Heroes and Hero Worship
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Thomas Carlyle >> Heroes and Hero Worship
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Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this Reformation;
which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and
crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable;
but after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems
strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules
turned the purifying river into King Augeas's stables, I have no doubt the
confusion that resulted was considerable all around: but I think it was
not Hercules's blame; it was some other's blame! The Reformation might
bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation simply could
not help coming. To all Popes and Popes' advocates, expostulating,
lamenting and accusing, the answer of the world is: Once for all, your
Popehood has become untrue. No matter how good it was, how good you say it
is, we cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk by
from Heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not
believe it, we will not try to believe it,--we dare not! The thing is
_untrue_; we were traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst
pretend to think it true. Away with it; let whatsoever likes come in the
place of it: with _it_ we can have no farther trade!--Luther and his
Protestantism is not responsible for wars; the false Simulacra that forced
him to protest, they are responsible. Luther did what every man that God
has made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do:
answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, Dost thou believe me?--No!--At
what cost soever, without counting of costs, this thing behooved to be
done. Union, organization spiritual and material, a far nobler than any
Popedom or Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the
world; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum,
will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded
on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have
anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave
is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one!
And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let us
not be unjust to the Old. The Old was true, if it no longer is. In
Dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, to
get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there is in the soul of it
a deathless good. The cry of "No Popery" is foolish enough in these days.
The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new chapels and so
forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very curious: to
count up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant
logic-choppings,--to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls
itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is _dead_; Popeism is more
alive than it, will be alive after it!--Drowsy inanities, not a few, that
call themselves Protestant are dead; but _Protestantism_ has not died yet,
that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced
its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the French Revolution;
rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive
_but_ Protestantism? The life of most else that one meets is a galvanic
one merely,--not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life!
Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery
cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,--_which_ also still lingers
in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with the
ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on
the beach; for _minutes_ you cannot tell how it is going; look in half an
hour where it is,--look in half a century where your Popehood is! Alas,
would there were no greater danger to our Europe than the poor old Pope's
revival! Thor may as soon try to revive.--And withal this oscillation has
a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor has
done, for some time yet; nor ought it. We may say, the Old never dies till
this happen, Till all the soul of good that was in it have got itself
transfused into the practical New. While a good work remains capable of
being done by the Romish form; or, what is inclusive of all, while a pious
_life_ remains capable of being led by it, just so long, if we consider,
will this or the other human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of
it. So long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we
in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then,
but also not till then, it will have no charm more for any man. It lasts
here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can.--
Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, the
noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued living.
The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. To me it
is proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find
a man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who does not himself perish,
swept away in it! Such is the usual course of revolutionists. Luther
continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution; all
Protestants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him for
guidance: and he held it peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. A
man to do this must have a kingly faculty: he must have the gift to
discern at all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant
himself courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may
rally round him there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise.
Luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts, of
_silence_, of tolerance and moderation, among others, are very notable in
these circumstances.
Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes what
is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as it will.
A complaint comes to him that such and such a Reformed Preacher "will not
preach without a cassock." Well, answers Luther, what harm will a cassock
do the man? "Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him have three
cassocks if he find benefit in them!" His conduct in the matter of
Karlstadt's wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the Peasants' War,
shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic violence. With sure
prompt insight he discriminates what is what: a strong just man, he speaks
forth what is the wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther's
Written Works give similar testimony of him. The dialect of these
speculations is now grown obsolete for us; but one still reads them with a
singular attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still
legible enough; Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest: his
dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written,
these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other
than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust,
genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged
honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He
dashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to
cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender
affection, nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He
had to _work_ an Epic Poem, not write one. I call him a great Thinker; as
indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that.
Richter says of Luther's words, "His words are half-battles." They may be
called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and
conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valor. No more valiant man, no
mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever lived in
that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valor. His defiance of the
"Devils" in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken.
It was a faith of Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of
the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this
turns up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the
room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show
you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these
conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was worn down with
long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food: there rose before him
some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid
his work: Luther started up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at
the spectre, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious
monument of several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us
what we are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense: but the
man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell itself, can
give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before
exists not on this Earth or under it.--Fearless enough! "The Devil is
aware," writes he on one occasion, "that this does not proceed out of fear
in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George," of
Leipzig, a great enemy of his, "Duke George is not equal to one
Devil,"--far short of a Devil! "If I had business at Leipzig, I would ride
into Leipzig, though it rained Duke Georges for nine days running." What a
reservoir of Dukes to ride into!--
At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage was
ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many do. Far
from that. There may be an absence of fear which arises from the absence
of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. We
do not value the courage of the tiger highly! With Luther it was far
otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this of mere ferocious
violence brought against him. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity and
love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger before a
_stronger_ foe--flies: the tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce
and cruel. I know few things more touching than those soft breathings of
affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this great wild heart of
Luther. So honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their
utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all
that down-pressed mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his
youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too
keen and fine? It is the course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fall
into. Luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man;
modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him.
It is a noble valor which is roused in a heart like this, once stirred up
into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze.
In Luther's _Table-Talk_, a posthumous Book of anecdotes and sayings
collected by his friends, the most interesting now of all the Books
proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the
man, and what sort of nature he had. His behavior at the death-bed of his
little Daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most affecting
things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, yet longs
inexpressibly that she might live;--follows, in awe-struck thought, the
flight of her little soul through those unknown realms. Awe-struck; most
heartfelt, we can see; and sincere,--for after all dogmatic creeds and
articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can know: His
little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills; for Luther too that is
all; _Islam_ is all.
