This
official
person's plan we do not give.
Thomas Carlyle
Let the Tories be Ministry if they will; let at
least some living reality be Ministry! A rearing horse that
will only run backward, he is not the horse one would choose
to travel on: yet of all conceivable horses the worst is the
dead horse. Mounted on a rearing horse, you may back
him, spur him, check him, make a little way even backwards:
but seated astride of your dead horse, what chance is there
for you in the chapter of possibilities? You sit motionless,
hopeless, a spectacle to gods and men. "
There is a class of revolutionists named Girondins, whose
fate in history is remarkable enough! Men who rebel, and
urge the Lower Classes to rebel, ought to have other than
Formulas to go upon. Men who discern in the misery of the
toiling complaining millions not misery, but only a raw-
material which can be wrought upon and traded in, for one's
own poor hidebound theories and egoisms; to whom millions
of living fellow-creatures, with beating hearts in their bosoms,
beating, suffering, hoping, are "masses," mere "explosive
masses for blowing-down Bastilles with," for voting at hust-
ings for us: such men are of the questionable species! No
man is justified in resisting by word or deed the Authority
he lives under, for a light cause, be such Authority what it
may. Obedience, little as many may consider that side of
the matter, is the primary duty of man. No man but is
bound indefeasibly, with all force of obligation, to obey.
Parents, teachers, superiors, leaders, these all creatures
recognise as deserving obedience. Recognised or not recog-
nised, a man has his superiors, a regular hierarchy above
him; extending up, degree above degree, to Heaven itself
and God the Maker, who made His world not for anarchy but
for rule and order! It is not a light matter when the just
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 226 Carlyle's Essays
man can recognise in the powers set over him no longer
anything that is divine; when resistance against such
becomes a deeper law of order than obedience to them;
when the just man sees himself in the tragical position of a
stirrer-up of strife! Rebel without due and most due cause,
is the ugliest of words; the first rebel was Satan. --
But now in these circumstances shall we blame the un-
voting disappointed millions that they turn away with horror
from this name of a Reform Ministry, name of a Parliamentary
Radicalism, and demand a fact and reality thereof? That
they too, having still faith in what so many had faith in, still
count " extension of the suffrage" the one thing needful;
and say, in such manner as they can, Let the suffrage be still
extended, then all will be well? It is the ancient British
faith; promulgated in these ages by prophets and evangelists;
preached forth from barrel-heads by all manner of men. He
who is free and blessed has his twenty-thousandth part of a
master of tongue-fence in National Palaver; whosoever is not
blessed but unhappy, the ailment of him is that he has it not.
Ought he not to have it, then? By the law of God and of
men, yea;--and will have it withal! Chartism, with its
"five points," borne aloft on pikeheads and torchlight
meetings, is there. Chartism is one of the most natural
phenomena in England. Not that Chartism now exists should
provoke wonder; but that the invited hungry people should
have sat eight years at such table of the Barmecide, patiently
expecting somewhat from the Name of a Reform Ministry,
and not till after eight years have grown hopeless, this is
the respectable side of the miracle.
CHAPTER X
IMPOSSIBLE
"But what are we to do? " exclaims the practical man,
impatiently on every side: "Descend from speculation and
the safe pulpit, down into the rough market-place, and say
what can be done I" -- O practical man, there seem very
many things which practice and true manlike effort, in
Parliament and out of it, might actually avail to do. But
the first of all things, as already said, is to gird thyself up
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
227
for actual doing; to know that thou actually either must do,
or, as the Irish say, " come out of that! "
It is not a lucky word this same impossible: no good
comes of those that have it so often in their mouth. Who
is he that says always, There is a lion in the way? Sluggard,
thou must slay the lion, then; the way has to be travelled!
In Art, in Practice, innumerable critics will demonstrate that
most things are henceforth impossible; that we are got, once
for all, into the region of perennial commonplace, and must
contentedly continue there. Let such critics demonstrate;
it is the nature of them: what harm is in it? Poetry once
well demonstrated to be impossible, arises the Burns, arises
the Goethe. Unheroic commonplace being now clearly all
we have to look for, comes the Napoleon, comes the con-
quest of the world. It was proved by fluxionary calculus,
that steamships could never get across the farthest point
of Ireland to the nearest of Newfoundland: impelling force,
resisting force, maximum here, minimum there; by law of
Nature, and geometric demonstration:--what could be done?
The Great Western could weigh anchor from Bristol Port;
that could be done. The Great Western, bounding safe
through the gullets of the Hudson, threw her cable out on the
capstan of New York, and left our still moist paper-demon-
stration to dry itself at leisure. "Impossible? " cried
Mirabeau to his secretary, " Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot,
Never name to me that blockhead of a word! "
There is a phenomenon which one might call Paralytic
Radicalism, in these days; which gauges with Statistic
measuring-reed, sounds with Philosophic Politico-Economic
plummet the deep dark sea of troubles; and having taught
us rightly what an infinite sea of troubles it is, sums-up with
the practical inference, and use of consolation, That nothing
whatever can be done in it by man, who has simply to sit still,
and look wistfully to " time and general laws: " and there-
upon, without so much as recommending suicide, coldly
takes its leave of us. Most paralytic, uninstructive; unpro-
ductive of any comfort to one! They are an unreasonable
class who cry, " Peace, peace," when there is no peace. But
what kind of class are they who cry, " Peace, peace, have I
not told you that there is no peace! " Paralytic Radicalism,
frequent among those Statistic friends of ours, is one of the
most afflictive phenomena the mind of man can be called to
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 228 Carlyle's Essays
contemplate. One prays that it at least might cease. Let
Paralysis retire into secret places, and dormitories proper
for it; the public highways ought not to be occupied by people
demonstrating that motion is impossible. Paralytic;--and
also, thank Heaven,' entirely false! Listen to a thinker
of another sort: "All evil, and this evil too, is as a nightmare;
the instant you begin to stir under it, the evil is, properly
speaking, gone. " Consider, O reader, whether it be not
actually so? Evil, once manfully fronted, ceases to be evil;
there is generous battle-hope in place of dead passive misery;
the evil itself has become a kind of good.
To the practical man, therefore, we will repeat that he has,
as the first thing he can " do," to gird himself up for actual
doing; to know well that he is either there to do, or not there
at all. Once rightly girded up, how many things will present
themselves as doable which now are not attemptable! Two
things, great things, dwell, for the last ten years, in all think-
ing heads in England; and are hovering, of late, even on the
tongues of not a few. With a word on each of these, we will
dismiss the practical man, and right gladly take ourselves into
obscurity and silence again. Universal Education is the first
great thing we mean; general Emigration is the second.
Who would suppose that Education were a thing which
had to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, or in-
deed on any ground? As if it stood not on the basis of ever-
lasting duty, as a prime necessity of man. It is a thing that
should need no advocating; much as it does actually need.
To impart the gift of thinking to those who cannot think, and
yet who could in that case think: this, one would imagine,
was the first function a government had to set about dis-
charging. Were it not a cruel thing to see, in any province
of an empire, the inhabitants living all mutilated in their
limbs, each strong man with his right arm lamed? How
much cruder to find the strong soul, with its eyes still sealed,
its eyes extinct so that it sees not! Light has come into the
world, but to this poor peasant it has come in vain. For
six thousand years the Sons of Adam, in sleepless effort, have
been devising, doing, discovering; in mysterious infinite
indissoluble communion, warring, a little band of brothers,
against the great black empire of Necessity and Night; they
have accomplished such a conauest and conquests: and to
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
229
this man it is all as if it had not been. The four-and-twenty
letters of the Alphabet are still Runic enigmas to him. He
passes by on the other side; and that great Spiritual King-
dom, the toilwom conquest of his own brothers, all that his
brothers have conquered, is a thing non-extant for him. An
invisible empire; he knows it not, suspects it not. And is
it not his withal; the conquest of his own brothers, the
lawfully acquired possession of all men? Baleful enchant-
ment lies over him, from generation to generation; he knows
not that such an empire is his, that such an empire is at all.
O, what are bills of rights, emancipations of black slaves into
black apprentices, lawsuits in chancery for some short usu-
fruct of a bit of land? The grand " seedfield of Time " is this
man's, and you give it him not. Time's seedfield, which
includes the Earth and all her seedfields and pearl-oceans,
nay her sowers too and pearl-divers, all that was wise and
heroic and victorious here below; of which the Earth's
centuries are but as furrows, for it stretches forth from the
Beginning onward even into this Day!
