she? Meta­phors are her stuff: ex­am­ine Lan­guage; what, if you ex­cept some few prim­it­ive ele­ments (of nat­ural sound), what is it all but Meta­phors, re­cog­nised as such, or no longer re­cog­nised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and col­our­less?

Lan­guage is called the Gar­ment of Thought: how­ever, it should rather be, Lan­guage is the Flesh-Gar­ment, the Body, of thought.

The Philo­sophy of Clothes is now to all read­ers, as we pre­dicted it would do, un­fold­ing it­self into new bound­less ex­pan­sions, of a cloud­clapt, al­most chi­mer­ical as­pect, yet not without azure loom­ings in the far dis­tance, and streaks as of an Elysian bright­ness; the highly ques­tion­able pur­port and prom­ise of which it is be­com­ing more and more im­port­ant for us to as­cer­tain.

What are your Ax­ioms, and Cat­egor­ies, and Sys­tems, and Aphor­isms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cun­ningly built of Words, the Words well bed­ded also in good Lo­gic-mor­tar, wherein, how­ever, no Know­ledge will come to lodge.

“Who am I; what is this Me? A Voice, a Mo­tion, an Ap­pear­ance;—some em­bod­ied, visu­al­ised Idea in the Eternal Mind? Co­gito, ergo sum.

Man is called a Laugh­ing An­imal: but do not the apes also laugh, or at­tempt to do it; and is the man­li­est man the greatest and of­ten­est laugher?

Never­the­less he can use Tools, can de­vise Tools: with these the gran­ite moun­tain melts into light dust be­fore him; he kneads glow­ing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth high­way, winds and fire his un­weary­ing steeds.

“But, on the whole,” con­tin­ues our elo­quent Pro­fessor, “Man is a Tool-us­ing An­imal (Handth­i­er­endes thier).

For neither in tail­or­ing nor in le­gis­lat­ing does man pro­ceed by mere Ac­ci­dent, but the hand is ever guided on by mys­ter­i­ous op­er­a­tions of the mind.