These being the elements of Carlyle’s moral nature, let us look for a moment at the world which he was to test by his “unborrowed principles of conviction.” He came on the scene during the decade of reaction which followed the battle of Waterloo. Official Europe, confounding the ambition of Napoleon with the causes underlying the Revolution, supposed that in crushing one it had destroyed the other. The motto of the Old Régime had been Privilege, of the New it was Merit. The revived political fashions of the eighteenth century, though cut by such elegant tailors as Metternich, Castlereagh, and Polignac, chafed a generation which had grown used to a freer costume. At any time there yawns between the ideals and the practices of society a discrepancy which provokes the censure of the philosopher and the sarcasm of the cynic; but in a time like the Restoration, when some men consciously repudiated and none sincerely believed the system thrust upon them, the chasm between profession and performance must open wider still, revealing not only the noble failures born of earnest but baffled endeavor, but also all the hideous growths of hypocrisy, of deceptions, insincerities, and intellectual fraud. And in very truth the Old Régime resuscitated by Europe’s oligarchs was doubly condemned,—first, as being unfitted to the new age; and, secondly, as having marked in the eighteenth century, when it flourished, the logical conclusion of a political and social epoch. In 1820 the trunk and main branches of the tree of Feudalism were dead: he was not a wise man who imagined that the still surviving upper branches would long keep green.
Not alone in the political constitution of society were momentous changes operating. They but represented the attempt of man to work out, in his civic and social relations, ideas which had already penetrated his religion and his philosophy. Distil those ideas to their inmost essence, its name is Liberty. The old Church, whether Roman or Protestant, lay rotting at anchor in the land-locked bayou of Authority; and the pioneers of the new convictions, abandoning her and her cargo of antiquated dogmas, had pushed on across intervening morasses to the shore of the illimitable sea; yea, they were launching thereon their skiffs of modern pattern, and resolutely, hopefully steering whither their consciences pointed. Better the storms of the living ocean than the miasma of that stagnant, scum-breeding pool! But a church is of all institutions that to which men cling most stubbornly, paying it lip-service long after its doctrines have ceased to shape their conduct or to lift their aspirations; trying to believe, in spite of their unbelief, that it will continue to be to them a source of strength as it once was to their fathers; preserving forms, but veneering them with contradictory meanings; coming at last to declare that an institution must be kept, if for no other reason than because it once fulfilled the purposes for which it is now inadequate. The aroma of association has for some minds the potency of original inspiration. Who can ponder on life without perceiving that whereas in their business, their possessions, their love, and their hate, men resent dictation; in matters beyond the scope of experience, and consequently beyond proof,—as the conditions of a future life,—men credulously accept the guidance of others quite as ignorant as themselves, from whom in their business or their passions they would submit to no interference?
Needless to say the revived Old Régime intrenched itself behind whatever church it found standing,—in Prussia the Lutheran, in England the Anglican, in Scotland the Calvinist, in the Latin countries the Roman. The ecclesiastical institution might not humanize the masses, but at least it held them in check; it might not spiritualize the classes, but it taught them that in rallying to its support they were best guarding their own privileges. Metternich, whom we call the representative of the Restoration, did not scruple to announce that, as the dangers which threatened Church and State were identical, the Church could be saved only by upholding the State. Not for the first time in history was the priest a policeman in disguise.
Into this world of transition Thomas Carlyle strode with his store of unborrowed principles. Right or wrong, his convictions were his own; therefore they were realities that need not fear a conflict with ghosts of dead convictions and insincerities.
Naturally, one of the first facts that amazed him was the monstrous unreality in that transitional society. By the census the people of Great Britain were rated as Christians; by their acts they seemed little better than barbarians. What availed the Established Church, in which livings were assigned at the pleasure of some dissolute noble, fox-hunting parsons were given the cure of souls, and worldlings or unbelievers rose to be bishops? Could the loudest protestations explain the existence of great, gaunt, brutalized masses, beyond the pale of human charity; every horse sleek, well lodged, and well fed, but innumerable men dying of hunger or lodged in the almshouse? Can that be true civilization in which the various constituents recognize no interdependence, and only a few usurp benefits which are pernicious unless they be free to all? Respectability, and not virtue,—that, Carlyle declared, was John Bull’s ideal, and he opened fire upon its chief allies, Sham and Cant. He spared no prejudices, he respected no institutions. With sarcasm until then unknown in English, he unmasked one artificiality after another, disclosing the cruelty or the hypocrisy which lurked behind it, and setting over against it the true nature of the thing it pretended to be. To interpret such conditions by the criterion of conscience was to condemn them.
But Carlyle’s mission was not merely to destroy: he shattered error in order that the clogged fountain of truth might once more gush forth. Before eyes long dimmed with gazing on insincerity, he would hold up shining patterns of sincerity; souls groping for guidance, he would stay and comfort by precedents of strength; hearts pursuing false idols, he would chasten by examples of truth. Men talked—and nowhere more pragmatically than in the churches—as if God, after having imparted his behests to a few Hebrews ages ago, had retired into some remote empyrean, and busied himself no more with the affairs of men. But to Carlyle the immanence of God was an ever-present reality, manifesting itself throughout all history and in every individual conscience, but nowise more clearly than in the careers of great men.