"My inheritance, how lordly wide and fair;
Time is my fair seedfield, to Time I'm heir! "--
Heavier wrong is not done under the sun. It lasts from
year to year, from century to century; the blinded sire slaves
himself out, and leaves a blinded son; and men, made in the
image of God, continue as two-legged beasts of labour;--and
in the largest empire of the world, it is a debate whether a
small fraction of the Revenue of one Day (? 30,000 is but that)
shall, after Thirteen Centuries, be laid out on it, or not laid
out on it. Have we Governors, have we Teachers; have we
had a Church these thirteen hundred years? What is an
Overseer of souls, an Archoverseer, Archiepiscopus? Is he
something? If so, let him lay his hand on his heart, and say
what thing!
But quitting all that, of which the human soul cannot well
speak in terms of civility, let us observe now that Education
is not only an eternal duty, but has at length become even a
temporary and ephemeral one, which the necessities of the
hour will oblige us to look after. These Twenty-four million
labouring men, if their affairs remain unregulated, chaotic,
will burn ricks and mills; reduce us, themselves and the
world into ashes and ruin. Simply their affairs cannot
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 230 Carlyle's Essays
remain unregulated, chaotic; but must be regulated, brought
into some kind of order. What intellect were able to regulate
them? The intellect of a Bacon, the energy of a Luther, if
left to their own strength, might pause in dismay before such
a task; a Bacon and Luther added together, to be perpetual
prime minister over us, could not do it. No one great and
greatest intellect can do it. What can? Only Twenty-four
million ordinary intellects, once awakened into action; these,
well presided over, may. Intellect, insight, is the discernment
of order in disorder; it is the discovery of the will of Nature,
of God's will; the beginning of the capability to walk accord-
ing to that. With perfect intellect, were such possible
without perfect morality, the world would be perfect; its
efforts unerringly correct, its results continually successful,
its condition faultless. Intellect is like light; the Chaos
becomes a World under it: fiat lux. These Twenty-four
million intellects are but common intellects; but they are
intellects; in earnest about the matter, instructed each
about his own province of it; labouring each perpetually,
with what partial light can be attained, to bring such province
into rationality. From the partial determinations and their
conflict springs the universal. Precisely what quantity of
intellect was in the Twenty-four millions will be exhibited
by the result they arrive at; that quantity and no more.
Accordingfas there was intellect or no intellect in the indivi-
duals, will the general conclusion they make-out embody
itself as a world-healing Truth and Wisdom, or as a baseless
fateful Hallucination, a Chimsera breathing hot fabulous fire!
Dissenters call for one scheme of Education, the Church
objects; this party objects, and that; there is endless objec-
tion, by him and by her and by it: a subject encumbered with
difficulties on every side! Pity that difficulties exist; that
Religion, of all things, should occasion difficulties. We do
not extenuate them: in their reality they are considerable;
in their appearance and pretension, they are insuperable,
heart-appalling to all Secretaries of the Home Department.
For, in very truth, how can Religion be divorced from
Education? An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge; may
be a development of the logical or other handicraft faculty
inward or outward; but is no culture of the soul of a man.
A knowledge that ends in barren self-worship, comparative
indifference or contempt for all God's Universe except one
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
insignificant item thereof, what is it? Handicraft develop-
ment, and even shallow as handicraft. Nevertheless is
handicraft itself, and the habit of the merest logic, nothing?
It is already something; it is the indispensable beginning of
everything! Wise men know it to be an indispensable
something; not yet much; and would so gladly superadd
to it the element whereby it may become all. Wise men
would not quarrel in attempting this; they would lovingly
cooperate in attempting it.
"And now how teach religion? " so asks the indignant
Ultra-radical, cited above; an Ultra-radical seemingly not
of the Benthamee species, with whom, though his dialect is
far different, there are sound Churchmen, we hope, who have
some fellow-feeling: "How teach religion? By plying with
liturgies, catechisms, credos; droning thirty-nine or other
articles incessantly into the infant ear? Friends! In that
case, why not apply to Birmingham, and have Machines
made, and set-up at all street-corners, in highways and
byways, to repeat and vociferate the same, not ceasing night
or day? The genius of Birmingham is adequate to that.
Albertus Magnus had a leather man that could articulate;
not to speak of Martinus Scriblerus' Niirnberg man that
could reason as well as we know who! Depend upon it,
Birmingham can make machines to repeat liturgies and
articles; to do whatsoever feat is mechanical. And what
were all schoolmasters, nay all priests and churches, com-
pared with this Birmingham Iron Church! Votes of two
millions in aid of the Church were then something. You
order, at so many pounds a-head, so many thousand iron
parsons as your grant covers; and fix them by satisfactory
masonry in all quarters wheresoever wanted, to preach
there independent of the world. In loud thoroughfares, still
more in unawakened districts, troubled with argumentative
infidelity, you make the windpipes wider, strengthen the main
steam-cylinder; your parson preaches, to the due pitch, while
you give him coal; and fears no man or thing. Here were
,a ' Church-extension;' to which I, with my last penny, did
I believe in it, would subscribe.
"Ye blind leaders of the blind! Are we Calmucks, that
pray by turning of a rotatory calabash with written prayers
in it? Is Mammon and machinery the means of converting
human souls, as of spinning cotton? Is God, as Jean Paul
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 232 Carlyle's Essays
predicted it would be, become verily a Force; the ^Ether too
a Gas! Alas, that Atheism should have got the length ol
putting on priests' vestments, and penetrating into the sanc-
tuary itself! Can dronings of articles, repetitions of liturgies
and all the cash and contrivance of Birmingham and the Bank
of England united bring ethereal fire into a human soul,
quicken it out of earthly darkness into heavenly wisdom?
Soul is kindled only by soul. To ' teach' religion, the first
thing needful, and also the last and the only thing, is finding
of a man who has religion. All else follows from this, church-
building, church-extension, whatever else is needful follows:
without this nothing will follow. "
From which we for our part conclude that the method oi
teaching religion to the English people is still far behindhand:
that the wise and pious may well ask themselves in silence
wistfully, " How is that last priceless element, by which edu-
cation becomes perfect, to be superadded? " and the unwise
who think themselves pious, answering aloud, "By this
method, By that method," long argue of it to small purpose.
But now, in the mean time, could not, by some fit official
person, some fit announcement be made, in words well-
weighed, in plan well-schemed, adequately representing the
facts of the thing, That after thirteen centuries of waiting,
he the official person, and England with him, was minded now
to have the mystery of the Alphabetic Letters imparted to
all human souls in this realm? Teaching of religion was a
thing he could not undertake to settle this day; it would be
work for a day after this; the work of this day was teaching
of the alphabet to all people. The miraculous art of reading
and writing, such seemed to him the needful preliminary of all
teaching, the first corner-stone of what foundation soever
could be laid for what edifice soever, in the teaching kind.
Let pious Churchism make haste, let pious Dissenterism make
haste, let all pious preachers and missionaries make haste,
bestir themselves according to their zeal and skill: he the
official person stood up for the Alphabet; and was even
impatient for it, having waited thirteen centuries now. He
insisted, and would take no denial, postponement, promise,
excuse or subterfuge, That all English persons should be
taught to read. He appealed to all rational Englishmen,
of all creeds, classes and colours, Whether this was not a fair
demand; nay whether it was not an indispensable one in
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
233
these days, Swing and Chartism having risen? For a choice
of inoffensive Hornbooks, and Schoolmasters able to teach
reading, he trusted the mere secular sagacity of a National
Collective Wisdom, in proper committee, might be found
sufficient. He purposed to appoint such Schoolmasters, to
venture on the choice of such Hornbooks; to send a School-
master and Hornbook into every township, parish and
hamlet of England; so that, in ten years hence, an English-
man who could not read might be acknowledged as the
monster, which he really is!
This official person's plan we do not give. The thing lies
there, with the facts of it, and with the appearances or sham-
facts of it; a plan adequately representing the facts of the
thing could by human energy be struck out, does lie there for
discovery and striking out. It is his, the official person's
duty, not ours, to mature a plan. We can believe that
Churchism and Dissenterism would clamour aloud; but yet
that in the mere secular Wisdom of Parliament a perspicacity
equal to the choice of Hornbooks might, in very deed, be
found to reside. England we believe would, if consulted,
resolve to that effect. Alas, grants of a half-day's revenue
once in the thirteen centuries for such an object, do not call-
out the voice of England, only the superficial clamour of
England! Hornbooks unexceptionable to the candid portion
of England, we will believe, might be selected. Nay, we can
conceive that Schoolmasters fit to teach reading might, by a
board of rational men, whether from Oxford or Hoxton, or
from both or neither of these places, be pitched upon. We
can conceive even, as in Prussia, that a penalty, civil dis-
abilities, that penalties and disabilities till they were found
effectual, might be by law inflicted on every parent who did
not teach his children to read, on every man who had not
been taught to read. We can conceive, in fine, such is the
vigour of our imagination, there might be found in England,
at a dead-lift, strength enough to perform this miracle, and
produce it henceforth as a miracle done: the teaching of
England to read! Harder things, we do know, have been
performed by nations before now, not abler-looking than
England.
