Heroes and Hero Worship

T >> Thomas Carlyle >> Heroes and Hero Worship

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At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely destructive
to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent as the basis of all
possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One often hears it said
that Protestantism introduced a new era, radically different from any the
world had ever seen before: the era of "private judgment," as they call
it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man became his own Pope; and
learnt, among other things, that he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual
Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and
subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility? So we hear it
said.--Now I need not deny that Protestantism was a revolt against
spiritual sovereignties, Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that
English Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second
act of it; that the enormous French Revolution itself was the third act,
whereby all sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might seem,
abolished or made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from
which our whole subsequent European History branches out. For the
spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the
spiritual is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry
is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth; instead
of _Kings_, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages: it seems made out that
any Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal
or things spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should
despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions is,
that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and
spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hatefulest of things.
But I find Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to
be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be a
revolt against _false_ sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first
preparative for _true_ sovereigns getting place among us! This is worth
explaining a little.

Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of "private
judgment" is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at that
epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar in the
Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition to
Falsehood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine Teaching
are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will consider it,
must at all times have existed in the world. Dante had not put out his
eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in that Catholicism of
his, a free-seeing soul in it,--if many a poor Hogstraten, Tetzel, and Dr.
Eck had now become slaves in it. Liberty of judgment? No iron chain, or
outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe
or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his;
he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of God alone! The sorriest
sophistical Bellarmine, preaching sightless faith and passive obedience,
must first, by some kind of _conviction_, have abdicated his right to be
convinced. His "private judgment" indicated that, as the advisablest step
_he_ could take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in full
force, wherever true men subsist. A true man _believes_ with his whole
judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has
always so believed. A false man, only struggling to "believe that he
believes," will naturally manage it in some other way. Protestantism said
to this latter, Woe! and to the former, Well done! At bottom, it was no
new saying; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had been said. Be
genuine, be sincere: that was, once more, the meaning of it. Mahomet
believed with his whole mind; Odin with his whole mind,--he, and all _true_
Followers of Odinism. They, by their private judgment, had "judged
"--_so_.

And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment,
faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish
independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite of
that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error,
insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting
against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that
believe in truth. There is no communion possible among men who believe
only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has no power of
sympathy even with _things_,--or he would believe _them_ and not hearsays.
No sympathy even with things; how much less with his fellow-men! He cannot
unite with men; he is an anarchic man. Only in a world of sincere men is
unity possible;--and there, in the long-run, it is as good as _certain_.

For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather
altogether lost sight of in this controversy: That it is not necessary a
man should himself have _discovered_ the truth he is to believe in, and
never so _sincerely_ to believe in. A Great Man, we said, was always
sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man need not be great in
order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of Nature and all Time, but
only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can believe, and
make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received from
another;--and with boundless gratitude to that other! The merit of
_originality_ is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the
original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for
another. Every son of Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in
this sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole ages, what
we call ages of Faith, are original; all men in them, or the most of men in
them, sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages: every worker, in
all spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on substance; every work
issues in a result: the general sum of such work is great; for all of it,
as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of it is _additive_, none of it
subtractive. There is true union, true kingship, loyalty, all true and
blessed things, so far as the poor Earth can produce blessedness for men.

Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or
what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing him
to reverence and believe other men's truth! It only disposes, necessitates
and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men's dead formulas,
hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes open, and
because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he can love
his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right gratitude and
genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has delivered him out of
darkness into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and Serpent-queller;
worthy of all reverence! The black monster, Falsehood, our one enemy in
this world, lies prostrate by his valor; it was he that conquered the world
for us!--See, accordingly, was not Luther himself reverenced as a true
Pope, or Spiritual Father, _being_ verily such? Napoleon, from amid
boundless revolt of Sansculottism, became a King. Hero-worship never dies,
nor can die. Loyalty and Sovereignty are everlasting in the world:--and
there is this in them, that they are grounded not on garnitures and
semblances, but on realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes,
your "private judgment;" no, but by opening them, and by having something
to see! Luther's message was deposition and abolition to all false Popes
and Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to new genuine
ones.

