Part 11
Probably this apostasy from his better faith had begun, before this, to show itself in conversation. At least Margaret Fuller, in a letter dated 1846, finds herself in his presence admiring his brilliancy, but "disclaiming and rejecting almost everything he said." "For a couple of hours," says she, "he was talking about poetry, and the whole harangue was one eloquent proclamation of the defects in his own mind." "All Carlyle's talk, another evening," says she, "was a defence of mere force,--success the test of right; if people would not behave well, put collars round their necks; find a hero, and let them be his slaves." "Mazzini was there, and, after some vain attempts to remonstrate, became very sad. Mrs. Carlyle said to me, 'These are but opinions to Carlyle; but to Mazzini, who has given his all, and helped bring his friends to the scaffold, in pursuit of such subjects, it is a matter of life and death.'"
As this mood of Mr. Carlyle comes out so strongly in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," it is perhaps best to dwell on them at greater leisure.
The first is "The Present Time." In this he describes Democracy as inevitable, but as utterly evil; calls for a government; finds most European governments, that of England included, to be shams and falsities,--no-government, or drifting, to be a yet greater evil. The object, he states, is to find the noblest and best men to govern. Democracy fails to do this; for universal balloting is not adequate to the task. Democracy answered in the old republics, when the mass were slaves, but will not answer now. The United States are no proof of its success, for (1st) anarchy is avoided merely by the quantity of cheap land, and (2d) the United States have produced no spiritual results, but only material. Democracy in America is no-government, and "its only feat is to have produced eighteen millions of the greatest _bores_ ever seen in the world." Mr. Carlyle's plan, therefore, is to find, somehow, the _best man_ for a ruler, to make him a despot, to make the mass of the English and Irish slaves, to beat them if they will not work, to shoot them if they still refuse. The only method of finding this best man, which he suggests, is to _call for him_. Accordingly, Mr. Thomas Carlyle _calls_, saying, "Best man, come forward, and govern."
The sum, therefore, of his recipe for the diseases of the times is SLAVERY.
The second pamphlet is called "Model Prisons," and the main object of this is to ridicule all attempts at helping men by philanthropy or humanity. The talk of "Fraternity" is nonsense, and must be drummed out of the world. Beginning with model prisons, he finds them much too good for the "scoundrels" who are shut up there. He would have them whipped and hung (seventy thousand in a year, we suppose, as in bluff King Harry's time, with no great benefit therefrom). "Revenge," he says, "is a right feeling against bad men,--only the excess of it wrong." The proper thing to say to a bad man is, "Caitiff, I hate thee." "A collar round the neck, and a cart-whip over the back," is what he thinks would be more just to criminals than a model prison. The whole effort of humanity should be to help the industrious and virtuous poor; the criminals should be swept out of the way, whipt, enslaved, or hung. As for human brotherhood, he does not admit brotherhood with "scoundrels." Particularly disgusting to him is it to hear this philanthropy to bad men called Christianity. Christianity, he thinks, does not tell us to love the bad, but to hate them as God hates them. According, probably, to his private expurgated version of the Gospel, "that ye may be the children of your Father in heaven, whose sun rises only on the good, and whose rain falls only on the just."
"Downing Street" and "New Downing Street" are fiery tirades against the governing classes in England. Mr. Carlyle says (according to his inevitable refrain), that England does not want a reformed Parliament, a body of talkers, but a reformed Downing Street, a body of workers. He describes the utter imbecility of the English government, and calls loudly for some able man to take its place. Two passages are worth quoting; the first as to England's aspect in her foreign relations, which is quite as true for 1864 as for 1854.
"How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her sword of sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid Catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword) to see how they will like it. Hercules-Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, the World's Busybody!"
Or see the following description of the sort of rulers who prevail in England, no less than in America:--
"If our government is to be a No-Government, what is the matter who administers it? Fling an orange-skin into St. James Street, let the man it hits be your man. He, if you bend him a little to it, and tie the due official bladders to his ankles, will do as well as another this sublime problem of balancing himself upon the vortexes, with the long loaded pole in his hand, and will, with straddling, painful gestures, float hither and thither, walking the waters in that singular manner for a little while, till he also capsize, and be left floating feet uppermost,--after which you choose another."
Concerning which we may say, that if this is the result of monarchy and aristocracy in England, we can stick a little longer to our democracy in America. Mr. Carlyle says that the object of all these methods is to find the ablest man for a ruler. He thinks our republican method very insufficient and absurd,--much preferring the English system,--and then tells us that this is the outcome of the latter; that you might as well select your ruler by throwing an orange-skin into the street as by the method followed in England.
Despotism, tempered by assassination, seems to be Carlyle's notion of a good government.