Ah me! if by some beneficent chance, there should be an
official man found in England who could and would, with
deliberate courage, after ripe counsel, with candid insight, with
n 704 q
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 234 Carlyle's Essays
patience, practical sense, knowing realities to be real, knowing
clamours to be clamorous and to seem real, propose this
thing, and the innumerable things springing from it,--woe to
any Churchism or any Dissenterism that cast itself athwart
the path of that man! Avaunt, ye gainsayers! is darkness
and ignorance of the Alphabet necessary for you? Reconcile
yourselves to the Alphabet, or depart elsewhither! --Would
not all that has genuineness in England gradually rally round
such a man; all that has strength in England? For
realities alone have strength; wind-bags are wind; cant is
cant, leave it alone there. Nor are all cjamours momentous;
among living creatures, we find, the loudest is the longest-
eared; among lifeless things, the loudest is the drum, the
emptiest. Alas, that official persons, and all of us, had not
eyes to see what was real, what was merely chimerical, and
thought or called itself real! How many dread minatory
Castle-spectres should we leave there, with their admonishing
right-hand and ghastly-burning saucer-eyes, to do simply
whatsoever they might find themselves able to do! Alas,
that we were not real ourselves; we should otherwise have
surer vision for the real. Castle-spectres, in their utmost
terror, are but poor mimicries of that real and most real
terror which lies in the Life of every Man: that, thou coward,
is the thing to be afraid of, if thou wilt live in fear. It is but
the scratch of a bare bodkin; it is but the flight of a few days
of time; and even thou, poor palpitating featherbrain, wilt
find how real it is. Eternity: hast thou heard of that? Is
that a fact, or is it no fact? Are Buckingham House and St.
Stephen's in that, or not in that?
But now we have to speak of the second great thing: Emi-
gration. It was said above, all new epochs, so convulsed
'and tumultuous to look upon, are " expansions," increase of
faculty not yet organised. It is eminently true of the con-
fusions of this time of ours. Disorganic Manchester afflicts
us with its Chartisms; yet is not spinning of clothes for the
naked intrinsically a most blessed thing? Manchester once
organic will bless and not afflict. The confusions, if we would
understand them, are at bottom mere increase which we
know not yet how to manage; "new wealth which the old
coffers will not hold. " How true is this, above all, of
the strange phenomenon called " over-population! " Over-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
235
population is the grand anomaly, which is bringing all other
anomalies to a crisis. Now once more, as at the end of the
Roman Empire, a most confused epoch and yet one of the
greatest, the Teutonic Countries find themselves too full.
On a certain western rim of our small Europe, there are more
men than were expected. Heaped up against the western
shore there, and for a couple of hundred miles inward,
the "tide of population" swells too high, and confuses
itself somewhat. Over-population? And yet, if this small
western rim of Europe is overpeopled, does not everywhere
else a whole vacant Earth, as it were, call to us, Come and
till me, come and reap me! Can it be an evil that in an Earth
such as ours there should be new Men? Considered as
mercantile commodities, as working machines, is there in
Birmingham or out of it a machine of such value? "Good
Heavens! a white European Man, standing on his two legs,
with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and
miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth something con-
siderable, one would say! " The stupid black African man
brings money in the market; the much stupider four-footed
horse brings money;--it is we that have not yet learned the
art of managing our white European man!
The controversies on Malthus and the "Population Prin-
ciple," "Preventive check," and so forth, with which the
public ear has been deafened for a long while, are indeed suffi-
ciently mournful. Dreary, stolid, dismal, without hope for
this world or the next, is all that of the preventive check
and the denial of the preventive check. Anti-Malthusians
quoting their Bible against palpable facts are not a pleasant
spectacle. On the other hand, how often have we read in
Malthusian benefactors of the species: "The working people
have their condition in their own hands; let them diminish
the supply of labourers, and of course the demand and the
remuneration will increase! " Yes, let them diminish the
supply: but who are they? They are twenty-four millions
of human individuals, scattered over a hundred and eighteen
thousand square miles of space and more; weaving, delving,
hammering, joinering; each unknown to his neighbour; each
distinct within his own skin. They are not a kind of character
that can take a resolution, and act on it, very readily. Smart
Sally in our alley proves all-too fascinating to brisk Tom in
yours: can Tom be called on to make pause, and calculate
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 236 Carlyle's Essays
the demand for labour in the British Empire first? Nay, if
Tom did renounce his highest blessedness of life, and struggle
and conquer like a Saint Francis of Assisi, what would it
profit him or us? Seven millions of the finest peasantry do
not renounce, but proceed all the more briskly; and with
blue-visaged Hibernians instead of fair Saxon Tomsons and
Sallysons, the latter end of that country is worse than
the beginning. O wonderful Malthusian prophets! Millen-
niums are undoubtedly coming, must come one way or the
other: but will it be, think you, by twenty millions of working
people simultaneously striking work in that department;
passing, in universal trades-union, a resolution not to beget
any more till the labour-market become satisfactory? By
Day and Night! they were indeed irresistible so; not to be
compelled by law or war; might make their own terms with
the richer classes, and defy the world!
A shade more rational is that of those other benefactors of
the species, who counsel that in each parish, in some central
locality, instead of the Parish Clergyman, there might be
established some Parish Exterminator; or say a Reservoir of
Arsenic, kept up at the public expense, free to all parishioners;
for which Church the rates probably would not be grudged.
--Ah, it is bitter jesting on such a subject. One's heart is
sick to look at the dreary chaos, and valley of Jehosaphat,
scattered with the limbs and souls of one's fellow-men; and
no divine voice, only creaking of hungry vultures, inarticulate
bodeful ravens, horn-eyed parrots that do articulate, pro-
claiming, Let these bones live!
Dante's Divina Commedia is called the mournfulest of
books: transcendent mistemper of the noblest soul; utter-
ance of a boundless, godlike, unspeakable, implacable sorrow
and protest against the world. But in Holywell Street, not
long ago, we bought, for three-pence, a book still mournfuler;
the Pamphlet of one "Marcus," whom his poor Chartist
editor and republisher calls the "Demon Author. " This
Marcus Pamphlet was the book alluded to by Stephens the
Preacher Chartist, in one of his harangues: it proves to be
no fable that such a book existed; here it lies, " Printed by
John Hill, Black-horse Court, Fleet Street, and now reprinted
for the instruction of the labourer, by William Dugdale,
Holywell Street, Strand," the exasperated Chartist editor
who sells it you for three-pence. We have read Marcus; but
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
237
his sorrow is not divine. We hoped he would turn out to
have been in sport: ah no, it is grim earnest with him; grim
as very death. Marcus is not a demon author at all: he is a
benefactor of the species in his own kind; has looked intensely
on the world's woes, from a Benthamee-Malthusian watch-
tower, under a Heaven dead as iron; and does now, with
much Iongwindedness, in a drawling, snuffling, circuitous,
extremely dull, yet at bottom handfast and positive manner,
recommend that all children of working people, after the
third, be disposed of by "painless extinction. " Charcoal-
vapour and other methods exist. The mothers would consent,
might be made to consent. Three children might be left
1 living; or perhaps, for Marcus's calculations are not yet
perfect, two and a half. There might be "beautiful ceme-
teries with colonnades and flower-plots," in which the patriot
infanticide matrons might delight to take their evening walk
of contemplation: and reflect what patriotesses they were,
what a cheerful flowery world it was.
Such is the scheme of Marcus; this is what he, for his share,
could devise to heal the world's woes. A benefactor of
the species, clearly recognisable as such: the saddest scientific
mortal we have ever in this world fallen in with; sadder even
than poetic Dante. His is a rco-godlike sorrow; sadder than
the godlike. The Chartist editor, dull as he, calls him demon
author, and a man set-on by the Poor-Law Commissioners.
What a black, godless, waste-struggling world, in this once
merry England of ours, do such pamphlets and such editors
betoken! Laissez-faire and Malthus, Malthus and Laissez-
faire: ought not these two at length to part company? Might
we not hope that both of them had as good as delivered their
message now, and were about to go their ways?
