Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

36. Forging a New Lifestyle of Dignity & Respect:Alinsky,Paul,Carlyle,Einstein

                                                       Carlyle's Sartor Resartus: A Rebirth of Ethics

                                              "Christian virtue has been 'quite overlooked by Science."

          "If Clothes, in these times, 'so tailorize and demoralize us,' have they no redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve better; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs?" This passage from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus suggests that nineteenth-century British society demand a new set of ethical principles to govern its behavior. Much like Schweitzer and Newman, Carlyle describes the decadence and indifference of his country's leaders, and calls for a return to the Christian values of divine unity and mutual love, as "from Heaven" (248). Carlyle employs the clothes metaphor to symbolize man's need for a new spiritual covering or set of attitudes. Like Einstein's wardrobe metaphor (Einstein 64), Church clothes, or spiritual values, Carlyle emphasizes, "have gone sorrowfully out at the elbows; nay, far worse, many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells; but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; and the mask still glares on you with its glass eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life—some generation –and-a-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it" (Carlyle 250). This commentary on the ineffectualness of religion poses the most significant issue in Carlyle's mind. He suggests that man's total want of a Philosophy of Clothes" (10), or Christian virtue, compares to "the general tissue . . . the real tissue" which has been "quite overlooked by Science . . . which man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappings . . . wherein his whole Faculties work, his whole Self moves, and has its being" (6-7). Carlyle here alludes to Acts 17:28 in which Paul affirms Christ as the source of all physical and spiritual life. Thus, the author uses the clothes metaphor and Christ's love synonymously to appeal for society's moral improvement, or in the author's words, "a new-attained progress in the Moral Development of man" (229).  The Apostle Paul admonished his followers "to put on the whole armor of God, that they may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil" (Ephesians 6:11).  Clothes have given man "holiness," "Individuality, distinction, social polity," qualities that have "made men of us" (48). Society is "founded upon Clothes," that is, their "political, moral, and religious influence" (61). Without clothes, or spiritual principles, man would "undoubtedly wander as if [he] knew right hand from left; yet [he] is only wise "who knows that he knows nothing" (64). This allusion to Christ's instruction on private almsgiving suggests man's inability to find meaning without "the omnipotent virtue of Clothes," or spiritual guidance (71). Without clothes, or love and compassion, a "naked world" (76) like Rousseau's would languish from "bodily and intellectual Nudity" and ultimately to "return to the savage state" (240). Here the Carlyle severely criticizes the theory of the noble savage which claims the fewer moral principles, the better. Instead, clothes, or spiritual love, shine "as the visible emblem of man's Spirit," which is "bound by invisible bonds to All Men" (72). This brotherhood of virtue plays an essential role in the welfare of citizens and nations. In contrast, Saul D. Alinsky, writing in Rules for Radicals (1971), suggests that modern politics clothes its pragmatic and nonsectarian policies in the attire of morality in order to gain the appropriate reception from the public. Alinsky maintains that Machiavelli made the mistake of not including morality  as a primary factor in influencing policy and public opinion, whereas today politicians and lawmakers pass laws solely on the basis of self-interest and expediency, yet use moral justifications deceive the voters and win their support. In Alinsky's words, "Within this morality there appears to be a tearing conflict, probably due to the layers of inhibition in our kind of moralistic civilization--it appears shameful to admit that we operate on the basis of naked self-interest, so we desperately tryto reconcile every shift of circumstances that is to our self-interest in terms of a broad moral justification or rationalization" (Alinsky 54-55).  

                                                                                   Works Cited

Alinsky, Saul D. Rules for Radicals. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. Chicago: Homewood Publishing Company, n.d.

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