The pamphlet "Stump-Orator" is simply a bitter denunciation of all talking, speech-making, and writing, as the curse of the time, and ends with the proposition to cut out the tongues of one whole generation, as an act of mercy to them and a blessing to the human race.
Thus this collection of "Latter-Day Pamphlets" consists of the bitterest cynicism. Carlyle sits in it, as in a tub, snarling at freedom, yelping at philanthropy, growling at the English government, snapping at all men who speak or write, and ending with one long howl over the universal falsity and hollowness of mankind in general.
After which he proceeds to his final apotheosis of despotism pure and simple, in this "Life of Frederick the Great." Of this it is not necessary to say more than that Frederick, being an absolute despot, but a very able one, having plunged Europe into war in order to steal Silesia, is everywhere admired, justified, or excused by Carlyle, who reserves his rebukes and contempt for those who find fault with all this.
That, with these opinions, Carlyle should have taken sides with the slaveholders' conspiracy against the Union is not surprising. His sympathies were with them; first, as slaveholders, secondly, as aristocrats. He hates us because we are democrats, and he loves them because they are despots and tyrants. Long before the outbreak of the rebellion, he had ridiculed emancipation, and denounced as folly and evil the noblest deed of England,--the emancipation of her West India slaves. In scornful, bitter satire, he denounced England for keeping the fast which God had chosen, in undoing the heavy burdens, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke. He ridiculed the black man, and described the poor patient African as "Quashee, steeped to the eyes in pumpkin." In the hateful service of oppression he had already done his best to uphold slavery and discourage freedom. And while he fully believed in enslaving the laboring population, black or white, and driving it to work by the cart-whip, he as fully abhorred republicanism everywhere, and most of all in the United States. He had exhausted the resources of language in vilifying American institutions. It was a matter of course, therefore, that at the outbreak of this civil war all his sympathies should be with those who whip women and sell babies.
How is it that this great change should have taken place? Men change,--but not often in this way. The ardent reformer often hardens into the stiff conservative. The radical in religion is very likely to join the Catholic Church. If a Catholic changes his religion, he goes over to atheism. To swing from one extreme to another, is a common experience. But it is a new thing to see calmness in youth, violence in age,--to find the young man wise and all-sided, the old man bigoted and narrow.
We think the explanation to be this.
Thomas Carlyle from the beginning has not shown the least appreciation of the essential thing in Christianity. Brought up in Scotland, inheriting from Calvinism a sense of truth, a love of justice, and a reverence for the Jewish Bible, he has never passed out of Judaism into Christianity. To him, Oliver Cromwell is the best type of true religion; inflexible justice the best attribute of God or man. He is a worshiper of Jehovah, not of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He sees in God truth and justice; he does not see in him love. He is himself a prophet after the type of Elijah and John the Baptist. He is the voice crying in the wilderness; and we may say of him, therefore, as was said of his prototype, "He was a burning and a shining light, and ye were willing, for a season, to rejoice in his light,"--but not always,--not now.
Carlyle does not, indeed, claim to be a Jew, or to reject Christ. On the contrary, he speaks of him with very sincere respect. He seems, however, to know nothing of him but what he has read in Goethe about the "worship of sorrow." The Gospel appears to him to be, essentially, a worship of sorrow. That Christ "came to save sinners,"--of that Carlyle has not the faintest idea. To him the notion of "saving sinners" is only "rose-water philanthropy." He does not wish them saved, he wishes them damned,--swept into hell as soon as convenient.
But, as everything which is real has two sides, that of _truth_ and that of _love_,--it usually happens that he who only sees _one_ side at last ceases even to see that. All goodness, to Carlyle, is truth,--in man it is sincerity, or love of reality, sight of the actual facts,--in God it is justice, divine adherence to law, infinite guidance of the world and of every human soul according to a strict and inevitable rule of righteousness. At first this seems to be a providence,--and Carlyle has everywhere, in the earlier epoch, shown full confidence in Providence. But believe only in justice and truth,--omit the doctrine of forgiveness, redemption, salvation,--and faith in Providence becomes sooner or later a despairing fatalism. The dark problem of evil remains insoluble without the doctrine of redemption.
So it was that Carlyle, seeing at first the chief duty of man to be the worship of reality, the love of truth, next made that virtue to consist in sincerity, or being in earnest. Truth was being true to one's self. In this lay the essence of heroism. So that Burns, being sincere and earnest, was a hero,--Odin was a hero,--Mohammed was a hero,--Cromwell was a hero,--Mirabeau and Danton were heroes,--and Frederick the Great was a hero. That which was first the love of truth, and caused him to reverence the calm intellectual force of Schiller and Goethe, soon became earnestness and sincerity, and then became power. For the proof of earnestness is power. So from power, by eliminating all love, all tenderness, as being only rose-water philanthropy, he at last became a worshiper of mere will, of force in its grossest form. So he illustrates those lines of Shakespeare in which this process is so well described. In "Troilus and Cressida" Ulysses is insisting on the importance of keeping everything in its place, and giving to the best things and persons their due priority. Otherwise, mere force will govern all things.
