Part IV.--Conception of History

Section I.--Great Men

"Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do, or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world; the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these."[381]

Whatever they be, poets, reformers, writers, men of action, revealers, he gives them all a mystical character;

"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.... 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.... It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things."[382]

In vain the ignorance of his age and his own imperfections mar the purity of his original vision; he ever attains some immutable and life-giving truth; for this truth he is listened to, and by this truth he is powerful. That which he has discovered is immortal and efficacious:

"The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities; remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of things."[383]

"No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Religion, I find, stands upon it ... What, therefore, is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship."[384]

This feeling is the deepest part of man. It exists even in this levelling and destructive age: "I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant, lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall."[385]

Section II.--Wherein Carlyle is Original

We have here a German theory, but transformed, made precise, thickened after the English manner. The Germans said that every nation, period, civilization, has its idea; that is, its chief feature, from which the rest were derived; so that philosophy, religion, arts, and morals, all the elements of thought and action, could be deduced from some original and fundamental quality, from which all proceeded and in which all ended. Where Hegel proposed an idea, Carlyle proposes a heroic sentiment. It is more palpable and moral. To complete his escape from the vague, he considers this sentiment in a hero. He must give to abstractions a body and soul; he is not at ease in pure conceptions, and wishes to touch a real being.

But this being, as he conceives it, is an abstract of the rest. For according to him, the hero contains and represents the civilization in which he is comprised; he has discovered, proclaimed or practised an original conception, and in this his age has followed him. The knowledge of a heroic sentiment, thus gives us a knowledge of a whole age. By this method Carlyle has emerged beyond biography. He has rediscovered the grand views of his masters. He has felt, like them, that a civilization, vast and dispersed as it is over time and space, forms an indivisible whole. He has combined, in a system of hero-worship, the scattered fragments which Hegel united by a law. He has derived from a common sentiment the events which the Germans derived from a common definition. He has comprehended the deep and distant connection of things, such as bind a great man to his time, such as connect the works of accomplished thought with the stutterings of infant thought, such as link the wise inventions of modern constitutions to the disorderly furies of primitive barbarism:

"Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things;--progenitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons. ... Hrolf or Rollo, Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour."[386]

"No wild Saint Dominies and Thebaïd Eremites, there had been no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakespeare to speak. Nay, the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed."[387]

His great poetical or practical works only publish or apply this dominant idea; the historian makes use of it to rediscover the primitive sentiment which engenders them, and to form the segregate conception which unites them.

Section III.--In What Genuine History Consists

Hence, a new fashion of writing history. Since the heroic sentiment is the cause of the other sentiments, it is to this the historian must devote himself. Since it is the source of civilization, the mover of revolutions, the master and regenerator of human life, it is in this that he must observe civilization, revolutions and human life. Since it is the spring of every movement, it is by this that we shall understand every movement. Let the metaphysicians draw up deductions and formulas, or the politicians expound situations and constitutions. Man is not an inert being, moulded by a constitution, nor a lifeless being expressed by formula; he is an active and living soul, capable of acting, discovering, creating, devoting himself, and before all, of daring; genuine history is an epic of heroism. This idea is, in my opinion, brilliant and luminous. For men have not done great things without great emotions. The first and sovereign motive of an extraordinary revolution is an extraordinary sentiment. Then we see appear and swell a lofty and all-powerful passion, which has burst the old dykes, and hurled the current of things into a new bed. All starts from this, and it is this which we must observe. Let us leave metaphysical formulas and political considerations, and regard the inner state of every mind. Let us quit bare narrative, forget abstract explanations, and study impassioned souls. A revolution is only the birth of a great sentiment. What is this sentiment, how is it bound to others, what is its degree, source, effect, how does it transform the imagination, understanding, common inclinations; what passions feed it, what proportion of folly and reason does it embrace--these are the main questions. If anyone wishes to represent to me the history of Buddhism, he must show me the calm despair of the ascetics who, deadened by the contemplation of the infinite void, and by the expectation of final annihilation, attain in their monotonous quietude the sentiment of universal fraternity. If anyone wishes to represent to me the history of Christianity, he must show me the soul of a Saint John or Saint Paul, the sudden renewal of the conscience, the faith in visible things, the transformation of a soul penetrated by the presence of a paternal God, the irruption of tenderness, generosity, abnegation, trust, and hope, which rescued the wretches oppressed under the Roman tyranny and decline. To explain a revolution is to write a partial psychology; the analysis of critics and the divination of artists are the only instruments which can attain to it: if we would have it precise and profound we must ask it of those who, through their profession or their genius, possess a knowledge of the soul--Shakespeare, Saint-Simon, Balzac, Stendhal. This is why we may occasionally ask it of Carlyle. And there is a history which we may ask of him in preference to all others, that of the Revolution which had conscience for its source, which set God in the councils of the state, which imposed strict duty, which provoked severe heroism. The best historian of Puritanism is a Puritan.

