Latter Day Pamphlets
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Thomas Carlyle >> Latter Day Pamphlets
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As for the Priest, though his trade was clearly of a reading and
speaking nature, he knew also in those veracious times that
grammar, if needful, was by no means the one thing needful, or
the chief thing. By far the chief thing needful, and indeed the
one thing then as now, was, That there should be in him the
feeling and the practice of reverence to God and to men; that in
his life's core there should dwell, spoken or silent, a ray of
pious wisdom fit for illuminating dark human destinies;--not so
much that he should possess the art of speech, as that he should
have something to speak! And for that latter requisite the
Priest also trained himself by apprenticeship, by actual attempt
to practise, by manifold long-continued trial, of a devout and
painful nature, such as his superiors prescribed to him. This,
when once judged satisfactory, procured him ordination; and his
grammar-learning, in the good times of priesthood, was very much
of a parergon with him, as indeed in all times it is
intrinsically quite insignificant in comparison.
The young Noble again, for whom grammar schoolmasters were first
hired and high seminaries founded, he too without these, or above
and over these, had from immemorial time been used to learn his
business by apprenticeship. The young Noble, before the
schoolmaster as after him, went apprentice to some elder noble;
entered himself as page with some distinguished earl or duke; and
here, serving upwards from step to step, under wise monition,
learned his chivalries, his practice of arms and of courtesies,
his baronial duties and manners, and what it would beseem him to
do and to be in the world,--by practical attempt of his own, and
example of one whose life was a daily concrete pattern for him.
To such a one, already filled with intellectual substance, and
possessing what we may call the practical gold-bullion of human
culture, it was an obvious improvement that he should be taught
to speak it out of him on occasion; that he should carry a
spiritual banknote producible on demand for what of
"gold-bullion" he had, not so negotiable otherwise, stored in
the cellars of his mind. A man, with wisdom, insight and heroic
worth already acquired for him, naturally demanded of the
schoolmaster this one new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit
words what he had. A valuable superaddition of faculty:--and yet
we are to remember it was scarcely a new faculty; it was but the
tangible sign of what other faculties the man had in the silent
state: and many a rugged inarticulate chief of men, I can
believe, was most enviably "educated," who had not a Book on his
premises; whose signature, a true sign-_manual_, was the stamp of
his iron hand duly inked and clapt upon the parchment; and whose
speech in Parliament, like the growl of lions, did indeed convey
his meaning, but would have torn Lindley Murray's nerves to
pieces! To such a one the schoolmaster adjusted himself very
naturally in that manner; as a man wanted for teaching
grammatical utterance; the thing to utter being already there.
The thing to utter, here was the grand point! And perhaps this
is the reason why among earnest nations, as among the Romans for
example, the craft of the schoolmaster was held in little regard;
for indeed as mere teacher of grammar, of ciphering on the abacus
and such like, how did he differ much from the dancing-master or
fencing-master, or deserve much regard?--Such was the rule in the
ancient healthy times.
Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human
education; that the human creature needs first of all to be
educated not that he may speak, but that he may have something
weighty and valuable to say! If speech is the bank-note of an
inward capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then
speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honored. But
if there is no inward capital; if speech represent no real
culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture; no bullion, but
the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such? Alas, alas,
said bank-note is then a _forged_ one; passing freely current in
the market; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer,
and to all the world, which are in sad truth infallible, and of
amount incalculable. Few think of it at present; but the truth
remains forever so. In parliaments and other loud assemblages,
your eloquent talk, disunited from Nature and her facts, is taken
as wisdom and the correct image of said facts: but Nature well
knows what it is, Nature will not have it as such, and will
reject your forged note one day, with huge costs. The foolish
traders in the market pass freely, nothing doubting, and rejoice
in the dexterous execution of the piece: and so it circulates
from hand to hand, and from class to class; gravitating ever
downwards towards the practical class; till at last it reaches
some poor _working_ hand, who can pass it no farther, but must
take it to the bank to get bread with it, and there the answer
is, "Unhappy caitiff, this note is forged. It does not mean
performance and reality, in parliaments and elsewhere, for thy
behoof; it means fallacious semblance of performance; and thou,
poor dupe, art thrown into the stocks on offering it here!"
