Heroes and Hero Worship
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Thomas Carlyle >> Heroes and Hero Worship
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But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and lay to heart, that he
who discerns nothing but Mechanism in the Universe has in the fatalest way
missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all Godhood should
vanish out of men's conception of this Universe seems to me precisely the
most brutal error,--I will not disparage Heathenism by calling it a Heathen
error,--that men could fall into. It is not true; it is false at the very
heart of it. A man who thinks so will think _wrong_ about all things in
the world; this original sin will vitiate all other conclusions he can
form. One might call it the most lamentable of Delusions,--not forgetting
Witchcraft itself! Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil; but this
worships a dead iron Devil; no God, not even a Devil! Whatsoever is noble,
divine, inspired, drops thereby out of life. There remains everywhere in
life a despicable _caput-mortuum_; the mechanical hull, all soul fled out
of it. How can a man act heroically? The "Doctrine of Motives" will teach
him that it is, under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love of
Pleasure, fear of Pain; that Hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever
victual it may be, is the ultimate fact of man's life. Atheism, in
brief;--which does indeed frightfully punish itself. The man, I say, is
become spiritually a paralytic man; this godlike Universe a dead mechanical
steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, balances, and I know not
what; wherein, as in the detestable belly of some Phalaris'-Bull of his own
contriving, he the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying!
Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's mind. It is a mysterious
indescribable process, that of getting to believe;--indescribable, as all
vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and
argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and
understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act.
Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch
up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All manner of
doubt, inquiry, [Gr.] _skepsis_ as it is named, about all manner of
objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the
mind, on the object it is _getting_ to know and believe. Belief comes out
of all this, above ground, like the tree from its hidden _roots_. But now
if, even on common things, we require that a man keep his doubts _silent_,
and not babble of them till they in some measure become affirmations or
denials; how much more in regard to the highest things, impossible to speak
of in words at all! That a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that
debating and logic (which means at best only the manner of _telling_ us
your thought, your belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and
true work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should
_overturn_ the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves and fruits, show
us ugly taloned roots turned up into the air,--and no growth, only death
and misery going on!
For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also;
a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing
something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for
him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can button in
his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than
that he will not get. We call those ages in which he gets so low the
mournfulest, sickest and meanest of all ages. The world's heart is
palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? Genuine Acting ceases in
all departments of the world's work; dexterous Similitude of Acting begins.
The world's wages are pocketed, the world's work is not done. Heroes have
gone out; Quacks have come in. Accordingly, what Century, since the end of
the Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and
universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth? Consider
them, with their tumid sentimental vaporing about virtue, benevolence,--the
wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them! Few men were
without quackery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and
amalgam for truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham himself, comes down to the
House, all wrapt and bandaged; he "has crawled out in great bodily
suffering," and so on;--_forgets_, says Walpole, that he is acting the sick
man; in the fire of debate, snatches his arm from the sling, and
oratorically swings and brandishes it! Chatham himself lives the strangest
mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all along. For indeed the world is
full of dupes; and you have to gain the _world's_ suffrage! How the duties
of the world will be done in that case, what quantities of error, which
means failure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to many, will
gradually accumulate in all provinces of the world's business, we need not
compute.
It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world's
maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. An insincere world; a
godless untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, that the
whole tribe of social pestilences, French Revolutions, Chartisms, and what
not, have derived their being,--their chief necessity to be. This must
alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. My one hope of
the world, my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of the
world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find a man
who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plausibility and
Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the
world is alive, instinct with Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the
beginning of days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by
and by come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever will take the
_spectacles_ off his eyes and honestly look, to know! For such a man the
Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed Products, is already past; a new
century is already come. The old unblessed Products and Performances, as
solid as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this
and the other noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole world
huzzaing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: Thou art not
_true_; thou art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!--Yes, hollow
Formulism, gross Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is
visibly and even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is
but an exception,--such as now and then occurs. I prophesy that the world
will once more become _sincere_; a believing world; with _many_ Heroes in
it, a heroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then.
Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men speak too much about
the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be
victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One
Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us
forevermore! It were well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, but
as wise and realities. The world's being saved will not save us; nor the
world's being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is
great merit here in the "duty of staying at home"! And, on the whole, to
say truth, I never heard of "world's" being "saved" in any other way. That
mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its
windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of the
_world_ I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world; and look a
little to my own saving, which I am more competent to!--In brief, for the
world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism,
Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and
as good as gone.--
Now it was under such conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our Men
of Letters had to live. Times in which there was properly no truth in
life. Old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying
to speak. That Man's Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact, and would
forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world, had
yet dawned. No intimation; not even any French Revolution,--which we
define to be a Truth once more, though a Truth clad in hell-fire! How
different was the Luther's pilgrimage, with its assured goal, from the
Johnson's, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible,
unintelligible! Mahomet's Formulas were of "wood waxed and oiled," and
could be burnt out of one's way: poor Johnson's were far more difficult to
burn.--The strong man will ever find _work_, which means difficulty, pain,
to the full measure of his strength. But to make out a victory, in those
circumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more
difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganization, Bookseller
Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his
own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is
that to having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of
those Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly is the highest
praise. With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living
victorious Heroes, as I said, the Tombs of three fallen Heroes! They fell
for us too; making a way for us. There are the mountains which they hurled
abroad in their confused War of the Giants; under which, their strength and
life spent, they now lie buried.