Section IV.--Carlyle's History of Cromwell

The history of Cromwell, Carlyle's masterpiece, is but a collection of letters and speeches, commented on and united by a continuous narrative. The impression which they leave is extraordinary. Grave constitutional histories hang heavy after this compilation. The author wished to make us comprehend a soul: the soul of Cromwell, the greatest of the Puritans, their chief, their abstract, their hero, and their model. His narrative resembles that of an eye-witness. A covenanter who should have collected letters, scraps of newspapers, and daily added reflections, interpretations, notes, and anecdotes, might have written just such a book. At last we are face to face with Cromwell. We have his words, we can hear his tone of voice; we seize, around each action, the circumstances which produced it: we see him in his tent, in council, with the proper background, with his face and costume: every detail, the most minute, is here. And the sincerity is as great as the sympathy; the biographer confesses his ignorance, the lack of documents, the uncertainty; he is perfectly loyal, though a poet and a sectarian. With him we simultaneously restrain and give free play to our conjectures; and we feel at every step, amidst our affirmations and our reservations, that we are firmly planting our feet upon the truth. Would that all history were like this, a selection of texts provided with a commentary! I would exchange, for such a history, all the regular arguments, all the beautiful, colorless narrations of Robertson and Hume. I can verify the judgment of the author whilst reading this; I no more think after him, but for myself; the historian does not obtrude himself between me and his subject. I see a fact, and not an account of a'fact; the oratorical and personal envelope, with which a narrative covers the truth, disappears; I can touch the truth itself. And this Cromwell, with his Puritans, comes forth from the test, recreated and renewed. We divined pretty well already that he was not a mere man of ambition, a hypocrite, but we took him for a fanatic and hateful disputant. We consider these Puritans as gloomy madmen, shallow brains, and full of scruples. Let us quit our French and modern ideas, and enter into these souls: we shall find there something else than hypochondria, namely, a grand sentiment--am I a just man? And if God, who is perfect justice, were to judge me at this moment, what sentence would he pass upon me?--Such is the original idea of the Puritans, and through them came the Revolution into England. The feeling of the difference there is between good and evil, filled for them all time and space, and became incarnate, and expressed for them, by such words as Heaven and Hell. They were struck by the idea of duty. They examined themselves by this light, severely and without intermission; they conceived the sublime model of infallible and complete virtue; they were imbued therewith; they drowned in this absorbing thought all worldly prejudices and all inclinations of the senses; they conceived a horror even of imperceptible faults, which an honest mind will excuse in itself; they exacted from themselves absolute and continuous perfection, and they entered into life with a fixed resolve to suffer and do all, rather than deviate one step. We laugh at a revolution about surplices and chasubles; there was a sentiment of the divine, underneath all these disputes about vestments. These poor folk, shopkeepers and farmers, believed, with all their heart, in a sublime and terrible God, and the manner how to worship Him was not a trifling thing for them:

"Suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter (as Divine worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to _form_ itself into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible--what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man--let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of the Greeks."[388]