Alas, alas, looking abroad over Irish difficulties, Mosaic
sweating-establishments, French barricades, and an anarchic
Europe, is it not as if all the populations of the world were
rising or had risen into incendiary madness;--unable longer to
endure such an avalanche of forgeries, and of penalties in
consequence, as had accumulated upon them? The speaker is
"excellent;" the notes he does are beautiful? Beautifully fit
for the market, yes; _he_ is an excellent artist in his
business;--and the more excellent he is, the more is my desire to
lay him by the heels, and fling _him_ into the treadmill, that I
might save the poor sweating tailors, French Sansculottes, and
Irish Sanspotatoes from bearing the smart!
For the smart must be borne; some one must bear it, as sure as
God lives. Every word of man is either a note or a forged
note:--have these eternal skies forgotten to be in earnest, think
you, because men go grinning like enchanted apes? Foolish souls,
this now as of old is the unalterable law of your existence. If
you know the truth and do it, the Universe itself seconds you,
bears you on to sure victory everywhere:--and, observe, to sure
defeat everywhere if you do not do the truth. And alas, if you
_know_ only the eloquent fallacious semblance of the truth, what
chance is there of your ever doing it? You will do something
very different from it, I think!--He who well considers, will
find this same "art of speech," as we moderns have it, to be a
truly astonishing product of the Ages; and the longer he
considers it, the more astonishing and alarming. I reckon it the
saddest of all the curses that now lie heavy on us. With horror
and amazement, one perceives that this much-celebrated "art," so
diligently practised in all corners of the world just now, is the
chief destroyer of whatever good is born to us (softly, swiftly
shutting up all nascent good, as if under exhausted glass
receivers, there to choke and die); and the grand parent
manufactory of evil to us,--as it were, the last finishing and
varnishing workshop of all the Devil's ware that circulates under
the sun. No Devil's sham is fit for the market till it have been
polished and enamelled here; this is the general assaying-house
for such, where the artists examine and answer, "Fit for the
market; not fit!" Words will not express what mischiefs the
misuse of words has done, and is doing, in these heavy-laden
generations.
Do you want a man _not_ to practise what he believes, then
encourage him to keep often speaking it in words. Every time he
speaks it, the tendency to do it will grow less. His empty
speech of what he believes, will be a weariness and an
affliction to the wise man. But do you wish his empty speech of
what he believes, to become farther an insincere speech of what
he does not believe? Celebrate to him his gift of speech; assure
him that he shall rise in Parliament by means of it, and achieve
great things without any performance; that eloquent speech,
whether performed or not, is admirable. My friends, eloquent
unperformed speech, in Parliament or elsewhere, is horrible! The
eloquent man that delivers, in Parliament or elsewhere, a
beautiful speech, and will perform nothing of it, but leaves it
as if already performed,--what can you make of that man? He has
enrolled himself among the _Ignes Fatui_ and Children of the
Wind; means to serve, as beautifully illuminated Chinese Lantern,
in that corps henceforth. I think, the serviceable thing you
could do to that man, if permissible, would be a severe one: To
clip off a bit of his eloquent tongue by way of penance and
warning; another bit, if he again spoke without performing; and
so again, till you had clipt the whole tongue away from him,--and
were delivered, you and he, from at least one miserable mockery:
"There, eloquent friend, see now in silence if there be any
redeeming deed in thee; of blasphemous wind-eloquence, at least,
we shall have no more!" How many pretty men have gone this road,
escorted by the beautifulest marching music from all the "public
organs;" and have found at last that it ended--where? It is the
_broad_ road, that leads direct to Limbo and the Kingdom of the
Inane. Gifted men, and once valiant nations, and as it were the
whole world with one accord, are marching thither, in melodious
triumph, all the drums and hautboys giving out their cheerfulest
_Ca-ira_. It is the universal humor of the world just now. My
friends, I am very sure you will _arrive_, unless you halt!--
