Heroes and Hero Worship

T >> Thomas Carlyle >> Heroes and Hero Worship

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

"We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!"

One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the _Outer_ Garden, central seat of
Jotun-land), is remarkable in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and
Loke. After various adventures, they entered upon Giant-land; wandered
over plains, wild uncultivated places, among stones and trees. At
nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed formed one
whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple
habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly
in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them. Thor grasped his
hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within ran
hither and thither in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall;
they found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had
Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it turned out that the noise had
been only the _snoring_ of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the
Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this that they took
for a house was merely his _Glove_, thrown aside there; the door was the
Glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the Thumb! Such a
glove;--I remark too that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a
thumb, and the rest undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove!

Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his own
suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put an
end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down into the
Giant's face a right thunder-bolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant
merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? Again Thor
struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before; but the
Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand? Thor's third stroke was
with both his hands (the "knuckles white" I suppose), and seemed to dint
deep into Skrymir's visage; but he merely checked his snore, and remarked,
There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they
have dropt?--At the gate of Utgard, a place so high that you had to "strain
your neck bending back to see the top of it," Skrymir went his ways. Thor
and his companions were admitted; invited to take share in the games going
on. To Thor, for his part, they handed a Drinking-horn; it was a common
feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and fiercely,
three times over, Thor drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a
weak child, they told him: could he lift that Cat he saw there? Small as
the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not; he bent up
the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, could at the
utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; there
is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this
haggard Old Woman; but could not throw her.

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escorting them politely
a little way, said to Thor: "You are beaten then:--yet be not so much
ashamed; there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn you tried to
drink was the _Sea_; you did make it ebb; but who could drink that, the
bottomless! The Cat you would have lifted,--why, that is the _Midgard-
snake_, the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up
the whole created world; had you torn that up, the world must have rushed
to ruin! As for the Old Woman, she was _Time_, Old Age, Duration: with
her what can wrestle? No man nor no god with her; gods or men, she
prevails over all! And then those three strokes you struck,--look at these
_three valleys_; your three strokes made these!" Thor looked at his
attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir;--it was, say Norse critics, the old
chaotic rocky _Earth_ in person, and that glove-_house_ was some
Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high gates,
when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only the
Giant's voice was heard mocking: "Better come no more to Jotunheim!"--

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the
prophetic and entirely devout: but as a mythus is there not real antique
Norse gold in it? More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in
many a famed Greek Mythus _shaped_ far better! A great broad Brobdignag
grin of true humor is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and
sadness, as the rainbow on black tempest: only a right valiant heart is
capable of that. It is the grim humor of our own Ben Jonson, rare old Ben;
runs in the blood of us, I fancy; for one catches tones of it, under a
still other shape, out of the American Backwoods.

That is also a very striking conception that of the _Ragnarok_,
Consummation, or _Twilight of the Gods_. It is in the _Voluspa_ Song;
seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine
Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory
by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel;
World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength; mutually extinctive;
and ruin, "twilight" sinking into darkness, swallows the created Universe.
The old Universe with its Gods is sunk; but it is not final death: there
is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; a higher supreme God, and Justice to
reign among men. Curious: this law of mutation, which also is a law
written in man's inmost thought, had been deciphered by these old earnest
Thinkers in their rude style; and how, though all dies, and even gods die,
yet all death is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater
and the Better! It is the fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of
Time, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it; may
still see into it.