This has caused the Revolution, and not the Writ of Ship-money, or any other political vexation. "You may take my purse,... but the Self is mine and God my Maker's."[389] And the same sentiment which made them rebels, made them conquerors. Men could not understand how discipline could exist in an army in which an inspired corporal would reproach a lukewarm general. They thought it strange that generals, who sought the Lord with tears, had learned administration and strategy in the Bible. They wondered that madmen could be men of business. The truth is, that they were not madmen, but men of business. The whole difference between them and practical men whom we know, is that they had a conscience; this conscience was their flame; mysticism and dreams were but the smoke. They sought the true, the just; and their long prayers, their nasal preaching, their quotations from the Bible, their tears, their anguish, only mark the sincerity and ardor with which they applied themselves to the search. They read their duty in themselves; the Bible only aided them. At need they did violence to it, when they wished to verify by texts the suggestions of their own hearts. It was this sentiment of duty which united, inspired, and sustained them, which made their discipline, courage, and boldness; which raised to ancient heroism Hutchinson, Milton, and Cromwell; which instigated all decisive deeds, grand resolves, marvellous successes, the declaration of war, the trial of the king, the purge of Parliament, the humiliation of Europe, the protection of Protestantism, the sway of the seas. These men are the true heroes of England; they display, in high relief, the original characteristics and noblest features of England--practical piety, the rule of conscience, manly resolution, indomitable energy. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts and the relaxation of modern manners, by the exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression of vice. They founded Scotland, they founded the United States; at this day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonizing the world. Carlyle is so much their brother that he excuses or admires their excesses--the execution of the king, the mutilation of Parliament, their intolerance, inquisition, the despotism of Cromwell, the theocracy of Knox. He sets them before us as models, and judges both past and present by them alone.

Section V.--His History of the French Revolution

Hence, he saw nothing but evil in the French Revolution. He judges it as unjustly as he judges Voltaire, and for the same reasons. He understands our manner of acting no better than our manner of thinking. He looks for Puritan sentiment; and, as he does not find it, he condemns us. The idea of duty, the religious spirit, self-government, the authority of an austere conscience, can alone, in his opinion, reform a corrupt society; and none of all these are to be met with in French society. The philosophy which has produced and guided the Revolution was simply destructive, proclaiming no other gospel but "that a lie cannot be believed! Philosophy knows only this: Her other relief is mainly that in spiritual, supra-sensual matters, no belief is possible." The theory of the Rights of Man, borrowed from Rousseau, is only a logical game, a pedantry almost as opportune as a "Theory of Irregular Verbs." The manners in vogue were the epicurism of Faublas. The morality in vogue was the promise of universal happiness. Incredulity, hollow rant, sensuality, were the mainsprings of this reformation. Men let loose their instincts and overturned the barriers. They replaced corrupt authority by unchecked anarchy. In what could a jacquerie of brutalized peasants, impelled by ecclesiastical arguments, end?

"For ourselves, we answer that French Revolution means here the open violent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt, worn-out Authority....[390]

"So thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite depths; and these men its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves--other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an accident under the sky. Man is without duty round him, except it be to make the Constitution. He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.

"While hollow languor and vacuity is the lot of the upper, and want and stagnation of the lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing is certain?... What will remain? The five unsatiated senses will remain, the sixth insatiable sense (of vanity); the whole _dœmoniac_ nature of man will remain.

"Man is not what we call a happy animal; his appetite for sweet victual is too enormous.... (He cannot subsist) except by girding himself together for continual endeavour and endurance."[391]

But set the good beside the evil; put down virtues beside vices. These sceptics believed in demonstrated truth, and would have her alone for mistress. These logicians founded society only on justice, and risked their lives rather than renounce an established theorem. These epicureans embraced in their sympathies entire humanity. These furious men, these workmen, these hungry, threadbare peasants, fought on the frontiers for humanitarian interests and abstract principles. Generosity and enthusiasm abounded in France, as well as in England; acknowledge them under a form which is not English. These men were devoted to abstract truth, as the Puritan to divine truth; they followed philosophy, as the Puritans followed religion; they had for their aim universal salvation, as the Puritans had individual salvation. They fought against evil in society, as the Puritans fought it in the soul. They were generous, as the Puritans were virtuous. They had, like them, a heroism, but sympathetic, sociable, ready to proselytize, which reformed Europe, whilst the English one only served England.

Section VI.--His Opinion of Modern England

This exaggerated Puritanism, which revolted Carlyle against the French Revolution, revolts him against modern England:

"We have forgotten God;--in the most modern dialect and very truth of the matter, we have taken up the Fact of this Universe as it is _not._ We have quietly closed our eyes to the eternal Substance of things, and opened them only to the Shows and Shams of things. We quietly believe this Universe to be intrinsically a great unintelligible PERHAPS; extrinsically, clear enough, it is a great, most extensive Cattlefold and Workhouse, with most extensive Kitchen-ranges, Dining-tables--whereat he is wise who can find a place! All the Truth of this Universe is uncertain; only the profit and loss of it, the pudding and praise of it, are and remain very visible to the practical man.

