Start and Restartus

Yes, it's time for another pre-20th century book. This selection is a worthy opponent, indeed. Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" (literally, the "tailor reclothed") is many things, but easy to read for a 21st century faux intellectual is not one of them.

Carlyle's first work, originally serialized circa 1831 Fraser's Magazine (imagine something similar in any periodical on the planet today!), pokes not-so-gentle fun at idealistic German philosophy, but saves its main ferocity for the early nineteenth century incarnation of scientific rationalism. The book is a running series of excerpts and extended commentary by the author of the novel "philosophy of clothes" of the obscure German Professor Teufelsdrockh (literally "devil dung" -- I think I remember his class from junior year!). I will forego an extended review in this medium in favor of periodic posts of notable excerpts, perhaps with a little commentary of my own. (Carlyle I'm not, but then, if you're reading my blog, you probably aren't a regular reader of Carlyle!)

So, here we go:

[N]o man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool: of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

--The editor on Professor T's laugh, from Chapter 4.