For all this of the " painless extinction," and the rest, is in
a world where Canadian Forests stand unfelled, boundless
Plains and Prairies unbroken with the plough; on the west
and on the east green desert spaces never yet made white with
corn; and to the overcrowded little western nook of Europe,
- our Terrestrial Planet, nine-tenths of it yet vacant or tenanted
by nomades, is still crying, Come and till me, come and reap
me! And in an England with wealth, and means for moving,
such as no nation ever before had. With ships; with war-
ships rotting idle, which, but bidden move and not rot, might
bridge all oceans. With trained men, educated to pen and
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 238 Carlylc's Essays
practise, to administer and act; briefless Barristers, charge
less Clergy, taskless Scholars, languishing in all court-houses,
hiding in obscure garrets, besieging all antechambers, in
passionate want of simply one thing, Work;--with as many
Half-pay Officers of both Services, wearing themselves down
in wretched tedium, as might lead an Emigrant host larger
than Xerxes' was! Laissez-faire and Malthus positively
must part company. Is it not as if this swelling, simmering,
never-resting Europe of ours stood, once more, on the verge
of an expansion without parallel; struggling, struggling like
a mighty tree again about to burst in the embrace of summer,
and shoot forth broad frondent boughs which would fill the
whole earth? A disease; but the noblest of all,--as of her
who is in pain and sore travail, but travails that she may be
a mother, and say, Behold, there is a new Man born!
"True, thou Gold-Hofrath," exclaims an eloquent satiri-
cal German of our acquaintance, in that strange Book of
his,1 "True, thou Gold-Hofrath: too crowded indeed!
Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable Terraqueous
Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no
more? How thick stands your population in the Pampas
and Savannas of America; round ancient Carthage, and in
the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in
the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim
Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year,
as I have understood it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself
and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics I
of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, when their
home is grown too narrow, will enlist and, like fire-pillars,
guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living
Valour; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-
chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare? Where
are they? --Preserving their Game! "
1 Sartor Resartus, People's Edition, p. 159.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? COUNT CAGLIOSTRO
IN TWO FLIGHTS1;
[1833]
FLIGHT FIRST
"The life of every man," says our friend Herr Sauerteig, "the
life even of the meanest man, it were good to remember, is a
Poem; perfect in all manner of Aristotelean requisites; with
beginning, middle and end; with perplexities, and solutions;
with its Will-strength (Willenkraft) and warfare against Fate,
its elegy and battle-singing, courage marred by crime, every-
where the two tragic elements of Pity and Fear; above all,
with supernatural machinery enough,--for was not the man
born out of Nonentity; did he not die, and miraculously
vanishing return thither? The most indubitable Poem!
Nay, whoso will, may he not name it a Prophecy, or whatever
else is highest in his vocabulary; since only in Reality lies the
essence and foundation of all that was ever fabled, visioned,
sung, spoken, or babbled by the human species; and the
actual Life of Man includes in it all Revelations, true and
false, that have been, are, or are to be. Man! I say there-
fore, reverence thy fellow-man. He too issued from Above;
is mystical and supernatural (as thou namest it): this know
thou of a truth. Seeing also that we ourselves are of so high
Authorship, is not that, in very deed, ' the highest Rever-
ence,' and most needful for us: 'Reverence for oneself'?
"Thus, to my view, is every Life, more properly is every
Man that has life to lead, a small strophe, or occasional verse,
. composed by the Supernal Powers; and published, in such
type and shape, with such embellishments, emblematic head-
piece and tail-piece as thou seest, to the thinking or un-
thinking Universe. Heroic strophes some few are; full of
force and a sacred fire, so that to latest ages the hearts of
1 Fraser's Magazine, Nos. 43, 44 (July and August).
239
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 240 Carlyle's Essays
those that read therein are made to tingle. Jeremiads others
seem; mere weeping laments, harmonious or disharmoni-
ous Remonstrances against Destiny; whereat we too may
sometimes profitably weep. Again, have we not flesh-and-
blood strophes of the idyllic sort,--though in these days
rarely, owing to Poor-Laws, Game-Laws, Population-Theories
and the like! Farther, of the comic laughter-loving sort:
yet ever with an unfathomable earnestness, as is fit, lying
underneath: for, bethink thee, what is the mirthfulest
grinning face of any Grimaldi, but a transitory mask, behind
which quite otherwise grins--the most indubitable Death's-
head I However, I say farther, there are strophes of the
pastoral sort (as in Ettrick, Afghaunistan, and elsewhere);
of the farcic-tragic, melodramatic, of all named and a thou-
sand unnamable sorts there are poetic strophes, written, as
was said, in Heaven, printed on Earth, and published (bound
in woollen cloth, or clothes) for the use of the studious.
Finally, a small number seem utter Pasquils, mere ribald
libels on Humanity: these too, however, are at times worth
reading.
"In this wise," continues our too obscure friend, " out of
all imaginable elements, awakening all imaginable moods of
heart and soul, ' barbarous enough to excite, tender enough
to assuage,' ever contradictory yet ever coalescing, is that
mighty world-old Rhapsodia of Existence page after page
(generation after generation), and chapter (or epoch) after
chapter, poetically put together! This is what some one
names ' the grand sacred Epos, or Bible of World-History;
infinite in meaning as the Divine Mind it emblems; wherein
he is wise that can read here a line, and there a line. '
"Remark too, under another aspect, whether it is not in
this same Bible of World-History that all men, in all times,
with or without clear consciousness, have been unwearied to
read, what we may call read; and again to write, or rather to
be written I What is all History, and all Poesy, but a
deciphering somewhat thereof, out of that mystic heaven-
written Sanscrit; and rendering it into the speech of men?
Know thyself, value thyself, is a moralist's commandment
(which I only half approve of); but Know others, value
others, is the hest of Nature herself. Or again, Work while it
is called To-day : is not that also the irreversible law of being
for mortal man? And now, what is all working, what is all
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Count Cagliostro
cnowing, but a faint interpreting and a faint showing-forth
>f that same Mystery of Life, which ever remains infinite,--
leaven-written mystic Sanscrit? View it as we will, to him
:hat lives, Life is a divine matter; felt to be of quite sacred
iignificance. Consider the wretchedest 'straddling biped
;hat wears breeches ' of thy acquaintance; into whose wool-
iead, Thought, as thou rashly supposest, never entered;
who, in froth-element of business, pleasure, or what else he
lames it, walks forever in a vain show; asking not Whence,
yr Why, or Whither; looking up to Heaven above as if some
jpholsterer had made it, and down to the Hell beneath as if
he had neither part nor lot there: yet tell me, does not he
too, over and above his five finite senses, acknowledge some
sixth infinite sense, were it only that of Vanity? For, sate
him in the other five as you may, will this sixth sense leave
him rest? Does he not rise early and sit late, and study
impromptus, and (in constitutional countries) parliamentary
motions, and bursts of eloquence, and gird himself in whale-
bone, and pad himself and perk himself, and in all ways
painfully take heed to his goings; feeling (if we must admit
it) that an altogether infinite endowment has been intrusted
him also, namely, a Life to lead? Thus does he too, with
his whole force, in his own way, proclaim that the world-old
Rhapsodia of Existence is divine, and an inspired Bible;
and, himself a wondrous verse therein (be it heroic, be it
pasquillic), study with his whole soul, as we said, both to
read and to be written I
"Here also I will observe, that the manner in which men
read this same Bible is, like all else, proportionate to their
stage of culture, to the circumstances of their environment.
First, and among the earnest Oriental nations, it was read
wholly like a Sacred Book; most clearly by the most earnest,
those wondrous Hebrew Readers; whose reading accordingly
was itself sacred, has meaning for all tribes of mortal men;
since ever, to the latest generation of the world, a true utter-
ance from the innermost of man's being will speak signifi-
tantly to man. But, again, in how different a style was that
other Oriental reading of the Magi; of Zerdusht, or whoever
it was that first so opened the matter? Gorgeous semi-
sensual Grandeurs and Splendours: on infinite darkness,
brightest-glowing light and fire;--of which, all defaced by
Time, and turned mostly into lies, a quite late reflex, in
I
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 242 Carlyle's Essays
those Arabian Tales and the like, still leads captive every
heart. Look, thirdly, at the earnest West, and that Conse-
cration of the Flesh, which stept forth life-lusty, radiant
smiling-earnest, in immortal grace, from under the chisel and
the stylus of old Greece. Here too was the Infinite intelligibly
proclaimed as infinite: and the antique man walked between
a Tartarus and an Elysium, his brilliant Paphos-islet 0!
