The Virtual Coffeehouse

I could be completely off base here. But...

At one point, he begins to question the existence of God and the fact that man is conscious of whether or not he is virtuous. He talks about martyrs who have faith and therefore suffer their burdens, and about Saint Paul who was very aware of his sins, calling himself the 'chief of sinners'. So it sounds to me that by having faith and belief in God, you are actually farther from happiness and spend more time suffering injustices.

He then makes a statement about throwing aside conscience and offering gifts to the Devil, because the life he provides would be a life of greater ease than that which the idea of God provides. Whether or not he actually means this, I can't tell, and personally, I'm not sure if he knows whether or not he means it either.

That's what I read, but like I said, I could be totally missing the point.

I actually had a very hard time following the reading, I felt that it wasn't very fluid. I got the same thing out of it as Amanda, however. He seemed to be questioning the value of faith in God and how it affects your life. I really don't feel like I can go into much detail about the reading, however, since I had such a hard time following it. I felt that I had to re-read almost every paragraph!

I had a really hard time with this reading as well. I'm not quite sure why he was writing it but I did understand that he was wondering about God and he questioned often whether the devil may be God. On page 1009 he writes, "O, the vast, gloomy solitary Golgatha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?"

Eventually I think he had a spiritual awakening but I'm not sure when and I'm not sure what became of his thoughts on the Devil as God.

One of the major ideas about life that Thomas Carlyle is bringing up in "Sartor Resartus" is the question of a greater being in the world. He makes it very clear that the only way that a man can be happy is to have a strong faith.
For a human being to lack this faith is just leading to his demise. It is a pretty big concept to grasp. Basically, to not believe in a greater good, and to live lavishly without thinking about morality will just lead to an unhappy life.

That is what I took from Carlyle's work. He was pretty black and white about this faith idea.

Going along with the question of whether or not man really needs God, is a quote on page 1018, "Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end."

I feel that his is talking about the importance of suffering in life. Comparing our years on Earth to Jesus's forty days in the wilderness is talking about what it takes to truly discover faith. Carlyle thinks faith is important, but it is up to the individual to decide if whether or not that faith should be in God or something else.

Carlyle also mentions a "Half-man" that seems to go along with his dissapointment in religion. In religion, a man's path is set by God, he does not have the freedom to make his own choice. Teufelsdrockh wants choice in his life. These Half-man forfeit their fate to God by having faith in him. Teufelsdrockh's faith does not involve God, but more of a faith in freedom and of a man finding his own path, not having one laid out for him.

I had a hard time following the reading; Carlyle's style was erratic to say the least. In the biography section of the book it mentions Emerson referring to Carlyle's writing style as "a sort of splendid conversation" but it seemed more like an emotional ranting by Carlyle on the indifference of god. I found Carlyle's tone really pessimistic and verging on whining.

Anyway the main point I took from the readings was that the struggle for a man's faith could be rather hollow. I found this quote from the first paragraph on 1008 to be solid one sentence summary:

"Thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no answer but an echo".

I'll admit I don’t think I fully understood the passage, but this is the most consistent idea I could take from the entire reading.

One question that Diogenes Teufelsdröckh presents is quoted from page 1007, "Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go?..."

As some classmates mentioned, I was a little confused by this reading and didn't know if the question was one that Diogenes Teufelsdröckh was asking himself, or if he was quoting someone else. However, this question is interesting and throughout the selection of Sartor Resartus, there are footnotes and paraphrases from the Bible as well as other religious references. Several of the references on religion that I recall seemed to be negative:
"I nevertheless still loved Truth... 'though the Heavens crush me for following [Truth]" (page 1008),
"let us offer sweet incense to the Devil" (pg. 1008),
"O Heaven, No, there was none!" (pg. 1009),
"as is the Heavens and Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I ... waited to be devoured" (pg. 1010),

As others mentioned, Diogenes Teufelsdröckh seemed to be having trouble with his faith. Carlyle wrote this pretty negatively and it's difficult to say what his true views on the topic were from this selection. He quotes so much religion and in the same line insults it, or at the very least shows his frustration/dissapointment with it.