Once, he looks out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle of Coburg, in the
middle of the night: The great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds
sailing through it,--dumb, gaunt, huge:--who supports all that? "None ever
saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." God supports it. We must
know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we cannot
see.--Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the
harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper
stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there,--the meek Earth, at
God's kind bidding, has produced it once again; the bread of man!--In the
garden at Wittenberg one evening at sunset, a little bird has perched for
the night: That little bird, says Luther, above it are the stars and deep
Heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little wings; gone trustfully to
rest there as in its home: the Maker of it has given it too a
home!--Neither are mirthful turns wanting: there is a great free human
heart in this man. The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness,
idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic
tints. One feels him to be a great brother man. His love of Music,
indeed, is not this, as it were, the summary of all these affections in
him? Many a wild unutterability he spoke forth from him in the tones of
his flute. The Devils fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the
one hand, and such love of music on the other; I could call these the two
opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had
room.
Luther's face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach's best portraits I
find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face; with its huge crag-like brows
and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a repulsive face.
Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild silent sorrow; an unnamable
melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the
rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this Luther, as we said;
but tears also were there. Tears also were appointed him; tears and hard
toil. The basis of his life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days,
after all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself heartily weary of
living; he considers that God alone can and will regulate the course things
are taking, and that perhaps the Day of Judgment is not far. As for him,
he longs for one thing: that God would release him from his labor, and let
him depart and be at rest. They understand little of the man who cite this
in discredit of him!--I will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in
intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and
precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain,--so
simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there for
quite another purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite,
piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains,
green beautiful valleys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet;
once more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries, and
many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven.
The most interesting phasis which the Reformation anywhere assumes,
especially for us English, is that of Puritanism. In Luther's own country
Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a religion or
faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat
of it not the heart; the essence of it sceptical contention: which indeed
has jangled more and more, down to Voltaireism itself,--through
Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onwards to French-Revolution ones! But in
our Island there arose a Puritanism, which even got itself established as a
Presbyterianism and National Church among the Scotch; which came forth as a
real business of the heart; and has produced in the world very notable
fruit. In some senses, one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism
that ever got to the rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with
Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a few
words for Knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more
important as Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to be, of
the Faith that became Scotland's, New England's, Oliver Cromwell's.
History will have something to say about this, for some time to come!
We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose, but
would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may
understand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has adopted it, and it
has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by wager-of-battle in
this world; that _strength_, well understood, is the measure of all worth.
Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a right thing. Look now at
American Saxondom; and at that little Fact of the sailing of the Mayflower,
two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in Holland! Were we of open sense
as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem here; one of Nature's own Poems,
such as she writes in broad facts over great continents. For it was
properly the beginning of America: there were straggling settlers in
America before, some material as of a body was there; but the soul of it
was first this. These poor men, driven out of their own country, not able
well to live in Holland, determine on settling in the New World. Black
untamed forests are there, and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as
Star-chamber hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if
they tilled honestly; the everlasting heaven would stretch, there too,
overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living
well in this world of Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not
the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small means together; hired a ship,
the little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail.
In Neal's _History of the Puritans_ [Neal (London, 1755), i. 490] is an
account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it
rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with
them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; all
joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor children, and
go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He was
there also as well as here.--Hah! These men, I think, had a work! The
weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true
thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can
manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and sinews; it has
firearms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten fingers, strength in its
right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove mountains;--it is one
of the strongest things under this sun at present!
In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one epoch: we may
say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by
Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions,
massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution; little
better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce barons, not so much
as able to form any arrangement with each other _how to divide_ what they
fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics
are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of
changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a
historical spectacle of no very singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I
doubt not; fierce fighting in abundance: but not braver or fiercer than
that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors; _whose_ exploits we have
not found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul:
nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And now
at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the
ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes
kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable
from Earth;--whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a
Member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true
man!
Well; this is what I mean by a whole "nation of heroes;" a _believing_
nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a
god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great
soul! The like has been seen, we find. The like will be again seen, under
wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good done till
then.--Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not _been_, in this world,
as a practiced fact? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox's case? Or are we made
of other clay now? Did the Westminster Confession of Faith add some new
property to the soul of man? God made the soul of man. He did not doom
any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with
such, and with the fatal work and fruit of such!--
But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really
call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it
was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On
the whole, cheap at any price!--as life is. The people began to _live_:
they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch
Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter
Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's
core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the
Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism
of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High
Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all
these realms;--there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we all
call the "_Glorious_ Revolution" a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments,
and much else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men in the
van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz,
and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them
dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes,
poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry
places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured,
_bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over
them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal
three-times-three!
It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three hundred
years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsically
for having been, in such way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of
all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched
into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had not been delivered; and
Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all
others, his country and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that
Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million
"unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to
the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in
clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his windows; had a right
sore fighting life: if this world were his place of recompense, he had
made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for Knox. To him it is
very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years or more, what men say
of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and
living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own sake,
ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man, into
the man himself.
For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was
not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he
became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a college
education; become a Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well
content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding
it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families; preaching
when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk
by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of
more; not fancying himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way
he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who
were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle,--when one day in their chapel,
the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the
forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that
all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to
speak;--which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name
of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, appealing to all the audience:
what then is _his_ duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a
criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him
silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand up; he attempted to reply; he could
say no word;--burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth
remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He
felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a
baptism he was called to be baptized withal. He "burst into tears."
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