"There is no longer any God for us! God's Laws are become a Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency; the Heavens overarch, us only as an Astronomical Timekeeper; a butt for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science at, to shoot sentimentalities at: in our and old Jonson's dialect, man has lost the _soul_ out of him; and now, after the due period--begins to find the want of it! This is verily the plague-spot; centre of the universal Social Gangrene, threatening all modern things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and taproot, with its worldwide upas-boughs and accursed poison-exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal-centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion: there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: in killing Kings, in passing Reform bills, in French Revolutions, Manchester Insurrections, is found no remedy. The foul elephantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, reappears in new force and desperateness next hour."[392]

Since the return of the Stuarts, we are utilitarians or sceptics. We believe only in observation, statistics, gross and concrete truth; or else we doubt, half believe, on hearsay, with reserve. We have no moral convictions, and we have only floating convictions. We have lost the mainspring of action; we no longer set duty in the midst of our resolve, as the sole and undisturbed foundation of life; we are caught by all kinds of little experimental and positive receipts, and we amuse ourselves with all kinds of pretty pleasures, well chosen and arranged. We are egotists or dilettanti. We no longer look on life as an august temple, but as a machine for solid profits, or as a hall for refined amusements. We have our rich men, our manufacturers, our bankers, who preach the gospel of gold; we have gentlemen, dandies, lords, who preach the gospel of manners. We overwork ourselves to heap up guineas, or else we make ourselves insipid to attain an elegant dignity. Our hell is no longer, as under Cromwell, the dread of being found guilty before the just Judge, but the dread of making a bad speculation, or of transgressing etiquette. We have for our aristocracy greedy shopkeepers, who reduce life to a calculation of cost and sale-prices; and idle amateurs, whose great business in life is to preserve the game on their estates. We are no longer governed. Our government has no other ambition than to preserve the public peace, and to get in the taxes. Our constitution lays it down as a principle that, in order to discover the true and the good, we have only to make two million imbeciles vote. Our Parliament is a great word-mill, where plotters out-bawl each other for the sake of making a noise.[393]

Under this thin cloak of conventionalities and phrases, ominously growls the irresistible democracy. England perishes if she ever ceases to be able to sell a yard of cotton at a farthing less than others. At the least check in the manufactures, 1,500,000 workmen,[394] without work, live upon public charity. The formidable masses, given up to the hazards of industry, urged by lust, impelled by hunger, oscillate between the fragile cracking barriers; we are nearing the final breaking-up, which will be open anarchy, and the democracy will heave amidst the ruins, until the sentiment of the divine and of duty has rallied them around the worship of heroism; until it has discovered the means of calling to power the most virtuous and the most capable;[395] until it has given its guidance into their hands, instead of making them subject to its caprices; until it has recognized and reverenced its Luther and its Cromwell, its priest and its king.

Section VII.--The Dangers of Enthusiasm.--Comparison of Carlyle and Macaulay

Nowadays, doubtless, in the whole civilized world, democracy is swelling or overflowing, and all the channels in which it flows are fragile or temporary. But it is a strange offer to present for its issue the fanaticism and tyranny of the Puritans. The society and spirit which Carlyle proposes, as models for human nature, lasted but an hour, and could not last longer. The asceticism of the Republic produced the debauchery of the Restoration; Harrison preceded Rochester, men like Bunyan raised up men like Hobbes; and the sectaries, in instituting the despotism of enthusiasm, established by reaction the authority of the positive mind, and the worship of gross pleasure. Exaltation is not stable, and it cannot be exacted from man without injustice and danger. The sympathetic generosity of the French Revolution ended in the cynicism of the Directory and the slaughters of the empire. The chivalric and poetic piety of the great Spanish monarchy emptied Spain of men and of thought. The primacy of genius, taste, and intellect in Italy, reduced her at the end of a century to voluptuous sloth and political slavery. "What makes the angel makes the beast;" and perfect heroism, like all excesses, ends in stupor. Human nature has its explosions, but with intervals: mysticism is serviceable but when it is short. Violent circumstances produce extreme conditions; great evils are necessary in order to raise great men, and you are obliged to look for shipwrecks when you wish to behold rescuers. If enthusiasm is beautiful, its results and its originating circumstances are sad; it is but a crisis, and a healthy state is better. In this respect, Carlyle himself may serve for a proof. There is, perhaps, less genius in Macaulay than in Carlyle; but when we have fed for some time on this exaggerated and demoniacal style, this marvellous and sickly philosophy, this contorted and prophetic history, these sinister and furious politics, we gladly return to the continuous eloquence, to the vigorous reasoning, to the moderate prognostications, to the demonstrated theories, of the generous and solid mind which Europe has just lost, who brought honor to England, and whose place none can fill.