Considered as the last finish of education, or of human culture,
worth and acquirement, the art of speech is noble, and even
divine; it is like the kindling of a Heaven's light to show us
what a glorious world exists, and has perfected itself, in a
man. But if no world exist in the man; if nothing but continents
of empty vapor, of greedy self-conceits, common-place hearsays,
and indistinct loomings of a sordid _chaos_ exist in him, what
will be the use of "light" to show us that? Better a thousand
times that such a man do not speak; but keep his empty vapor and
his sordid chaos to himself, hidden to the utmost from all
beholders. To look on that, can be good for no human beholder;
to look away from that, must be good. And if, by delusive
semblances of rhetoric, logic, first-class degrees, and the aid
of elocution-masters and parliamentary reporters, the poor
proprietor of said chaos should be led to persuade himself, and
get others persuaded,--which it is the nature of his sad task to
do, and which, in certain eras of the world, it is fatally
possible to do,--that this is a cosmos which he owns; that _he_,
being so perfect in tongue-exercise and full of college-honors,
is an "educated" man, and pearl of great price in his generation;
that round him, and his parliament emulously listening to him, as
round some divine apple of gold set in a picture of silver, all
the world should gather to adore: what is likely to become of
him and the gathering world? An apple of Sodom set in the
clusters of Gomorrah: that, little as he suspects it, is the
definition of the poor chaotically eloquent man, with his emulous
parliament and miserable adoring world!--Considered as the whole
of education, or human culture, which it now is in our modern
manners; all apprenticeship except to mere handicraft having
fallen obsolete, and the "educated man" being with us
emphatically and exclusively the man that can speak well with
tongue or pen, and astonish men by the quantities of speech he
has _heard_ ("tremendous _reader_," "walking encyclopaedia," and
such like),--the Art of Speech is probably definable in that case
as the short summary of all the Black Arts put together.
But the Schoolmaster is secondary, an effect rather than a cause
in this matter: what the Schoolmaster with his universities
shall manage or attempt to teach will be ruled by what the
Society with its practical industries is continually demanding
that men should learn. We spoke once of vital lungs for Society:
and in fact this question always rises as the alpha and omega of
social questions, What methods the Society has of summoning aloft
into the high places, for its help and governance, the wisdom
that is born to it in all places, and of course is born chiefly
in the more populous or lower places? For this, if you will
consider it, expresses the ultimate available result, and net
sum-total, of all the efforts, struggles and confused activities
that go on in the Society; and determines whether they are true
and wise efforts, certain to be victorious, or false and foolish,
certain to be futile, and to fall captive and caitiff. How do
men rise in your Society? In all Societies, Turkey included, and
I suppose Dahomey included, men do rise; but the question of
questions always is, What kind of men? Men of noble gifts, or
men of ignoble? It is the one or the other; and a life-and-death
inquiry which! For in all places and all times, little as you may
heed it, Nature most silently but most inexorably demands that it
be the one and not the other. And you need not try to palm an
ignoble sham upon her, and call it noble; for she is a judge.
And her penalties, as quiet as she looks, are terrible:
amounting to world-earthquakes, to anarchy and death
everlasting; and admit of no appeal!--
Surely England still flatters herself that she has lungs; that
she can still breathe a little? Or is it that the poor creature,
driven into mere blind industrialisms; and as it were, gone
pearl-diving this long while many fathoms deep, and tearing up
the oyster-beds so as never creature did before, hardly
knows,--so busy in the belly of the oyster chaos, where is no
thought of "breathing,"--whether she has lungs or not? Nations
of a robust habit, and fine deep chest, can sometimes take in a
deal of breath _before_ diving; and live long, in the muddy
deeps, without new breath: but they too come to need it at last,
and will die if they cannot get it!