Existence embraced by boundless oceans of sadness anc
fateful gloom.
least some living reality be Ministry! A rearing horse that
will only run backward, he is not the horse one would choose
to travel on: yet of all conceivable horses the worst is the
dead horse. Mounted on a rearing horse, you may back
him, spur him, check him, make a little way even backwards:
but seated astride of your dead horse, what chance is there
for you in the chapter of possibilities? You sit motionless,
hopeless, a spectacle to gods and men. "
There is a class of revolutionists named Girondins, whose
fate in history is remarkable enough! Men who rebel, and
urge the Lower Classes to rebel, ought to have other than
Formulas to go upon. Men who discern in the misery of the
toiling complaining millions not misery, but only a raw-
material which can be wrought upon and traded in, for one's
own poor hidebound theories and egoisms; to whom millions
of living fellow-creatures, with beating hearts in their bosoms,
beating, suffering, hoping, are "masses," mere "explosive
masses for blowing-down Bastilles with," for voting at hust-
ings for us: such men are of the questionable species! No
man is justified in resisting by word or deed the Authority
he lives under, for a light cause, be such Authority what it
may. Obedience, little as many may consider that side of
the matter, is the primary duty of man. No man but is
bound indefeasibly, with all force of obligation, to obey.
Parents, teachers, superiors, leaders, these all creatures
recognise as deserving obedience. Recognised or not recog-
nised, a man has his superiors, a regular hierarchy above
him; extending up, degree above degree, to Heaven itself
and God the Maker, who made His world not for anarchy but
for rule and order! It is not a light matter when the just
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 226 Carlyle's Essays
man can recognise in the powers set over him no longer
anything that is divine; when resistance against such
becomes a deeper law of order than obedience to them;
when the just man sees himself in the tragical position of a
stirrer-up of strife! Rebel without due and most due cause,
is the ugliest of words; the first rebel was Satan. --
But now in these circumstances shall we blame the un-
voting disappointed millions that they turn away with horror
from this name of a Reform Ministry, name of a Parliamentary
Radicalism, and demand a fact and reality thereof? That
they too, having still faith in what so many had faith in, still
count " extension of the suffrage" the one thing needful;
and say, in such manner as they can, Let the suffrage be still
extended, then all will be well? It is the ancient British
faith; promulgated in these ages by prophets and evangelists;
preached forth from barrel-heads by all manner of men. He
who is free and blessed has his twenty-thousandth part of a
master of tongue-fence in National Palaver; whosoever is not
blessed but unhappy, the ailment of him is that he has it not.
Ought he not to have it, then? By the law of God and of
men, yea;--and will have it withal! Chartism, with its
"five points," borne aloft on pikeheads and torchlight
meetings, is there. Chartism is one of the most natural
phenomena in England. Not that Chartism now exists should
provoke wonder; but that the invited hungry people should
have sat eight years at such table of the Barmecide, patiently
expecting somewhat from the Name of a Reform Ministry,
and not till after eight years have grown hopeless, this is
the respectable side of the miracle.
CHAPTER X
IMPOSSIBLE
"But what are we to do? " exclaims the practical man,
impatiently on every side: "Descend from speculation and
the safe pulpit, down into the rough market-place, and say
what can be done I" -- O practical man, there seem very
many things which practice and true manlike effort, in
Parliament and out of it, might actually avail to do. But
the first of all things, as already said, is to gird thyself up
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
227
for actual doing; to know that thou actually either must do,
or, as the Irish say, " come out of that! "
It is not a lucky word this same impossible: no good
comes of those that have it so often in their mouth. Who
is he that says always, There is a lion in the way? Sluggard,
thou must slay the lion, then; the way has to be travelled!
In Art, in Practice, innumerable critics will demonstrate that
most things are henceforth impossible; that we are got, once
for all, into the region of perennial commonplace, and must
contentedly continue there. Let such critics demonstrate;
it is the nature of them: what harm is in it? Poetry once
well demonstrated to be impossible, arises the Burns, arises
the Goethe. Unheroic commonplace being now clearly all
we have to look for, comes the Napoleon, comes the con-
quest of the world. It was proved by fluxionary calculus,
that steamships could never get across the farthest point
of Ireland to the nearest of Newfoundland: impelling force,
resisting force, maximum here, minimum there; by law of
Nature, and geometric demonstration:--what could be done?
The Great Western could weigh anchor from Bristol Port;
that could be done. The Great Western, bounding safe
through the gullets of the Hudson, threw her cable out on the
capstan of New York, and left our still moist paper-demon-
stration to dry itself at leisure. "Impossible? " cried
Mirabeau to his secretary, " Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot,
Never name to me that blockhead of a word! "
There is a phenomenon which one might call Paralytic
Radicalism, in these days; which gauges with Statistic
measuring-reed, sounds with Philosophic Politico-Economic
plummet the deep dark sea of troubles; and having taught
us rightly what an infinite sea of troubles it is, sums-up with
the practical inference, and use of consolation, That nothing
whatever can be done in it by man, who has simply to sit still,
and look wistfully to " time and general laws: " and there-
upon, without so much as recommending suicide, coldly
takes its leave of us. Most paralytic, uninstructive; unpro-
ductive of any comfort to one! They are an unreasonable
class who cry, " Peace, peace," when there is no peace. But
what kind of class are they who cry, " Peace, peace, have I
not told you that there is no peace! " Paralytic Radicalism,
frequent among those Statistic friends of ours, is one of the
most afflictive phenomena the mind of man can be called to
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 228 Carlyle's Essays
contemplate. One prays that it at least might cease. Let
Paralysis retire into secret places, and dormitories proper
for it; the public highways ought not to be occupied by people
demonstrating that motion is impossible. Paralytic;--and
also, thank Heaven,' entirely false! Listen to a thinker
of another sort: "All evil, and this evil too, is as a nightmare;
the instant you begin to stir under it, the evil is, properly
speaking, gone. " Consider, O reader, whether it be not
actually so? Evil, once manfully fronted, ceases to be evil;
there is generous battle-hope in place of dead passive misery;
the evil itself has become a kind of good.
To the practical man, therefore, we will repeat that he has,
as the first thing he can " do," to gird himself up for actual
doing; to know well that he is either there to do, or not there
at all. Once rightly girded up, how many things will present
themselves as doable which now are not attemptable! Two
things, great things, dwell, for the last ten years, in all think-
ing heads in England; and are hovering, of late, even on the
tongues of not a few. With a word on each of these, we will
dismiss the practical man, and right gladly take ourselves into
obscurity and silence again. Universal Education is the first
great thing we mean; general Emigration is the second.
Who would suppose that Education were a thing which
had to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, or in-
deed on any ground? As if it stood not on the basis of ever-
lasting duty, as a prime necessity of man. It is a thing that
should need no advocating; much as it does actually need.
To impart the gift of thinking to those who cannot think, and
yet who could in that case think: this, one would imagine,
was the first function a government had to set about dis-
charging. Were it not a cruel thing to see, in any province
of an empire, the inhabitants living all mutilated in their
limbs, each strong man with his right arm lamed? How
much cruder to find the strong soul, with its eyes still sealed,
its eyes extinct so that it sees not! Light has come into the
world, but to this poor peasant it has come in vain. For
six thousand years the Sons of Adam, in sleepless effort, have
been devising, doing, discovering; in mysterious infinite
indissoluble communion, warring, a little band of brothers,
against the great black empire of Necessity and Night; they
have accomplished such a conauest and conquests: and to
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
229
this man it is all as if it had not been. The four-and-twenty
letters of the Alphabet are still Runic enigmas to him. He
passes by on the other side; and that great Spiritual King-
dom, the toilwom conquest of his own brothers, all that his
brothers have conquered, is a thing non-extant for him. An
invisible empire; he knows it not, suspects it not. And is
it not his withal; the conquest of his own brothers, the
lawfully acquired possession of all men? Baleful enchant-
ment lies over him, from generation to generation; he knows
not that such an empire is his, that such an empire is at all.
O, what are bills of rights, emancipations of black slaves into
black apprentices, lawsuits in chancery for some short usu-
fruct of a bit of land? The grand " seedfield of Time " is this
man's, and you give it him not. Time's seedfield, which
includes the Earth and all her seedfields and pearl-oceans,
nay her sowers too and pearl-divers, all that was wise and
heroic and victorious here below; of which the Earth's
centuries are but as furrows, for it stretches forth from the
Beginning onward even into this Day!
