A shallower philosopher would have been content with exposing these and other shams; and consequently his philosophy would have led nowhere.  Carlyle is a greater thinker, and one who takes a wider view.  He is no enemy of clothes, although fools have put them to wrong uses and made them the instruments of deception.  His choice is not between worshipping and abandoning the world and its appearances.  He will frankly confess the value of it and of its vesture, and so we have the chapter on Adamitism, in defence of clothes, which acknowledges in great and ingenious detail the many uses of the existing order of institutions.  But still, through all such acknowledgment, we are reminded constantly of the main truth.  All appearance is for the sake of reality, and all tools for expressing the worker.  When the appearance becomes a substitute for the reality, and the tools absorb the attention that should be devoted to the work for whose accomplishment they exist, then we have relapsed into the fundamental human error.  The object of the book is to plunge back from appearance to reality, from clothes to him who wears them.  “Who am I?  What is this ME?... some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind.”

This swift retreat upon reality occurs at intervals throughout the whole book, and in connection with every conceivable department of human life and interest.  In many parts there is little attempt at sequence or order.  The author has made voluminous notes on men and things, and the whole fantastic structure of Sartor Resartus is a device for introducing these disjointedly.  In the remainder of this lecture we shall select and displace freely, in order to present the main teachings of the book in manageable groups.

1. Language and Thought.—­Language is the natural garment of thoughts, and while sometimes it performs its function of revealing them, it often conceals them.  Many people’s whole intellectual life is spent in dealing with words, and they never penetrate to the thoughts at all.  Still more commonly, people get lost among words, especially words which have come to be used metaphorically, and again fail to penetrate to the thought.  Thus the Name is the first garment wrapped around the essential ME; and all speech, whether of science, poetry, or politics, is simply an attempt at right naming.  The names by which we call things are apt to become labelled pigeon-holes in which we bury them.  Having catalogued and indexed our facts, we lose sight of them thenceforward, and think and speak in terms of the catalogue.  If you are a Liberal, it is possible that all you may know or care to know about Conservatism is the name.  Nay, having catalogued yourself a Liberal, you may seldom even find it necessary to inquire what the significance of Liberalism really is.  If you happen to be a Conservative, the corresponding risks will certainly not be less.