All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so
forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a
final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments
for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the
pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. In all ways, it behooved
men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it might, that did
behoove to be done. With spurious Popes, and Believers having no private
judgment,--quacks pretending to command over dupes,--what can you do?
Misery and mischief only. You cannot make an association out of insincere
men; you cannot build an edifice except by plummet and level,--at
right-angles to one another! In all this wild revolutionary work, from
Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest result preparing itself: not
abolition of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a whole World of
Heroes. If Hero mean _sincere man_, why may not every one of us be a Hero?
A world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been; the like will
again be,--cannot help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers for
Heroes: never could the truly Better be so reverenced as where all were
True and Good!--But we must hasten to Luther and his Life.

Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he came into the world there on
the 10th of November, 1483. It was an accident that gave this honor to
Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-laborers in a village of that region,
named Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in the tumult of this
scene the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge in some poor
house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN LUTHER. Strange enough
to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with her husband
to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had
been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or
household; in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely
unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet
what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was
born here, once more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon
over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its
history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great. It leads us
back to another Birth-hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen Hundred
years ago,--of which it is fit that we _say_ nothing, that we think only in
silence; for what words are there! The Age of Miracles past? The Age of
Miracles is forever here!--

I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function in this Earth, and
doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence presiding over him
and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought up poor, one of
the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the school-children in those times
did; singing for alms and bread, from door to door. Hardship, rigorous
Necessity was the poor boy's companion; no man nor no thing would put on a
false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among things, not among the shows of
things, had he to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet with weak health, with
his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and sensibility, he suffered
greatly. But it was his task to get acquainted with _realities_, and keep
acquainted with them, at whatever cost: his task was to bring the whole
world back to reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance! A youth
nursed up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that
he may step forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true
man, as a god: a Christian Odin,--a right Thor once more, with his
thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough _Jotuns_ and Giant-monsters!

Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death of
his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had
struggled up through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite of all
hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father judging
doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him upon the
study of Law. This was the path to rise; Luther, with little will in it
either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of age. Alexis and
he had been to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt; were got back again
near Erfurt, when a thunder-storm came on; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell
dead at Luther's feet. What is this Life of ours?--gone in a moment, burnt
up like a scroll, into the blank Eternity! What are all earthly
preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships? They lie shrunk together--there!
The Earth has opened on them; in a moment they are not, and Eternity is.
Luther, struck to the heart, determined to devote himself to God and God's
service alone. In spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he
became a Monk in the Augustine Convent at Erfurt.

This was probably the first light-point in the history of Luther, his purer
will now first decisively uttering itself; but, for the present, it was
still as one light-point in an element all of darkness. He says he was a
pious monk, _ich bin ein frommer Monch gewesen_; faithfully, painfully
struggling to work out the truth of this high act of his; but it was to
little purpose. His misery had not lessened; had rather, as it were,
increased into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to do, as novice in his
Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance: the deep earnest
soul of the man had fallen into all manner of black scruples, dubitations;
he believed himself likely to die soon, and far worse than die. One hears
with a new interest for poor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror
of the unspeakable misery; fancied that he was doomed to eternal
reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature of the man? What was
he, that he should be raised to Heaven! He that had known only misery, and
mean slavery: the news was too blessed to be credible. It could not
become clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a
man's soul could be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness; had to
wander staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair.

It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible
which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen
the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and
vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. Luther
learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite
grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got himself
founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had
brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest
must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that; as through
life and to death he firmly did.

This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over
darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important of
all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness; that,
unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should
rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found more and
more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was
sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity
fit to do their business well: the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named the
Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a valuable
person; made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg, Preacher
too at Wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this
Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining more and more
esteem with all good men.

It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome; being sent
thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second,
and what was going on at Rome, must have filled the mind of Luther with
amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of God's High-priest
on Earth; and he found it--what we know! Many thoughts it must have given
the man; many which we have no record of, which perhaps he did not himself
know how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false priests, clothed not in
the beauty of holiness, but in far other vesture, is _false_: but what is
it to Luther? A mean man he, how shall he reform a world? That was far
from his thoughts. A humble, solitary man, why should he at all meddle
with the world? It was the task of quite higher men than he. His business
was to guide his own footsteps wisely through the world. Let him do his
own obscure duty in it well; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is
in God's hand, not in his.

