I am often accused of inconsistency; but believe myself defensible against the charge with respect to what I have said on nearly every subject except that of war. It is impossible for me to write consistently of war, for the groups of facts I have gathered about it lead me to two precisely opposite conclusions.
When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, till I can choose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by the necessities of the time; and forced to act, one way or another. The conviction on which I act is, that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian nations; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a better mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly that the most beautiful characters yet developed among men have been formed in war;—that all great nations have been warrior nations, and that the only kinds of peace which we are likely to get in the present age are ruinous alike to the intellect, and the heart.
The lecture on "War," in this volume, addressed to young soldiers, had for its object to strengthen their trust in the virtue of their profession. It is inconsistent with itself, in its closing appeal to women, praying them to use their influence to bring wars to an end. And I have been hindered from completing my long intended notes on the economy of the Kings of Prussia by continually increasing doubt how far the machinery and discipline of war, under which they learned the art of government, was essential for such lesson; and what the honesty and sagacity of the Friedrich who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia, might have done for the happiness of his Prussia, unruined.
In war, however, or in peace, the character which Carlyle chiefly loves him for, and in which Carlyle has shown him to differ from all kings up to this time succeeding him, is his constant purpose to use every power entrusted to him for the good of his people; and be, not in name only, but in heart and hand, their king.
Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of duty. Friedrich, born to govern, determines to govern to the best of his faculty. That "best" may sometimes be unwise; and self-will, or love of glory, may have their oblique hold on his mind, and warp it this way or that; but they are never principal with him. He believes that war is necessary, and maintains it; sees that peace is necessary, and calmly persists in the work of it to the day of his death, not claiming therein more praise than the head of any ordinary household, who rules it simply because it is his place, and he must not yield the mastery of it to another.
How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain the strength necessary for kingship without either fronting death, or inflicting it, seems to me not at present determinable. The historical facts are that, broadly speaking, none but soldiers, or persons with a soldierly faculty, have ever yet shown themselves fit to be kings; and that no other men are so gentle, so just, or so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's character of the happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of it but by a warrior; nay, so much is it beyond common strength that I had supposed the entire meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of the best soldiers of England himself read me the poem,[142] and taught me, what I might have known, had I enough watched his own life, that it was entirely literal. There is nothing of so high reach distinctly demonstrable in Friedrich: but I see more and more, as I grow older, that the things which are the most worth, encumbered among the errors and faults of every man's nature, are never clearly demonstrable; and are often most forcible when they are scarcely distinct to his own conscience,—how much less, clamorous for recognition by others!
Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle's showing of this, to any careful reader of Friedrich. But careful readers are but one in the thousand; and by the careless, the masses of detail with which the historian must deal are insurmountable.
My own notes, made for the special purpose of hunting down the one point of economy, though they cruelly spoil Carlyle's own current and method of thought, may yet be useful in enabling readers, unaccustomed to books involving so vast a range of conception, to discern what, on this one subject only, may be gathered from that history. On any other subject of importance, similar gatherings might be made of other passages. The historian has to deal with all at once.
I therefore have determined to print here, as a sequel to the Essay on War, my notes from the first volume of Friedrich, on the economies of Brandenburg, up to the date of the establishment of the Prussian monarchy. The economies of the first three Kings of Prussia I shall then take up in Fors Clavigera, finding them fitter for examination in connection with the subject of that book than of this.
I assume, that the reader will take down his first volume of Carlyle, and read attentively the passages to which I refer him. I give the reference first to the largest edition, in six volumes (1858-1865); then, in parenthesis, to the smallest or "people's edition" (1872-1873). The pieces which I have quoted in my own text are for the use of readers who may not have ready access to the book; and are enough for the explanation of the points to which I wish them to direct their thoughts in reading such histories of soldiers or soldier-kingdoms.