"My inheritance, how lordly wide and fair;
Time is my fair seedfield, to Time I'm heir! "--
Heavier wrong is not done under the sun. It lasts from
year to year, from century to century; the blinded sire slaves
himself out, and leaves a blinded son; and men, made in the
image of God, continue as two-legged beasts of labour;--and
in the largest empire of the world, it is a debate whether a
small fraction of the Revenue of one Day (? 30,000 is but that)
shall, after Thirteen Centuries, be laid out on it, or not laid
out on it. Have we Governors, have we Teachers; have we
had a Church these thirteen hundred years? What is an
Overseer of souls, an Archoverseer, Archiepiscopus? Is he
something? If so, let him lay his hand on his heart, and say
what thing!
But quitting all that, of which the human soul cannot well
speak in terms of civility, let us observe now that Education
is not only an eternal duty, but has at length become even a
temporary and ephemeral one, which the necessities of the
hour will oblige us to look after. These Twenty-four million
labouring men, if their affairs remain unregulated, chaotic,
will burn ricks and mills; reduce us, themselves and the
world into ashes and ruin. Simply their affairs cannot
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 230 Carlyle's Essays
remain unregulated, chaotic; but must be regulated, brought
into some kind of order. What intellect were able to regulate
them? The intellect of a Bacon, the energy of a Luther, if
left to their own strength, might pause in dismay before such
a task; a Bacon and Luther added together, to be perpetual
prime minister over us, could not do it. No one great and
greatest intellect can do it. What can? Only Twenty-four
million ordinary intellects, once awakened into action; these,
well presided over, may. Intellect, insight, is the discernment
of order in disorder; it is the discovery of the will of Nature,
of God's will; the beginning of the capability to walk accord-
ing to that. With perfect intellect, were such possible
without perfect morality, the world would be perfect; its
efforts unerringly correct, its results continually successful,
its condition faultless. Intellect is like light; the Chaos
becomes a World under it: fiat lux. These Twenty-four
million intellects are but common intellects; but they are
intellects; in earnest about the matter, instructed each
about his own province of it; labouring each perpetually,
with what partial light can be attained, to bring such province
into rationality. From the partial determinations and their
conflict springs the universal. Precisely what quantity of
intellect was in the Twenty-four millions will be exhibited
by the result they arrive at; that quantity and no more.
Accordingfas there was intellect or no intellect in the indivi-
duals, will the general conclusion they make-out embody
itself as a world-healing Truth and Wisdom, or as a baseless
fateful Hallucination, a Chimsera breathing hot fabulous fire!
Dissenters call for one scheme of Education, the Church
objects; this party objects, and that; there is endless objec-
tion, by him and by her and by it: a subject encumbered with
difficulties on every side! Pity that difficulties exist; that
Religion, of all things, should occasion difficulties. We do
not extenuate them: in their reality they are considerable;
in their appearance and pretension, they are insuperable,
heart-appalling to all Secretaries of the Home Department.
For, in very truth, how can Religion be divorced from
Education? An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge; may
be a development of the logical or other handicraft faculty
inward or outward; but is no culture of the soul of a man.
A knowledge that ends in barren self-worship, comparative
indifference or contempt for all God's Universe except one
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
insignificant item thereof, what is it? Handicraft develop-
ment, and even shallow as handicraft. Nevertheless is
handicraft itself, and the habit of the merest logic, nothing?
It is already something; it is the indispensable beginning of
everything! Wise men know it to be an indispensable
something; not yet much; and would so gladly superadd
to it the element whereby it may become all. Wise men
would not quarrel in attempting this; they would lovingly
cooperate in attempting it.
"And now how teach religion? " so asks the indignant
Ultra-radical, cited above; an Ultra-radical seemingly not
of the Benthamee species, with whom, though his dialect is
far different, there are sound Churchmen, we hope, who have
some fellow-feeling: "How teach religion? By plying with
liturgies, catechisms, credos; droning thirty-nine or other
articles incessantly into the infant ear? Friends! In that
case, why not apply to Birmingham, and have Machines
made, and set-up at all street-corners, in highways and
byways, to repeat and vociferate the same, not ceasing night
or day? The genius of Birmingham is adequate to that.
Albertus Magnus had a leather man that could articulate;
not to speak of Martinus Scriblerus' Niirnberg man that
could reason as well as we know who! Depend upon it,
Birmingham can make machines to repeat liturgies and
articles; to do whatsoever feat is mechanical. And what
were all schoolmasters, nay all priests and churches, com-
pared with this Birmingham Iron Church! Votes of two
millions in aid of the Church were then something. You
order, at so many pounds a-head, so many thousand iron
parsons as your grant covers; and fix them by satisfactory
masonry in all quarters wheresoever wanted, to preach
there independent of the world. In loud thoroughfares, still
more in unawakened districts, troubled with argumentative
infidelity, you make the windpipes wider, strengthen the main
steam-cylinder; your parson preaches, to the due pitch, while
you give him coal; and fears no man or thing. Here were
,a ' Church-extension;' to which I, with my last penny, did
I believe in it, would subscribe.
"Ye blind leaders of the blind! Are we Calmucks, that
pray by turning of a rotatory calabash with written prayers
in it? Is Mammon and machinery the means of converting
human souls, as of spinning cotton? Is God, as Jean Paul
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 232 Carlyle's Essays
predicted it would be, become verily a Force; the ^Ether too
a Gas! Alas, that Atheism should have got the length ol
putting on priests' vestments, and penetrating into the sanc-
tuary itself! Can dronings of articles, repetitions of liturgies
and all the cash and contrivance of Birmingham and the Bank
of England united bring ethereal fire into a human soul,
quicken it out of earthly darkness into heavenly wisdom?
Soul is kindled only by soul. To ' teach' religion, the first
thing needful, and also the last and the only thing, is finding
of a man who has religion. All else follows from this, church-
building, church-extension, whatever else is needful follows:
without this nothing will follow. "
From which we for our part conclude that the method oi
teaching religion to the English people is still far behindhand:
that the wise and pious may well ask themselves in silence
wistfully, " How is that last priceless element, by which edu-
cation becomes perfect, to be superadded? " and the unwise
who think themselves pious, answering aloud, "By this
method, By that method," long argue of it to small purpose.
But now, in the mean time, could not, by some fit official
person, some fit announcement be made, in words well-
weighed, in plan well-schemed, adequately representing the
facts of the thing, That after thirteen centuries of waiting,
he the official person, and England with him, was minded now
to have the mystery of the Alphabetic Letters imparted to
all human souls in this realm? Teaching of religion was a
thing he could not undertake to settle this day; it would be
work for a day after this; the work of this day was teaching
of the alphabet to all people. The miraculous art of reading
and writing, such seemed to him the needful preliminary of all
teaching, the first corner-stone of what foundation soever
could be laid for what edifice soever, in the teaching kind.
Let pious Churchism make haste, let pious Dissenterism make
haste, let all pious preachers and missionaries make haste,
bestir themselves according to their zeal and skill: he the
official person stood up for the Alphabet; and was even
impatient for it, having waited thirteen centuries now. He
insisted, and would take no denial, postponement, promise,
excuse or subterfuge, That all English persons should be
taught to read. He appealed to all rational Englishmen,
of all creeds, classes and colours, Whether this was not a fair
demand; nay whether it was not an indispensable one in
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
233
these days, Swing and Chartism having risen? For a choice
of inoffensive Hornbooks, and Schoolmasters able to teach
reading, he trusted the mere secular sagacity of a National
Collective Wisdom, in proper committee, might be found
sufficient. He purposed to appoint such Schoolmasters, to
venture on the choice of such Hornbooks; to send a School-
master and Hornbook into every township, parish and
hamlet of England; so that, in ten years hence, an English-
man who could not read might be acknowledged as the
monster, which he really is!
This official person's plan we do not give. The thing lies
there, with the facts of it, and with the appearances or sham-
facts of it; a plan adequately representing the facts of the
thing could by human energy be struck out, does lie there for
discovery and striking out. It is his, the official person's
duty, not ours, to mature a plan. We can believe that
Churchism and Dissenterism would clamour aloud; but yet
that in the mere secular Wisdom of Parliament a perspicacity
equal to the choice of Hornbooks might, in very deed, be
found to reside. England we believe would, if consulted,
resolve to that effect. Alas, grants of a half-day's revenue
once in the thirteen centuries for such an object, do not call-
out the voice of England, only the superficial clamour of
England! Hornbooks unexceptionable to the candid portion
of England, we will believe, might be selected. Nay, we can
conceive that Schoolmasters fit to teach reading might, by a
board of rational men, whether from Oxford or Hoxton, or
from both or neither of these places, be pitched upon. We
can conceive even, as in Prussia, that a penalty, civil dis-
abilities, that penalties and disabilities till they were found
effectual, might be by law inflicted on every parent who did
not teach his children to read, on every man who had not
been taught to read. We can conceive, in fine, such is the
vigour of our imagination, there might be found in England,
at a dead-lift, strength enough to perform this miracle, and
produce it henceforth as a miracle done: the teaching of
England to read! Harder things, we do know, have been
performed by nations before now, not abler-looking than
England.