It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had Roman Popery
happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in its great wasteful orbit, and
not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault it! Conceivable
enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace about the abuses of
Rome; left Providence, and God on high, to deal with them! A modest quiet
man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons in authority. His clear
task, as I say, was to do his own duty; to walk wisely in this world of
confused wickedness, and save his own soul alive. But the Roman
High-priesthood did come athwart him: afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther,
could not get lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to
extremity; was struck at, struck again, and so it came to wager of battle
between them! This is worth attending to in Luther's history. Perhaps no
man of so humble, peaceable a disposition ever filled the world with
contention. We cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, quiet
diligence in the shade; that it was against his will he ever became a
notoriety. Notoriety: what would that do for him? The goal of his march
through this world was the Infinite Heaven; an indubitable goal for him:
in a few years, he should either have attained that, or lost it forever!
We will say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of
its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the
Dominican, that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the
Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it, if
indeed any such exist now: Get first into the sphere of thought by which
it is so much as possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther,
otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you.

The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by Leo
Tenth,--who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest seems
to have been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was
anything,--arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade there.
Luther's flock bought Indulgences; in the confessional of his Church,
people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned.
Luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard
and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground that was his
own and no other man's, had to step forth against Indulgences, and declare
aloud that _they_ were a futility and sorrowful mockery, that no man's sins
could be pardoned by _them_. It was the beginning of the whole
Reformation. We know how it went; forward from this first public challenge
of Tetzel, on the last day of October, 1517, through remonstrance and
argument;--spreading ever wider, rising ever higher; till it became
unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. Luther's heart's desire was to
have this grief and other griefs amended; his thought was still far other
than that of introducing separation in the Church, or revolting against the
Pope, Father of Christendom.--The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about
this Monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to have done with the noise
of him: in a space of some three years, having tried various softer
methods, he thought good to end it by _fire_. He dooms the Monk's writings
to be burnt by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to
Rome,--probably for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended with
Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss:
he came to that Constance Council, with all imaginable promises and
safe-conducts; an earnest, not rebellious kind of man: they laid him
instantly in a stone dungeon "three feet wide, six feet high, seven feet
long;" _burnt_ the true voice of him out of this world; choked it in smoke
and fire. That was _not_ well done!

I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against the Pope.
The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble just
wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. The bravest, if also
one of the humblest, peaceablest; it was now kindled. These words of mine,
words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as human inability would
allow, to promote God's truth on Earth, and save men's souls, you, God's
vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman and fire? You will burn me
and them, for answer to the God's-message they strove to bring you? You
are not God's vicegerent; you are another's than his, I think! I take your
Bull, as an emparchmented Lie, and burn _it_. _You_ will do what you see
good next: this is what I do.--It was on the 10th of December, 1520, three
years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, "with a great
concourse of people," took this indignant step of burning the Pope's
fire-decree "at the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg." Wittenberg looked on "with
shoutings;" the whole world was looking on. The Pope should not have
provoked that "shout"! It was the shout of the awakening of nations. The
quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at length got more than it
could bear. Formulism, Pagan Popeism, and other Falsehood and corrupt
Semblance had ruled long enough: and here once more was a man found who
durst tell all men that God's-world stood not on semblances but on
realities; that Life was a truth, and not a lie!

At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet
Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of
great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours are wood; you
put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not God, I tell
you, they are black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of yours
that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It is
nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone can
pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God's Church, is that a
vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? It is an awful fact. God's Church
is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand on this,
since you drive me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German Monk am
stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on God's Truth;
you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories,
thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and are not so
strong!--

The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521,
may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the
point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilization
takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come
to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany,
Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there:
Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not.
The world's pomp and power sits there on this hand: on that, stands up for
God's Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans Luther's Son. Friends had
reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he would not be advised. A
large company of friends rode out to meet him, with still more earnest
warnings; he answered, "Were there as many Devils in Worms as there are
roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall
of the Diet, crowded the windows and house-tops, some of them calling out
to him, in solemn words, not to recant: "Whosoever denieth me before men!"
they cried to him,--as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it
not in reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in
dark bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral Nightmare and
triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: "Free
us; it rests with thee; desert us not!"

Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself
by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could
lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His
writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of
God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded
anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him
could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the
Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he? "Confute me," he
concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I
cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught
against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist me!"--It
is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History of Men. English
Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two
centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present:
the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had
all been otherwise! The European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever
lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or,
with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and
live?--

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