To the gifted soul that is born in England, what is the career,
then, that will carry him, amid noble Olympic dust, up to the
immortal gods? For his country's sake, that it may not lose the
service he was born capable of doing it; for his own sake, that
his life be not choked and perverted, and his light from Heaven
be not changed into lightning from the Other Place,--it is
essential that there be such a career. The country that can
offer no career in that case, is a doomed country; nay it is
already a dead country: it has secured the ban of Heaven upon
it; will not have Heaven's light, will have the Other Place's
lightning; and may consider itself as appointed to expire, in
frightful coughings of street musketry or otherwise, on a set
day, and to be in the eye of law dead. In no country is there
not some career, inviting to it either the noble Hero, or the
tough Greek of the Lower Empire: which of the two do your
careers invite? There is no question more important. The kind of
careers you offer in countries still living, determines with
perfect exactness the kind of the life that is in them,--whether
it is natural blessed life, or galvanic accursed ditto, and
likewise what degree of strength is in the same.
Our English careers to born genius are twofold. There is the
silent or unlearned career of the Industrialisms, which are very
many among us; and there is the articulate or learned career of
the three professions, Medicine, Law (under which we may include
Politics), and the Church. Your born genius, therefore, will
first have to ask himself, Whether he can hold his tongue or
cannot? True, all human talent, especially all deep talent, is a
talent to _do_, and is intrinsically of silent nature; inaudible,
like the Sphere Harmonies and Eternal Melodies, of which it is an
incarnated fraction. All real talent, I fancy, would much
rather, if it listened only to Nature's monitions, express itself
in rhythmic facts than in melodious words, which latter at best,
where they are good for anything, are only a feeble echo and
shadow or foreshadow of the former. But talents differ much in
this of power to be silent; and circumstances, of position,
opportunity and such like, modify them still more;--and Nature's
monitions, oftenest quite drowned in foreign hearsays, are by no
means the only ones listened to in deciding!--The Industrialisms
are all of silent nature; and some of them are heroic and
eminently human; others, again, we may call unheroic, not
eminently human: _beaverish_ rather, but still honest; some are
even _vulpine_, altogether inhuman and dishonest. Your born
genius must make his choice.
If a soul is born with divine intelligence, and has its lips
touched with hallowed fire, in consecration for high enterprises
under the sun, this young soul will find the question asked of
him by England every hour and moment: "Canst thou turn thy human
intelligence into the beaver sort, and make honest contrivance,
and accumulation of capital by it? If so, do it; and avoid the
vulpine kind, which I don't recommend. Honest triumphs in
engineering and machinery await thee; scrip awaits thee,
commercial successes, kingship in the counting-room, on the
stock-exchange;--thou shalt be the envy of surrounding flunkies,
and collect into a heap more gold than a dray-horse can
draw."--"Gold, so much gold?" answers the ingenuous soul, with
visions of the envy of surrounding flunkies dawning on him; and
in very many cases decides that he will contract himself into
beaverism, and with such a horse-draught of gold, emblem of a
never-imagined success in beaver heroism, strike the surrounding
flunkies yellow.
This is our common course; this is in some sort open to every
creature, what we call the beaver career; perhaps more open in
England, taking in America too, than it ever was in any country
before. And, truly, good consequences follow out of it: who can
be blind to them? Half of a most excellent and opulent result is
realized to us in this way; baleful only when it sets up (as too
often now) for being the whole result. A half-result which will
be blessed and heavenly so soon as the other half is had,--namely
wisdom to guide the first half. Let us honor all honest human
power of contrivance in its degree. The beaver intellect, so
long as it steadfastly refuses to be vulpine, and answers the
tempter pointing out short routes to it with an honest "No, no,"
is truly respectable to me; and many a highflying speaker and
singer whom I have known, has appeared to me much less of a
developed man than certain of my mill-owning, agricultural,
commercial, mechanical, or otherwise industrial friends, who have
held their peace all their days and gone on in the silent state.
If a man can keep his intellect silent, and make it even into
honest beaverism, several very manful moralities, in danger of
wreck on other courses, may comport well with that, and give it a
genuine and partly human character; and I will tell him, in these
days he may do far worse with himself and his intellect than
change it into beaverism, and make honest money with it. If
indeed he could become a _heroic_ industrial, and have a life
"eminently human"! But that is not easy at present. Probably
some ninety-nine out of every hundred of our gifted souls, who
have to seek a career for themselves, go this beaver road.
Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, is
plentifully realized; and only the second half, or wisdom to
guide it, is dreadfully behindhand.