Ah me! if by some beneficent chance, there should be an
official man found in England who could and would, with
deliberate courage, after ripe counsel, with candid insight, with
n 704 q
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 234 Carlyle's Essays
patience, practical sense, knowing realities to be real, knowing
clamours to be clamorous and to seem real, propose this
thing, and the innumerable things springing from it,--woe to
any Churchism or any Dissenterism that cast itself athwart
the path of that man! Avaunt, ye gainsayers! is darkness
and ignorance of the Alphabet necessary for you? Reconcile
yourselves to the Alphabet, or depart elsewhither! --Would
not all that has genuineness in England gradually rally round
such a man; all that has strength in England? For
realities alone have strength; wind-bags are wind; cant is
cant, leave it alone there. Nor are all cjamours momentous;
among living creatures, we find, the loudest is the longest-
eared; among lifeless things, the loudest is the drum, the
emptiest. Alas, that official persons, and all of us, had not
eyes to see what was real, what was merely chimerical, and
thought or called itself real! How many dread minatory
Castle-spectres should we leave there, with their admonishing
right-hand and ghastly-burning saucer-eyes, to do simply
whatsoever they might find themselves able to do! Alas,
that we were not real ourselves; we should otherwise have
surer vision for the real. Castle-spectres, in their utmost
terror, are but poor mimicries of that real and most real
terror which lies in the Life of every Man: that, thou coward,
is the thing to be afraid of, if thou wilt live in fear. It is but
the scratch of a bare bodkin; it is but the flight of a few days
of time; and even thou, poor palpitating featherbrain, wilt
find how real it is. Eternity: hast thou heard of that? Is
that a fact, or is it no fact? Are Buckingham House and St.
Stephen's in that, or not in that?
But now we have to speak of the second great thing: Emi-
gration. It was said above, all new epochs, so convulsed
'and tumultuous to look upon, are " expansions," increase of
faculty not yet organised. It is eminently true of the con-
fusions of this time of ours. Disorganic Manchester afflicts
us with its Chartisms; yet is not spinning of clothes for the
naked intrinsically a most blessed thing? Manchester once
organic will bless and not afflict. The confusions, if we would
understand them, are at bottom mere increase which we
know not yet how to manage; "new wealth which the old
coffers will not hold. " How true is this, above all, of
the strange phenomenon called " over-population! " Over-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
235
population is the grand anomaly, which is bringing all other
anomalies to a crisis. Now once more, as at the end of the
Roman Empire, a most confused epoch and yet one of the
greatest, the Teutonic Countries find themselves too full.
On a certain western rim of our small Europe, there are more
men than were expected. Heaped up against the western
shore there, and for a couple of hundred miles inward,
the "tide of population" swells too high, and confuses
itself somewhat. Over-population? And yet, if this small
western rim of Europe is overpeopled, does not everywhere
else a whole vacant Earth, as it were, call to us, Come and
till me, come and reap me! Can it be an evil that in an Earth
such as ours there should be new Men? Considered as
mercantile commodities, as working machines, is there in
Birmingham or out of it a machine of such value? "Good
Heavens! a white European Man, standing on his two legs,
with his two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and
miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth something con-
siderable, one would say! " The stupid black African man
brings money in the market; the much stupider four-footed
horse brings money;--it is we that have not yet learned the
art of managing our white European man!
The controversies on Malthus and the "Population Prin-
ciple," "Preventive check," and so forth, with which the
public ear has been deafened for a long while, are indeed suffi-
ciently mournful. Dreary, stolid, dismal, without hope for
this world or the next, is all that of the preventive check
and the denial of the preventive check. Anti-Malthusians
quoting their Bible against palpable facts are not a pleasant
spectacle. On the other hand, how often have we read in
Malthusian benefactors of the species: "The working people
have their condition in their own hands; let them diminish
the supply of labourers, and of course the demand and the
remuneration will increase! " Yes, let them diminish the
supply: but who are they? They are twenty-four millions
of human individuals, scattered over a hundred and eighteen
thousand square miles of space and more; weaving, delving,
hammering, joinering; each unknown to his neighbour; each
distinct within his own skin. They are not a kind of character
that can take a resolution, and act on it, very readily. Smart
Sally in our alley proves all-too fascinating to brisk Tom in
yours: can Tom be called on to make pause, and calculate
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 236 Carlyle's Essays
the demand for labour in the British Empire first? Nay, if
Tom did renounce his highest blessedness of life, and struggle
and conquer like a Saint Francis of Assisi, what would it
profit him or us? Seven millions of the finest peasantry do
not renounce, but proceed all the more briskly; and with
blue-visaged Hibernians instead of fair Saxon Tomsons and
Sallysons, the latter end of that country is worse than
the beginning. O wonderful Malthusian prophets! Millen-
niums are undoubtedly coming, must come one way or the
other: but will it be, think you, by twenty millions of working
people simultaneously striking work in that department;
passing, in universal trades-union, a resolution not to beget
any more till the labour-market become satisfactory? By
Day and Night! they were indeed irresistible so; not to be
compelled by law or war; might make their own terms with
the richer classes, and defy the world!
A shade more rational is that of those other benefactors of
the species, who counsel that in each parish, in some central
locality, instead of the Parish Clergyman, there might be
established some Parish Exterminator; or say a Reservoir of
Arsenic, kept up at the public expense, free to all parishioners;
for which Church the rates probably would not be grudged.
--Ah, it is bitter jesting on such a subject. One's heart is
sick to look at the dreary chaos, and valley of Jehosaphat,
scattered with the limbs and souls of one's fellow-men; and
no divine voice, only creaking of hungry vultures, inarticulate
bodeful ravens, horn-eyed parrots that do articulate, pro-
claiming, Let these bones live!
Dante's Divina Commedia is called the mournfulest of
books: transcendent mistemper of the noblest soul; utter-
ance of a boundless, godlike, unspeakable, implacable sorrow
and protest against the world. But in Holywell Street, not
long ago, we bought, for three-pence, a book still mournfuler;
the Pamphlet of one "Marcus," whom his poor Chartist
editor and republisher calls the "Demon Author. " This
Marcus Pamphlet was the book alluded to by Stephens the
Preacher Chartist, in one of his harangues: it proves to be
no fable that such a book existed; here it lies, " Printed by
John Hill, Black-horse Court, Fleet Street, and now reprinted
for the instruction of the labourer, by William Dugdale,
Holywell Street, Strand," the exasperated Chartist editor
who sells it you for three-pence. We have read Marcus; but
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Chartism
237
his sorrow is not divine. We hoped he would turn out to
have been in sport: ah no, it is grim earnest with him; grim
as very death. Marcus is not a demon author at all: he is a
benefactor of the species in his own kind; has looked intensely
on the world's woes, from a Benthamee-Malthusian watch-
tower, under a Heaven dead as iron; and does now, with
much Iongwindedness, in a drawling, snuffling, circuitous,
extremely dull, yet at bottom handfast and positive manner,
recommend that all children of working people, after the
third, be disposed of by "painless extinction. " Charcoal-
vapour and other methods exist. The mothers would consent,
might be made to consent. Three children might be left
1 living; or perhaps, for Marcus's calculations are not yet
perfect, two and a half. There might be "beautiful ceme-
teries with colonnades and flower-plots," in which the patriot
infanticide matrons might delight to take their evening walk
of contemplation: and reflect what patriotesses they were,
what a cheerful flowery world it was.
Such is the scheme of Marcus; this is what he, for his share,
could devise to heal the world's woes. A benefactor of
the species, clearly recognisable as such: the saddest scientific
mortal we have ever in this world fallen in with; sadder even
than poetic Dante. His is a rco-godlike sorrow; sadder than
the godlike. The Chartist editor, dull as he, calls him demon
author, and a man set-on by the Poor-Law Commissioners.
What a black, godless, waste-struggling world, in this once
merry England of ours, do such pamphlets and such editors
betoken! Laissez-faire and Malthus, Malthus and Laissez-
faire: ought not these two at length to part company? Might
we not hope that both of them had as good as delivered their
message now, and were about to go their ways?