I have already written of these three Literary Heroes, expressly or
incidentally; what I suppose is known to most of you; what need not be
spoken or written a second time. They concern us here as the singular
_Prophets_ of that singular age; for such they virtually were; and the
aspect they and their world exhibit, under this point of view, might lead
us into reflections enough! I call them, all three, Genuine Men more or
less; faithfully, for most part unconsciously, struggling to be genuine,
and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of things. This to a degree
that eminently distinguishes them from the poor artificial mass of their
contemporaries; and renders them worthy to be considered as Speakers, in
some measure, of the everlasting truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs.
By Nature herself a noble necessity was laid on them to be so. They were
men of such magnitude that they could not live on unrealities,--clouds,
froth and all inanity gave way under them: there was no footing for them
but on firm earth; no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not
footing there. To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nature once more in
an age of Artifice; once more, Original Men.
As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our
great English souls. A strong and noble man; so much left undeveloped in
him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not have been,--Poet,
Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not complain of his
"element," of his "time," or the like; it is thriftless work doing so. His
time is bad: well then, he is there to make it better!--Johnson's youth
was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem
possible that, in any the favorablest outward circumstances, Johnson's life
could have been other than a painful one. The world might have had more of
profitable _work_ out of him, or less; but his _effort_ against the world's
work could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for his
nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element of diseased sorrow. Nay,
perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably
connected with each other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about
girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a
Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots in on him dull
incurable misery: the Nessus'-shirt not to be stript off, which is his own
natural skin! In this manner _he_ had to live. Figure him there, with his
scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of
thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring
what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely
grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was
in all England; and provision made for it of "fourpence-halfpenny a day."
Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story
of the shoes at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor
stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn out; how the
charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and
the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim
eyes, with what thoughts,--pitches them out of window! Wet feet, mud,
frost, hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary!
Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused
misery and want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of
the man's life, this pitching away of the shoes. An original man;--not a
second-hand, borrowing or begging man. Let us stand on our own basis, at
any rate! On such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and mud, if you
will, but honestly on that;--on the reality and substance which Nature
gives _us_, not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than
us!--
And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self-help, was there ever
soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really
higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to
what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a
better proof of what I said the other day, That the sincere man was by
nature the obedient man; that only in a World of Heroes was there loyal
Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of _originality_ is not that it be
_new_: Johnson believed altogether in the old; he found the old opinions
credible for him, fit for him; and in a right heroic manner lived under
them. He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that
Johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man
of truths and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for
him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that _he_ could stand by,
there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that
poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries,
Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe glared in, forever wonderful,
indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he
harmonized his Formulas with it, how he managed at all under such
circumstances: that is a thing worth seeing. A thing "to be looked at
with reverence, with pity, with awe." That Church of St. Clement Danes,
where Johnson still _worshipped_ in the era of Voltaire, is to me a
venerable place.
It was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort
from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that
Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects "artificial"? Artificial
things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly
_shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of
them, _true_. What we call "Formulas" are not in their origin bad; they
are indispensably good. Formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man
is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways,
leading toward some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent.
Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds out a way
of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the
Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was
needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought
that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that;
these are his footsteps, the beginning of a "Path." And now see: the
second men travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the
_easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements,
with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the
Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a
broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there
remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end,
the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake
the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things
in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas
all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the
articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is
already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said,
are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's
heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant
withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and
will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this
world.--
Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his "sincerity." He has no
suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly
anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls
himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to
starve, but to live--without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him.
He does not "engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;" no, but he stands by
truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it
once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first
of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable
of being _in_sincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a
Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of
Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it
or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand
and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; unrecognized, because never
questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon:
all the Great Men I ever heard of have this as the primary material of
them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere
their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at
second-hand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have
truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. How shall he stand otherwise?
His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no
standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of
thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I
recognize the everlasting element of _heart-sincerity_ in both; and see
with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is
as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seedfield will
_grow_.
Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all
like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a
kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little
is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching.
"A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not sink
yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched
god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: how
could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and
taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great
Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the
cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn
shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, I
call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest
perhaps that was possible at that time.
Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now as
it were disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's
opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of
living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books
the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart;--ever
welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are
_sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram
style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping
or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now;
sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents
of it: all this you will put up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not,
has always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with
_nothing_ in them;--a man is a malefactor to the world who writes such!
_They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his
_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man.
Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty,
insight and successful method, it may be called the best of all
Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.
One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He passes
for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. Yet
the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The
foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time,
approaching in such awe-struck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue
in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for Excellence; a
_worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were
surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain
worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of
the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if
so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's: that his soul, namely, is
a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal
stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets
sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a _Grand-
Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his
king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head
fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a
Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of _Hero_ to do
that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as in other senses, is for
most part want of such.
On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration was well
bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of
bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson too,
that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely; led it _well_, like
a right valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste
chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and
life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body
and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly
without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave
all need to have: with his eye set on that, he would change his course for
nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. "To the
Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in nowise strike his
flag." Brave old Samuel: _ultimus Romanorum_!
Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He is not what I call a
strong man. A morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather
than strong. He had not "the talent of Silence," an invaluable talent;
which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in!
The suffering man ought really "to consume his own smoke;" there is no good
in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into _fire_,--which, in the
metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming! Rousseau has not
depth or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first characteristic of
true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity
strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men
cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without
staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, especially in these
loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves of that. A man who cannot _hold
his peace_, till the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man.
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