[Footnote 326: Because the Kalmucks put written prayers into a calabash turned by the wind, which in their opinion produces a perpetual adoration. In the same way are the prayer-mills of Thibet used.]

[Footnote 327: The "Life of John Sterling," ch. V; "A Profession."]

[Footnote 328: "Sartor Resartus," 1868, bk. II. ch. VIII; Centre of Indifference.]

[Footnote 329: "History of the French Révolution," bk. I. ch. II; Realised Ideals.]

[Footnote 330: In the "Adoration of the Magi."]

[Footnote 331: "Latter-Day Pamphlets," 1850; Stump Orator, 35.]

[Footnote 332: "The French Revolution," I. bk. III. ch. VII; Internecine.]

[Footnote 333: "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," III. X; the end.]

[Footnote 334: "Life of Sterling."]

[Footnote 335: "Sartor Resartus," bk. I. ch. X; Pure Reason.]

[Footnote 336: Ibid.]

[Footnote 337: Ibid. bk. III. ch. I; Incident in Modern History.]

[Footnote 338: "Sailor Resartus," bk. III. ch. X; The Dandiacal Body.]

[Footnote 339: "Sartor Resartus," bk. III. ch. X; The Dandiacal Body.]

[Footnote 340: Ibid.]

[Footnote 341: Ibid.]

[Footnote 342: "Latter-Day Pamphlets," 1850; Jesuitism, 28.]

[Footnote 343: In "Past and Present," bk. II.]

[Footnote 344: Ibid. ch. I; Jocelin of Brakelond.]

[Footnote 345: Ibid. ch. II; St. Edmondsbury.]

[Footnote 346: "Lectures on Heroes," 1868.]

[Footnote 347: "Lectures on Heroes," I: The Hero as Divinity.]

[Footnote 348: "Sartor Resartus," bk. I, ch, VIII; The World out of Clothes.]

[Footnote 349: Goethe, the greatest of them all.]

[Footnote 350: M. Renan.]

[Footnote 351: In particular, Stanley and Jowett.]

[Footnote 352: "Sartor Resartus," bk. I. ch. XI; Prospective.]

[Footnote 353: Ibid. bk. I. ch. X; Pure Reason.]

[Footnote 354: Ibid.]

[Footnote 355: Ibid. bk. I. ch. XI; Prospective.]

[Footnote 356: "Sartor Resartus," bk. III. ch. III; Symbols.]

[Footnote 357: Ibid. bk. III. ch. VIII; Natural Supernaturalism.]

[Footnote 358: Ibid.]

[Footnote 359: Ibid.]

[Footnote 360: "Sartor Resartus," bk. I. ch. X; Pure Reason.]

[Footnote 361: Ibid. bk. III. ch. VIII; Natural Supernaturalism.]

[Footnote 362: Ibid.]

[Footnote 363: "Sartor Resartus," bk. I. ch. X; Pre Reason.]

[Footnote 364: Ibid. bk. III. ch. VIII; Natural Supernaturalism.]

[Footnote 365: Ibid.]

[Footnote 366: "Sartor Resartus," bk. II. ch. VII; The Everlasting No.]

[Footnote 367: "Only this I know: If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But what, in these dull, unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his Elect!"--"Sartor Resartus," bk. II. ch. VII.]

[Footnote 368: "Lectures on Heroes."]

[Footnote 369: "Sartor Resartus," bk. II. ch. IX; The Everlasting Yea.]

[Footnote 370: Ibid. bk. III. ch. II; Church Clothes.]

[Footnote 371: "Lectures on Heroes," I; The Hero as Divinity.]

[Footnote 372: "Lectures on Heroes," I; The Hero as Divinity.]

[Footnote 373: Ibid, IV; The Hero as Priest.]