"Strength would be lord of imbecility,"--
as Carlyle indeed openly declares that it ought to be,--
"And the rude son should strike his father dead,"
which Carlyle does not quite approve of in the case of Dr. Francia. But why not, if he maintains that strength is the measure of justice?
"Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar justice resides) Should lose their names and so should justice, too. _Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And, last, eat up himself._"
Just so, in the progress of Carlyle's literary career, first, force became right,--then, everything included itself in power,--next, power was lost in will, and will in mere caprice or appetite. From his admiration for Goethe, as the type of intellectual power, he passed to the praise of Cromwell as the exponent of will, and then to that of Frederick, whose appetite for plunder and territory was seconded by an iron will and the highest power of intellect; but whose ambition devoured himself, his country, and its prosperity, in the mad pursuit of victory and conquest.
The explanation, therefore, of our author's lapse, is simply this, that he worshiped truth divorced from love, and so ceased to worship truth, and fell into the idolatry of mere will. Truth without love is not truth, but hard, willful opinion, just as love without truth is not love, but weak good-nature and soft concession.
Carlyle has no idea of that sublime feature of Christianity, which shows to us God caring more for the one sinner who repents than the ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance. To him one just person deserves more care than ninety-nine sinners. Yet it is strange that he did not learn from his master, Goethe, this essential trait of the Gospel. For Goethe, in a work translated by Carlyle himself, distinguishes between the three religions thus. The ethnic or Gentile religions, he says, reverence _what is above us_,--the religion of the philosopher reverences _what is on our own level_,--but Christianity reverences _what is beneath us_. "This is the last step," says Goethe, "which mankind were destined to attain,--to recognize humility and poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, as divine,--nay, _even on sin and crime to look not as hindrances, but to honor and love them as furtherances of what is holy_."
On sin and crime, as we have seen, Carlyle looks with no such tenderness. But if he does not care for the words of Christ, teaching us that we must forgive if we hope to be forgiven, if he does not care for the words of his master, Goethe, he might at least remember his own exposition of this doctrine in an early work, where he shows that the poor left to perish by disease infect a whole community, and declares that the safety of all is involved in the safety of the humblest.
In 1840, when he wrote "Chartism," Carlyle seems to have known better than he did in 1855, when he wrote these "Latter-Day Pamphlets." _Then_ he said:--
"To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissible manner made away, and swept out of sight, is not an amiable faith."
Of Ireland, too, he said:--
"We English pay, even now, the bitter smart of long centuries of injustice to Ireland." "It is the feeling of _injustice_ that is insupportable to all men. The brutalest black African feels it, and cannot bear that he should be used unjustly. No man can bear it, or ought to bear it."
This seems like the "rose-water philanthropy" which he subsequently so much disliked. In this book also he speaks of a "seven years' Silesian robber-war,"--we trust not intending to call his beloved Frederick a robber! And again he proposes, as one of the best things to be done in England, to have all the people taught by government to read and write,--the same thing which this American democracy, in which he could see not one good thing, has so long been doing. That was the plan by which England was to be saved,--a plan first suggested in England in 1840,--adopted and acted on in America for two hundred years.
But just as love separated from truth becomes cruelty, so _truth_ by itself--truth _not_ tempered and fulfilled by love--runs sooner or later into falsehood. _Truth_, after a while, becomes dogmatism, overbearing assertion, willful refusal to see and hear other than one's own belief; that is to say, it becomes falsehood. Such has been the case with our author. On all the subjects to which he has committed himself he closes his eyes, and refuses to see the other side. Like his own symbol, the mighty Bull, he makes his charge _with his eyes shut_.
Determined, for example, to rehabilitate such men as Mirabeau, Cromwell, Frederick, and Frederick's father, he does thorough work, and defends or excuses all their enormities, palliating whenever he cannot justify.
What can we call this which he says[27] concerning the execution of Lieutenant Katte, by order of old King Friedrich Wilhelm? Tired of the tyranny of his father, tired of being kicked and caned, the young prince tried to escape. He was caught and held as a deserter from the army, and his father tried to run him through the body. Lieutenant Katte, who had aided him in getting away, having been kicked and caned, was sent to a court-martial to be tried. The court-martial found him guilty not of deserting, but of intending to desert, and sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. Whereupon the king went into a rage, declared that Katte had committed high treason, and ordered him to be executed. Whereupon Carlyle thus writes:--
"'Never was such a transaction before or since in modern history,' cries the angry reader; 'cruel, like the grinding of human hearts under millstones; like----' Or, indeed, like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, but not that alone."