But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn nature, be of
vivid, impatient, rapidly productive nature, and aspire much to
give itself sensible utterance,--I find that, in this case, the
field it has in England is narrow to an extreme; is perhaps
narrower than ever offered itself, for the like object, in this
world before. Parliament, Church, Law: let the young vivid soul
turn whither he will for a career, he finds among variable
conditions one condition invariable, and extremely surprising,
That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue. For
heroism that will not speak, but only act, there is no account
kept:--The English Nation does not need that silent kind, then,
but only the talking kind? Most astonishing. Of all the organs a
man has, there is none held in account, it would appear, but the
tongue he uses for talking. Premiership, woolsack, mitre, and
quasi-crown: all is attainable if you can talk with due ability.
Everywhere your proof-shot is to be a well-fired volley of talk.
Contrive to talk well, you will get to Heaven, the modern Heaven
of the English. Do not talk well, only work well, and heroically
hold your peace, you have no chance whatever to get thither; with
your utmost industry you may get to Threadneedle Street, and
accumulate more gold than a dray-horse can draw. Is not this a
very wonderful arrangement?
I have heard of races done by mortals tied in sacks; of human
competitors, high aspirants, climbing heavenward on the soaped
pole; seizing the soaped pig; and clutching with cleft fist, at
full gallop, the fated goose tied aloft by its foot;--which feats
do prove agility, toughness and other useful faculties in man:
but this of dexterous talk is probably as strange a competition
as any. And the question rises, Whether certain of these other
feats, or perhaps an alternation of all of them, relieved now and
then by a bout of grinning through the collar, might not be
profitably substituted for the solitary proof-feat of talk, now
getting rather monotonous by its long continuance? Alas, Mr.
Bull, I do find it is all little other than a proof of toughness,
which is a quality I respect, with more or less expenditure of
falsity and astucity superadded, which I entirely condemn.
Toughness _plus_ astucity:--perhaps a simple wooden mast set up
in Palace-Yard, well soaped and duly presided over, might be the
honester method? Such a method as this by trial of talk, for
filling your chief offices in Church and State, was perhaps never
heard of in the solar system before. You are quite used to it,
my poor friend; and nearly dead by the consequences of it: but
in the other Planets, as in other epochs of your own Planet it
would have done had you proposed it, the thing awakens
incredulous amazement, world-wide Olympic laughter, which ends in
tempestuous hootings, in tears and horror! My friend, if you
can, as heretofore this good while, find nobody to take care of
your affairs but the expertest talker, it is all over with your
affairs and you. Talk never yet could guide any man's or
nation's affairs; nor will it yours, except towards the _Limbus
Patrum_, where all talk, except a very select kind of it, lodges
at last.
Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and frightful
medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from
entering, is of the _half_-articulate professions, and does not
much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect
required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by
all rules be,--the profession of the Human Healer being radically
a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or
rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and
divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one
day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic
spectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's
task is always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most
unluckily at present we find it too become in good part
_beaverish_; yielding a money-result alone. And what of it is
not beaverish,--does not that too go mainly to ingenious talking,
publishing of yourself, ingratiating of yourself; a partly human
exercise or waste of intellect, and alas a partly vulpine
ditto;--making the once sacred [Gr.] _'Iatros_, or Human Healer,
more impossible for us than ever!
Angry basilisks watch at the gates of Law and Church just now;
and strike a sad damp into the nobler of the young aspirants.
Hard bonds are offered you to sign; as it were, a solemn
engagement to constitute yourself an impostor, before ever
entering; to declare your belief in incredibilities,--your
determination, in short, to take Chaos for Cosmos, and Satan for
the Lord of things, if he come with money in his pockets, and
horsehair and bombazine decently wrapt about him. Fatal
preliminaries, which deter many an ingenuous young soul, and send
him back from the threshold, and I hope will deter ever more.
But if you do enter, the condition is well known: "Talk; who can
talk best here? His shall be the mouth of gold, and the purse of
gold; and with my [Gr.] _mitra_ (once the head-dress of
unfortunate females, I am told) shall his sacred temples be
begirt."
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