[Footnote 374: Ibid.]

[Footnote 375: "Past and Present," bk. III. ch. XV; Morrison Again.]

[Footnote 376: Ibid. bk. III. ch. XII; Reward.]

[Footnote 377: "Lectures on Heroes;" Miscellanies, passim.]

[Footnote 378: "Life of Sterling."]

[Footnote 379: "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays," 4 vols.; II. Voltaire.]

[Footnote 380: See this double praise in "Wilhelm Meister."]

[Footnote 381: "Lectures on Heroes," I; The Hero as Divinity.]

[Footnote 382: Ibid. II; The Hero as Prophet.]

[Footnote 383: "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," III. part X; Death of the Protector.]

[Footnote 384: "Lectures on Heroes," I; The Hero as Divinity.]

[Footnote 385: Ibid.]

[Footnote 386: "Lectures on Heroes," I; The Hero as Divinity.]

[Footnote 387: Ibid. IV; The Hero as Priest.]

[Footnote 388: "Lectures on Heroes," VI; The Hero as King.]

[Footnote 389: Ibid.]

[Footnote 390: "The French Revolution," I. bk. VI. ch. I; Make the Constitution.]

[Footnote 391: Ibid.]

[Footnote 392: "Past and Present," bk. III. ch. I; Phenomena.]

[Footnote 393: "It is his effort and desire to teach this and the other thinking British man that said finale, the advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot be distant, now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued, and waxing daily, has got to such a height; and that the one method of staving off the fatal consummation, and steering towards the Continents of the Future, lies not in the direction of reforming Parliament, but of what he calls reforming Downing Street; a thing infinitely urgent to be begun, and to be strenuously carried on. To find a Parliament more and more the express image of the People, could, unless the people chanced to be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not this at all; but to find some sort of King, made in the image of God, who could a little achieve for the People, if not their spoken wishes, yet their dumb wants, and what they would at last find to have been their instinctive will--which is a far different matter usually, in this babbling world of ours."--Parliaments, in "Latter-Day Pamphlets."

"A king or leader, then, in all bodies of men, there must be; be their work what it may, there is one man here who by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it.

"He who is to be my ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither, except in such obedience to the Heaven-chosen, is freedom so much as conceivable."]

[Footnote 394: Official Report, 1842.]

[Footnote 395: "Latter-Day Pamphlets;" Parliaments.]

CHAPTER FIFTH

PHILOSOPHY--STUART MILL

Section I.--Lack of General Ideas

When at Oxford, some years ago, during the meeting of the British Association, I met, amongst the few students still in residence, a young Englishman, a man of intelligence, with whom I became intimate.[396] He took me in the evening to the New Museum, well filled with specimens. Here short lectures were delivered, new models of machinery were set to work; ladies were present and took an interest in the experiments; on the last day, full of enthusiasm, "God Save the Queen" was sung. I admired this zeal, this solidity of mind, this organization of science, these voluntary subscriptions, this aptitude for association and for labor, this great machine pushed on by so many arms, and so well fitted to accumulate, criticise, and classify facts. But yet in this abundance, there was a void; when I read the Transactions, I thought I was present at a congress of heads of manufactories. All these learned men verified details and exchanged recipes. It was as though I listened to foremen, busy in communicating their processes for tanning leather, or dyeing cotton: general ideas were wanting. I used to regret this to my friend; and in the evening, by his lamp, amidst that great silence in which the university town lay wrapped, we both tried to discover its reasons.

