From Thomas Carlyle in 1833 - Who Am I?

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In Thomas Carlyle's satirical metaphysical novel Sartor Resarus

written in 1833 there appears a truly amazing and remarkable passage

anticipating our contemporary Self Enquiry.

 

 

" With men of speculative turn, there come seasons, meditative,

sweet, yet aweful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself

that unanswerable question: Who am I; the thing that can say 'I'?

 

The world with its loud traficking, retires into the distance;

and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick plied

tissues of Commerce and policy, and all the living and lifeless

integuments of Society and a Body, wherewith your Existence sits

surrounded,-the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are

alone with the universe, and silently commune with it, as one

mysterious Presence with another.

 

Who am I: what is this Me? A voice, a Motion, an Appearance;-some

embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind? 'I think therefore I

am''.

 

Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough,

I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies

around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of

jubilee and wail, in thousand figured, thousand voiced, harmonious

Nature: but where is thee cunning eye and ear to whom that God-

written Apocalypse will yield artuclate meaning? We sit as in a

boundless Phantasmagoria and Drea-grotto; boundless, for the faintest

star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof:

sounds and many coloured visions flit round our sense; but Him, the

Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not.

 

Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; but

the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that

strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances;

and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake!

 

Which of your Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-

theorem; a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and

dividend are both unknown? What are all your National Wars, but the

Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dreaming, this Somnabulism is

what we on Earth call Life; wherein the most undoubtingly wander, as

if they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who know

that they know nothing.