Thus he made it his business to set before his contemporaries models worthy of veneration, for he recognized that worship is a primary moral need. “Great men,” he says, “are the inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.” In this spirit he introduced Goethe, the latest of the heroes, to English readers, as the man who, from amid chaos similar to that which bewildered them, had climbed to a position where life could be lived nobly, rationally, well. “Close your Byron, open your Goethe,” was his advice to those in whom Byron’s mingled defiance and sentimentality found an echo. He showed in Cromwell how religious zeal is something very different from a phantom faith. He laid bare the truth in Mahomet. He made Luther live again. And all to the end that he might convince his dazed contemporaries that in no age, if we look deeply, shall we look in vain for concrete, living examples of those qualities which are indispensable to right action; that salvation—the purging of the character—is won by exercising virtues, and not by conforming to a stereotyped routine; that the authority of conscience is a present fact, not a mere mechanism which God wound up and gave to the Hebrews, and has been transmitted in poor repair by them to us. As an antidote to sterilizing doubt, Carlyle prescribed the simple remedy which sums up the wisdom of all the sages: “Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.” In this fashion did Carlyle discharge his mission as a moral regenerator. We live as individuals, and to the individual conscience he made his appeal, caring little for the organization of principles into institutions. Rather, like every individualist, did he incline to deprecate the numbing effect of institutions. Let each unit be righteous, in order that whatever the collective units shall establish may be righteous too.
Bearing this in mind, we shall understand Carlyle’s attitude toward the great social and intellectual movements of his time. The watchword which had inspired generous minds at the end of the last century was Liberty, and after the thunders of the Napoleonic wars that had drowned it died away, it rang out its summons more clearly than before, never again to be quite deadened, despite all the efforts of the Old Régime. The application of the theory of Liberty to government resulted in setting up Democracy as the ideal political system. Since every citizen in the State bears, directly or indirectly, his fraction of the burden of taxation, and since he is affected by the laws, and interested, even to the point of laying down his life, in the preservation of his country, Democracy declares that he should have an equal part with every other citizen in determining what the taxes and policy of his State shall be; and it thrusts upon him the responsibility of choosing his own governors and representatives. To Carlyle this ideal seemed a chimera. Honest, just, and intelligent government is of all social contrivances the most difficult: by what miracle, therefore, shall the sum of the opinions of a million voters, severally ignorant, be intelligent? As well blow a million soap-bubbles, each thinner than gossamer, and expect that collectively they will be hard as steel! Or, admitting that the representatives Demos chooses be not so incompetent as itself, how shall they be kept disinterested? Their very numbers not only make them unmanageable, but so divide responsibility that any individual among them can shift from his own shoulders the blame for corrupt or harmful laws. Moreover, popular government means party government, and that means compromise. To Carlyle, principles were either right or wrong, and between right and wrong he saw no neutral ground for compromise. Party government cleaves to expediency, which at best is only a half-truth; but half-truth is also half-error, and any infinitesimal taint of error vitiates the truth to which it clings. Finally, Democracy substitutes a new, many-headed tyranny—more difficult to destroy because many-headed—for the tyranny it would abolish.
Such objections Carlyle urged with consummate vigor. He foresaw, too, many of the other evils which have accompanied the development of this system to impair its efficacy, such as the rise of a class of professional politicians, of political sophists, of corrupt “bosses,” expert in the art of wheedling the ignorant many, and thereby of frustrating the initial purpose of the system. His opposition did not spring from desire to see the masses down-trodden, but from conviction that they need guidance and enlightenment, and that they are therefore no more competent to choose their own law-makers than children are to choose their own teachers. In knowledge of public affairs Demos is still a child, innocent, well-intentioned, if you will; but ignorant, and by this system left to the mercy of the unscrupulous.
This brings us to consider the charge that Carlyle, in his exaltation of the Strong Man, worshiped crude force. Let us grant that on the surface the accusation seems plausible; but when we seek deeper, we shall discover that he exalts Cromwell and Frederick, not because they were despots, but because, in his judgment, they knew better than any other man, or group of men, in their respective countries, how to govern. Their ability was their justification; their force, but the symbol of their ability. “Weakness”—Carlyle was fond of quoting—“is the only misery.” What is ignorance but weakness (through lack of training) of the intellect? In the incessant battle of life,—and few men have been more constantly impressed than Carlyle by the battle-aspect of life,—weakness of whatever kind succumbs to strength. Evil perpetually marshals its forces against Good,—positive, aggressive forces, to be overcome neither by inertia, nor indifference, nor half-hearted compromise, but by hurling stronger forces of Good against them. Interpreting Carlyle’s views thus, we perceive why he extolled the Strong Man and distrusted the aggregate ignorance of Democracy. Furthermore, we must not forget that he never considered politics the prime business of life: first, make the masses righteous, next, enlightened, and then they will naturally organize a righteous and enlightened government. When Carlyle rejoined to the zealots of Democracy or other panaceas, “Adopt your new system if you must, will not the same old human units operate it? Were it not wiser to perfect them first?”—he antagonized the spirit of the age: wisely or not, only time can show. Those of us who would reject his arguments would nevertheless admit that Democracy is still on trial.