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.