Resartus

I've been half-thinking about tracing the cultural history of an idea. It started with wondering about the trajectory of Sartor Resartus (which was Carlyle's own personal experience) -- namely, that you pass through the Everlasting Nay in order to be born again in the Everlasting Aye; that spiritual doubt is not an aberration from faith, but a vital component of it (because unless he died, Christ could not be born again; si le grain ne meurt and all that). Carlyle's book embodies this formally and thematically as well as discussing it on the level of content; but who else does it? Who did it earlier than Carlyle? Who says 'perfect faith that never doubts and never has doubted is a kind of monstrosity, almost a perversity of faith'? I'm not sure anybody does -- before Carlyle. Then I chanced upon this on Alan Jacobs tumblr:

“What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s Resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. – If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved, – what I need is certainty – not wisdom, dreams or speculation – and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my heart, my soul, not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. Perhaps we can say: Only love can believe in the Resurrection. Or: It is love that believes the Resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection; holds fast even to the Resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption. Holding fast to this must be holding fast to that belief. So what that means is: first you must be redeemed and hold on to your redemption (keep hold of your redemption) – then you will see that you are holding fast to this belief. So this can come about only if you no longer rest your weight on the earth but suspend yourself from heaven. Then everything will be different and it will be ‘no wonder’ if you can do things that you cannot do now. [Ludwig Wittgenstein, note of 1937, in Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (1984)]