And now, connected with this, let us glance at the _last_ mythus of the
appearance of Thor; and end there. I fancy it to be the latest in date of
all these fables; a sorrowing protest against the advance of
Christianity,--set forth reproachfully by some Conservative Pagan. King
Olaf has been harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing Christianity;
surely I should have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that! He
paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of his Pagan people, in
battle, in the year 1033, at Stickelstad, near that Drontheim, where the
chief Cathedral of the North has now stood for many centuries, dedicated
gratefully to his memory as _Saint_ Olaf. The mythus about Thor is to this
effect. King Olaf, the Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit escort
along the shore of Norway, from haven to haven; dispensing justice, or
doing other royal work: on leaving a certain haven, it is found that a
stranger, of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust figure,
has stept in. The courtiers address him; his answers surprise by their
pertinency and depth: at length he is brought to the King. The stranger's
conversation here is not less remarkable, as they sail along the beautiful
shore; but after some time, he addresses King Olaf thus: "Yes, King Olaf,
it is all beautiful, with the sun shining on it there; green, fruitful, a
right fair home for you; and many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight
with the rock Jotuns, before he could make it so. And now you seem minded
to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care!" said the stranger, drawing down
his brows;--and when they looked again, he was nowhere to be found.--This
is the last appearance of Thor on the stage of this world!

Do we not see well enough how the Fable might arise, without unveracity on
the part of any one? It is the way most Gods have come to appear among
men: thus, if in Pindar's time "Neptune was seen once at the Nemean
Games," what was this Neptune too but a "stranger of noble grave
aspect,"--fit to be "seen"! There is something pathetic, tragic for me in
this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the whole Norse world has
vanished; and will not return ever again. In like fashion to that, pass
away the highest things. All things that have been in this world, all
things that are or will be in it, have to vanish: we have our sad farewell
to give them.

That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impressive _Consecration
of Valor_ (so we may define it), sufficed for these old valiant Northmen.
Consecration of Valor is not a bad thing! We will take it for good, so far
as it goes. Neither is there no use in _knowing_ something about this old
Paganism of our Fathers. Unconsciously, and combined with higher things,
it is in us yet, that old Faith withal! To know it consciously, brings us
into closer and clearer relation with the Past,--with our own possessions
in the Past. For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of
the Present; the Past had always something _true_, and is a precious
possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some
other _side_ of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself.
The actual True is the sum of all these; not any one of them by itself
constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know
them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you
specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!"
answers the other: "To all the Three; for they by their union first
constitute the True Religion."

[May 8, 1840.]
LECTURE II.
THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM.

From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North,
we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different
people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and
progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men!

The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellowmen; but as one
God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship: the
first or oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; in the history
of the world there will not again be any man, never so great, whom his
fellowmen will take for a god. Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set of
human beings ever really think the man they _saw_ there standing beside
them a god, the maker of this world? Perhaps not: it was usually some man
they remembered, or _had_ seen. But neither can this any more be. The
Great Man is not recognized henceforth as a god any more.

It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a god. Yet let
us say that it is at all times difficult to know _what_ he is, or how to
account of him and receive him! The most significant feature in the
history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man. Ever,
to the true instincts of men, there is something godlike in him. Whether
they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall take
him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering that,
we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of these
men's spiritual condition. For at bottom the Great Man, as he comes from
the hand of Nature, is ever the same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson,
Burns; I hope to make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff;
that only by the world's reception of them, and the shapes they assume, are
they so immeasurably diverse. The worship of Odin astonishes us,--to fall
prostrate before the Great Man, into _deliquium_ of love and wonder over
him, and feel in their hearts that he was a denizen of the skies, a god!
This was imperfect enough: but to welcome, for example, a Burns as we did,
was that what we can call perfect? The most precious gift that Heaven can
give to the Earth; a man of "genius" as we call it; the Soul of a Man
actually sent down from the skies with a God's-message to us,--this we
waste away as an idle artificial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and
sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality: _such_ reception of a Great
Man I do not call very perfect either! Looking into the heart of the
thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon,
betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the
Scandinavian method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning _deliquium_ of
love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational
supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!--It is a thing forever
changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do
well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one
may say, is to do it well.

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we
are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do
esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any
of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is
the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what _he_ meant
with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a
more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he
was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere
mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one.
The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are
disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the
proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's
ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there
was no proof! It is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man
spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred and eighty millions of
men these twelve hundred years. These hundred and eighty millions were
made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in
Mahomet's word at this hour, than in any other word whatever. Are we to
suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which
so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my
part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner
than that. One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at
all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here.

Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge
of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They
are the product of an Age of Scepticism: they indicate the saddest
spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless
theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a
religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know
and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else be
works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not
stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will
fall straightway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, _be_ verily
in communion with Nature and the truth of things, or Nature will answer
him, No, not at all! Speciosities are specious--ah me!--a Cagliostro, many
Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their quackery, for a
day. It is like a forged bank-note; they get it passed out of _their_
worthless hands: others, not they, have to smart for it. Nature bursts up
in fire-flames, French Revolutions and such like, proclaiming with terrible
veracity that forged notes are forged.

But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it is
incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the primary
foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau,
Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of
all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say
_sincerity_, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic
of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere;
ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed;--a shallow braggart conscious
sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great Man's sincerity is of
the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is
conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the
law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself
sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would
say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being
sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he
cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made;
he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life,
real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its
truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image
glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!--I wish you to take this as
my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is
competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without
it.

Such a man is what we call an _original_ man; he comes to us at first-hand.
A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. We may
call him Poet, Prophet, God;--in one way or other, we all feel that the
words he utters are as no other man's words. Direct from the Inner Fact of
things;--he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that. Hearsays
cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless, miserable, following
hearsays; _it_ glares in upon him. Really his utterances, are they not a
kind of "revelation;"--what we must call such for want of some other name?
It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the
primal reality of things. God has made many revelations: but this man
too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The "inspiration
of the Almighty giveth him understanding:" we must listen before all to
him.

This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and
Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive him
so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest
confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not false, nor
his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of Life
cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To _kindle_ the world; the
world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections,
insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against
him, shake this primary fact about him.

On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide
the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is
to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think,
might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own
heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest
crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and
ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say,
seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward
details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations,
true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? "It is not
in man that walketh to direct his steps." Of all acts, is not, for a man,
_repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same
supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that is death; the heart so
conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is
"pure" as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for
us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of
a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever
discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what
is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into
entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance,
true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's
walking, in truth, always that: "a succession of falls"? Man can do no
other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now
fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart,
he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle _be_
a faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of questions. We will
put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true. Details by
themselves will never teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate
Mahomet's faults even as faults: but the secret of him will never be got
by dwelling there. We will leave all this behind us; and assuring
ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or
might be.

These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people. Their
country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage
inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful
strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty;
odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. Consider that
wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing
habitable place from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with
the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable
radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such a country is
fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is something most
agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character.
The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs
Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong
feelings, and of iron restraint over these: the characteristic of
noble-mindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his
tent, as one having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he
will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for
three days, will set him fairly on his way;--and then, by another law as
sacred, kill him if he can. In words too as in action. They are not a
loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when they do
speak. An earnest, truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish
kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem
to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had
"Poetic contests" among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at
Ocadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the
merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes:--the wild people gathered to
hear that.

One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high
qualities: what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been
zealous worshippers, according to their light. They worshipped the stars,
as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,--recognized them as symbols,
immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; and yet
not wholly wrong. All God's works are still in a sense symbols of God. Do
we not, as I urged, still account it a merit to recognize a certain
inexhaustible significance, "poetic beauty" as we name it, in all natural
objects whatsoever? A man is a poet, and honored, for doing that, and
speaking or singing it,--a kind of diluted worship. They had many
Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each to his tribe, each according to the
light he had. But indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs,
still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and noble-mindedness
had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? Biblical critics seem agreed
that our own _Book of Job_ was written in that region of the world. I call
that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever
written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a
noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns
in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our first, oldest statement of
the never-ending Problem,--man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in
this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity,
in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There
is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So _true_ every way;
true eyesight and vision for all things; material things no less than
spiritual: the Horse,--"hast thou clothed his neck with _thunder_?"--he
"_laughs_ at the shaking of the spear!" Such living likenesses were never
since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody
as of the heart of mankind;--so soft, and great; as the summer midnight, as
the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in
the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.--

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20