For all this of the " painless extinction," and the rest, is in
a world where Canadian Forests stand unfelled, boundless
Plains and Prairies unbroken with the plough; on the west
and on the east green desert spaces never yet made white with
corn; and to the overcrowded little western nook of Europe,
- our Terrestrial Planet, nine-tenths of it yet vacant or tenanted
by nomades, is still crying, Come and till me, come and reap
me! And in an England with wealth, and means for moving,
such as no nation ever before had. With ships; with war-
ships rotting idle, which, but bidden move and not rot, might
bridge all oceans. With trained men, educated to pen and
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 238 Carlylc's Essays
practise, to administer and act; briefless Barristers, charge
less Clergy, taskless Scholars, languishing in all court-houses,
hiding in obscure garrets, besieging all antechambers, in
passionate want of simply one thing, Work;--with as many
Half-pay Officers of both Services, wearing themselves down
in wretched tedium, as might lead an Emigrant host larger
than Xerxes' was! Laissez-faire and Malthus positively
must part company. Is it not as if this swelling, simmering,
never-resting Europe of ours stood, once more, on the verge
of an expansion without parallel; struggling, struggling like
a mighty tree again about to burst in the embrace of summer,
and shoot forth broad frondent boughs which would fill the
whole earth? A disease; but the noblest of all,--as of her
who is in pain and sore travail, but travails that she may be
a mother, and say, Behold, there is a new Man born!
"True, thou Gold-Hofrath," exclaims an eloquent satiri-
cal German of our acquaintance, in that strange Book of
his,1 "True, thou Gold-Hofrath: too crowded indeed!
Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable Terraqueous
Globe have ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no
more? How thick stands your population in the Pampas
and Savannas of America; round ancient Carthage, and in
the interior of Africa; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in
the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim
Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, in one year,
as I have understood it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself
and nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics I
of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, when their
home is grown too narrow, will enlist and, like fire-pillars,
guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living
Valour; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and war-
chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare? Where
are they? --Preserving their Game! "
1 Sartor Resartus, People's Edition, p. 159.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? COUNT CAGLIOSTRO
IN TWO FLIGHTS1;
[1833]
FLIGHT FIRST
"The life of every man," says our friend Herr Sauerteig, "the
life even of the meanest man, it were good to remember, is a
Poem; perfect in all manner of Aristotelean requisites; with
beginning, middle and end; with perplexities, and solutions;
with its Will-strength (Willenkraft) and warfare against Fate,
its elegy and battle-singing, courage marred by crime, every-
where the two tragic elements of Pity and Fear; above all,
with supernatural machinery enough,--for was not the man
born out of Nonentity; did he not die, and miraculously
vanishing return thither? The most indubitable Poem!
Nay, whoso will, may he not name it a Prophecy, or whatever
else is highest in his vocabulary; since only in Reality lies the
essence and foundation of all that was ever fabled, visioned,
sung, spoken, or babbled by the human species; and the
actual Life of Man includes in it all Revelations, true and
false, that have been, are, or are to be. Man! I say there-
fore, reverence thy fellow-man. He too issued from Above;
is mystical and supernatural (as thou namest it): this know
thou of a truth. Seeing also that we ourselves are of so high
Authorship, is not that, in very deed, ' the highest Rever-
ence,' and most needful for us: 'Reverence for oneself'?
"Thus, to my view, is every Life, more properly is every
Man that has life to lead, a small strophe, or occasional verse,
. composed by the Supernal Powers; and published, in such
type and shape, with such embellishments, emblematic head-
piece and tail-piece as thou seest, to the thinking or un-
thinking Universe. Heroic strophes some few are; full of
force and a sacred fire, so that to latest ages the hearts of
1 Fraser's Magazine, Nos. 43, 44 (July and August).
239
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 240 Carlyle's Essays
those that read therein are made to tingle. Jeremiads others
seem; mere weeping laments, harmonious or disharmoni-
ous Remonstrances against Destiny; whereat we too may
sometimes profitably weep. Again, have we not flesh-and-
blood strophes of the idyllic sort,--though in these days
rarely, owing to Poor-Laws, Game-Laws, Population-Theories
and the like! Farther, of the comic laughter-loving sort:
yet ever with an unfathomable earnestness, as is fit, lying
underneath: for, bethink thee, what is the mirthfulest
grinning face of any Grimaldi, but a transitory mask, behind
which quite otherwise grins--the most indubitable Death's-
head I However, I say farther, there are strophes of the
pastoral sort (as in Ettrick, Afghaunistan, and elsewhere);
of the farcic-tragic, melodramatic, of all named and a thou-
sand unnamable sorts there are poetic strophes, written, as
was said, in Heaven, printed on Earth, and published (bound
in woollen cloth, or clothes) for the use of the studious.
Finally, a small number seem utter Pasquils, mere ribald
libels on Humanity: these too, however, are at times worth
reading.
"In this wise," continues our too obscure friend, " out of
all imaginable elements, awakening all imaginable moods of
heart and soul, ' barbarous enough to excite, tender enough
to assuage,' ever contradictory yet ever coalescing, is that
mighty world-old Rhapsodia of Existence page after page
(generation after generation), and chapter (or epoch) after
chapter, poetically put together! This is what some one
names ' the grand sacred Epos, or Bible of World-History;
infinite in meaning as the Divine Mind it emblems; wherein
he is wise that can read here a line, and there a line. '
"Remark too, under another aspect, whether it is not in
this same Bible of World-History that all men, in all times,
with or without clear consciousness, have been unwearied to
read, what we may call read; and again to write, or rather to
be written I What is all History, and all Poesy, but a
deciphering somewhat thereof, out of that mystic heaven-
written Sanscrit; and rendering it into the speech of men?
Know thyself, value thyself, is a moralist's commandment
(which I only half approve of); but Know others, value
others, is the hest of Nature herself. Or again, Work while it
is called To-day : is not that also the irreversible law of being
for mortal man? And now, what is all working, what is all
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? Count Cagliostro
cnowing, but a faint interpreting and a faint showing-forth
>f that same Mystery of Life, which ever remains infinite,--
leaven-written mystic Sanscrit? View it as we will, to him
:hat lives, Life is a divine matter; felt to be of quite sacred
iignificance. Consider the wretchedest 'straddling biped
;hat wears breeches ' of thy acquaintance; into whose wool-
iead, Thought, as thou rashly supposest, never entered;
who, in froth-element of business, pleasure, or what else he
lames it, walks forever in a vain show; asking not Whence,
yr Why, or Whither; looking up to Heaven above as if some
jpholsterer had made it, and down to the Hell beneath as if
he had neither part nor lot there: yet tell me, does not he
too, over and above his five finite senses, acknowledge some
sixth infinite sense, were it only that of Vanity? For, sate
him in the other five as you may, will this sixth sense leave
him rest? Does he not rise early and sit late, and study
impromptus, and (in constitutional countries) parliamentary
motions, and bursts of eloquence, and gird himself in whale-
bone, and pad himself and perk himself, and in all ways
painfully take heed to his goings; feeling (if we must admit
it) that an altogether infinite endowment has been intrusted
him also, namely, a Life to lead? Thus does he too, with
his whole force, in his own way, proclaim that the world-old
Rhapsodia of Existence is divine, and an inspired Bible;
and, himself a wondrous verse therein (be it heroic, be it
pasquillic), study with his whole soul, as we said, both to
read and to be written I
"Here also I will observe, that the manner in which men
read this same Bible is, like all else, proportionate to their
stage of culture, to the circumstances of their environment.
First, and among the earnest Oriental nations, it was read
wholly like a Sacred Book; most clearly by the most earnest,
those wondrous Hebrew Readers; whose reading accordingly
was itself sacred, has meaning for all tribes of mortal men;
since ever, to the latest generation of the world, a true utter-
ance from the innermost of man's being will speak signifi-
tantly to man. But, again, in how different a style was that
other Oriental reading of the Magi; of Zerdusht, or whoever
it was that first so opened the matter? Gorgeous semi-
sensual Grandeurs and Splendours: on infinite darkness,
brightest-glowing light and fire;--of which, all defaced by
Time, and turned mostly into lies, a quite late reflex, in
I
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-12-21 07:22 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015012169135 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 242 Carlyle's Essays
those Arabian Tales and the like, still leads captive every
heart. Look, thirdly, at the earnest West, and that Conse-
cration of the Flesh, which stept forth life-lusty, radiant
smiling-earnest, in immortal grace, from under the chisel and
the stylus of old Greece. Here too was the Infinite intelligibly
proclaimed as infinite: and the antique man walked between
a Tartarus and an Elysium, his brilliant Paphos-islet 0!
Existence embraced by boundless oceans of sadness anc
fateful gloom.