Section II.--Why Metaphysics are Lacking

One day I said to him: You lack philosophy--I mean, what the Germans call metaphysics. You have learned men, but you have no thinkers. Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for him. He is the most important personage in England, and I see clearly that he merits his position; for he forms part of your constitution, he is the guardian of your morality, he judges in final appeal on all questions whatsoever, he replaces with advantage the prefects and gendarmes with whom the nations on the Continent are still encumbered. Yet, this high rank has the inconvenience of all official positions; it produces a cant, prejudices, intolerance, and courtiers. Here, close by us, is poor Mr. Max Müller, who, in order to acclimatize the study of Sanscrit, was compelled to discover in the Vedas the worship of a moral God, that is to say, the religion of Paley and Addison. Some time ago, in London, I read a proclamation of the Queen, forbidding people to play cards, even in their own houses, on Sundays.[397] It seems that, if I were robbed, I could not bring my thief to justice without taking a preliminary religious oath; for the judge has been known to send a complainant away who refused to take the oath, deny him justice, and insult him into the bargain. Every year, when we read the Queen's speech in your papers, we find there the compulsory mention of Divine Providence, which comes in mechanically, like the invocation to the immortal gods on the fourth page of a rhetorical declamation; and you remember that once, the pious phrase having been omitted, a second communication was made to Parliament for the express purpose of supplying it. All these cavillings and pedantries indicate to my mind a celestial monarchy; naturally it resembles all others; I mean that it relies more willingly on tradition and custom than on examination and reason. A monarchy never invited men to verify its credentials. As yours is, however, useful, well adapted to you, and moral, you are not revolted by it; you submit to it without difficulty, you are, at heart, attached to it; you would fear, in touching it, to disturb the constitution and morality. You leave it in the clouds, amidst public homage. You fall back upon yourselves, confine yourselves to matters of fact, to minute disSections, to experiments in the laboratory. You go culling plants and collecting shells. Science is deprived of its head; but all is for the best, for practical life is improved, and dogma remains intact.

Section III.--Mill's Philosophical Method

You are truly French, he answered; you ignore facts, and all at once find yourself settled in a theory. I assure you that there are thinkers amongst us, and not far from hence, at Christ Church, for instance. One of them, the professor of Greek, has spoken so deeply on inspiration, the creation and final causes, that he is out of favor. Look at this little collection which has recently appeared, "Essays and Reviews;" your philosophic freedom of the last century, the latest conclusions of geology and cosmogony, the boldness of German exegesis, are here in abstract. Some things are wanting, amongst others the waggeries of Voltaire, the misty jargon of Germany, and the prosaic coarseness of Comte; to my mind, the loss is small. Wait twenty years, and you will find in London the ideas of Paris and Berlin.--But they will still be the ideas of Paris and Berlin. Whom have you that is original?--Stuart Mill.--Who is he?--A political writer. His little book "On Liberty" is as admirable as Rousseau's "Contrat Social" is bad.--That is a bold assertion.--No, for Mill decides as strongly for the independence of the individual as Rousseau for the despotism of the State.--Very well, but that is not enough to make a philosopher. What besides is he?--An economist who goes beyond his science, and subordinates production to man, instead of man to production.--Well, but this is not enough to make a philosopher. Is he anything else?--A logician.--Very good; but of what school?--Of his own. I told you he was original.--Is he Hegelian?--By no means; he is too fond of facts and proofs.--Does he follow Port-Royal?--Still less; he is too well acquainted with modern sciences.--Does he imitate Condillac?--Certainly not; Condillac has only taught him to write well.--Who, then, are his friends?--Locke and Comte in the first rank; then Hume and Newton.--Is he a system-monger, a speculative reformer?--He has too much sense for that; he only arranges the best theories, and explains the best methods. He does not attitudinize majestically in the character of a restorer of science; he does not declare, like your Germans, that his book will open up a new era for humanity. He proceeds gradually, somewhat slowly, often creepingly, through a multitude of particular facts. He excels in giving precision to an idea, in disentangling a principle, in discovering it amongst a number of different facts; in refuting, distinguishing, arguing. He has the astuteness, patience, method, and sagacity of a lawyer.--Very well, you admit that I was right. A lawyer, an ally of Locke, Newton, Comte, and Hume; we have here only English philosophy; but no matter. Has he reached a grand conception of the universe?--Yes.--Has he an individual and complete idea of nature and the mind?--Yes.--Has he combined the operations and discoveries of the intellect under a single principle which puts them all in a new light?--Yes; but we have to discover this principle.--That is your business, and I hope you will undertake it.--But I shall fall into abstract generalities.--There is no harm in that?--But this close reasoning will be like a quick-set hedge. We will prick our fingers with it.--But three men out of four would cast aside such speculations as idle.--So much the worse for them. For in what does the life of a nation or a century consist, except in the formation of such theories? We are not thoroughly men unless so engaged. If some dweller in another planet were to come down here to ask us the nature of our race, we should have to show him the five or six great ideas which we have formed of the mind and the world. That alone would give him the measure of our intelligence. Expound to me your theory, and I shall go away better instructed than after having seen the masses of brick, which you call London and Manchester.