APPENDIX II.—(p. 34.)
Few passages of the book which at least some part of the nations at present most advanced in civilization accept as an expression of final truth, have been more distorted than those bearing on Idolatry. For the idolatry there denounced is neither sculpture, nor veneration of sculpture. It is simply the substitution of an "Eidolon," phantasm, or imagination of Good, for that which is real and enduring; from the Highest Living Good, which gives life, to the lowest material good which ministers to it. The Creator, and the things created, which He is said to have "seen good" in creating, are in this their eternal goodness appointed always to be "worshipped,"—i. e., to have goodness and worth ascribed to them from the heart; and the sweep and range of idolatry extend to the rejection of any or all of these, "calling evil good, and good evil,—putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter."[96] For in that rejection and substitution we betray the first of all Loyalties, to the fixed Law of life, and with resolute opposite loyalty serve our own imagination of good, which is the law, not of the House, but of the Grave, (otherwise called the law of "mark missing," which we translate "law of Sin"); these "two masters," between whose services we have to choose, being otherwise distinguished as God and Mammon, which Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power of money only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of false and fond desire, or "Covetousness, which is Idolatry." So that Iconoclasm—image-breaking—is easy; but an Idol cannot be broken—it must be forsaken; and this is not so easy, either to do, or persuade to doing. For men may readily be convinced of the weakness of an image; but not of the emptiness of an imagination.
APPENDIX III.—(p. 36.)
I have not attempted to support, by the authority of other writers, any of the statements made in these papers; indeed, if such authorities were rightly collected, there would be no occasion for my writing at all. Even in the scattered passages referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle's—Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the Latter Day Pamphlets,—all has been said that needs to be said, and far better than I shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public mind at present is to require everything to be uttered diffusely, loudly, and a hundred times over, before it will listen; and it has revolted against these papers of mine as if they contained things daring and new, when there is not one assertion in them of which the truth has not been for ages known to the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It would be [I had written will be; but have now reached a time of life for which there is but one mood—the conditional,] a far greater pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words than to add to mine; Horace's clear rendering of the substance of the passages in the text may be found room for at once,
Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum
Nec studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli;
Si scalpra et formas non sutor, nautica vela
Aversus mercaturis, delirus et amens
Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis
Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti
Compositis; metuensque velut contingere sacrum?
[Which may be roughly thus translated:—
"Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, being in no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music: or if, being no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no mind for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him a madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there between such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and does not know how to use, when he has got them?">[
With which it is perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon's statement, it being clearer than any English one can be, owing to the power of the general Greek term for wealth, "useable things."
[I have cut out the Greek because I can't be troubled to correct the accents, and am always nervous about them; here it is in English, as well as I can do it:—
"This being so, it follows that things are only property to the man who knows how to use them; as flutes, for instance, are property to the man who can pipe upon them respectably; but to one who knows not how to pipe, they are no property, unless he can get rid of them advantageously.... For if they are not sold, the flutes are no property (being serviceable for nothing); but, sold, they become property. To which Socrates made answer,—'and only then if he knows how to sell them, for if he sell them to another man who cannot play on them, still they are no property.'">[