In other words, Carlyle cannot make up his mind frankly to condemn this atrocious murder, and call it by its right name. He must needs try to sophisticate us by talking about "the doings of the gods." Because Divine Providence takes men out of the world in various ways, it is therefore allowable to a king, provided he be a hero grim enough and "earnest" enough, to kick men, cane them, and run them through the body when he pleases; and, after having sent a man to be tried by court-martial, if the court acquits him, to order him to be executed by his own despotic will. A truth-telling Carlyle ought to have said, "I admit this is murder; but I like the old fellow, and so I will call it right." A Carlyle grown sophistical mumbles something about its being like "the doings of the gods," and leaves off with that small attempt at humbug. Be brave, my men, and defend my Lord Jeffreys next for bullying juries into hanging prisoners. Was not Jeffreys "grim" too? In fact, are not most murderers "grim"?
We have had occasion formerly, in this journal, to examine the writings of another very positive and clear-headed thinker,--Mr. Henry James. Mr. James is, in his philosophy, the very antithesis of Carlyle. With equal fervor of thought, with a like vehemence of style, with a somewhat similar contempt for his opponents, Mr. James takes exactly the opposite view of religion and duty. As Carlyle preaches the law, and the law alone, maintaining justice as the sole Divine attribute, so Mr. James preaches the Gospel only, denying totally that to the Divine Mind any distinction exists between saint and sinner, unless that the sinner is somewhat more of a favorite than the saint. We did not, do not, agree with Mr. James in his anti-nomianism; as between him and Carlyle, we think his doctrine far the truer and nobler. He stands on a higher plane, and sees much the farther. A course of reading in Mr. James's books might, we think, help our English cynic not a little.
God is the perfect harmony of justice and love. His justice is warmed through and through with love, his love is sanctified and made strong by justice. And so, in Christ, perfect justice was fulfilled in perfect love. But in him first was fully revealed, in this world, the Divine fatherly tenderness to the lost, to the sinner, to those lowest down and farthest away. In him was taught that our own redemption from evil does not lie in despising and hating men worse than ourselves, but in saving them. The hard Pharisaic justice of Carlyle may call this "rose-water philanthropy," but till he accepts it from his heart, and repents of his contempt for his fallen fellowmen, till he learns to love "scoundrels," there is no hope for him. He lived once in the heaven of reverence, faith, and love; he has gone from it into the hell of Pharisaic scorn and contempt. Till he comes back out of that, there is no hope for him.
But such a noble nature cannot be thus lost. He will one day, let us trust, worship the divine love which he now abhors. Cromwell asked, on his death-bed, "if those once in a state of grace could fall," and, being assured not, said, "I am safe then, for I am sure I was once in a state of grace." There is a truth in this doctrine of the perseverance of saints. Some truths once fully seen, even though afterward rejected by the mind and will, stick like a barbed arrow in the conscience, tormenting the soul till they are again accepted and obeyed. Such a truth Carlyle once saw, in the great doctrine of reverence for the fallen and the sinful. He will see it again, if not in this world, then in some other world.
The first Carlyle was an enthusiast, the last Carlyle is a cynic. From enthusiasm to cynicism, from the spirit of reverence to the spirit of contempt, the way seems long, but the condition of arriving is simple. Discard LOVE, and the whole road is passed over. Divorce love from truth, and truth ceases to be open and receptive,--ceases to be a positive function, turns into acrid criticism, bitter disdain, cruel and hollow laughter, empty of all inward peace. Such is the road which Carlyle has passed over, from his earnest, hopeful youth to his bitter old age.
Carlyle fulfilled for many, during these years, the noble work of a mediator. By reverence and love he saw what was divine in nature, in man, and in life. By the profound sincerity of his heart, his worship of reality, his hatred of falsehood, he escaped from the commonplaces of literature to a better land of insight and knowledge. So he was enabled to lead many others out of their entanglements, into his own luminous insight. It was a great and blessed work. Would that it had been sufficient for him!
BUCKLE AND HIS THEORY OF AVERAGES[28]
We welcomed kindly the first installment of Mr. Buckle's work,[29] giving a cursory account of it, and hinting, rather than urging, the objections which readily suggested themselves against theories concerning Man, History, Civilization, and Human Progress. But now it seems a proper time to discuss with a little more deliberation the themes opened before us by this intrepid writer,--this latest champion of that theory of the mind which in the last century was called Materialism and Necessity, and which in the present has been re-baptized as Positivism.