Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843

PAST AND PRESENT, BY CARLYLE

Mr Carlyle—an astute and trenchant critic might, with show of justice, remark—assumes to be the reformer and castigator of his age—a reformer in philosophy, in politics, in religion—denouncing its mechanical method of thinking, deploring its utter want of faith, and threatening political society, obstinately deaf to the voice of wisdom, with the retributive horrors of repeated revolutions; and yet neither in philosophy, in religion, nor in politics, has Mr Carlyle any distinct dogma, creed, or constitution to promulgate. The age is irreligious, he exclaims, and the vague feeling of the impenetrable mystery which encompasses us, is all the theology we can gather from him; civil society, with its laws and government, is in a false and perilous position, and for all relief and reformation, he launches forth an indisputable morality—precepts of charity, and self-denial, and strenuous effort—precepts most excellent, and only too applicable; applicable, unfortunately, after an à priori fashion—for if men would but obey them, there had been need of few laws, and of no remedial measures.

This man of faith—our critic might continue—has but one everlasting note; and it is really the most sceptical and melancholy that has ever been heard, or heard with toleration, in our literature. He repeats it from his favourite apostle Goethe; "all doubt is to be cured only—by action." Certainly, if forgetting the doubt, and the subject of doubt, be the sole cure for it. But that other advice which Mr Carlyle tells us was given, and in vain, to George Fox, the Quaker, at a time when he was agitated by doubts and perplexities, namely, "to drink beer and dance with the girls," was of the very same stamp, and would have operated in the very same manner, to the removing of the pious Quaker's doubts. Faith! ye lack faith! cries this prophet in our streets; and when reproved and distressed scepticism enquires where truth is to be found, he bids it back to the loom or the forge, to its tools and its workshop, of whatever kind these may be—there to forget the enquiry.

The religion, or, if he pleases, the formula of religion, which helps to keep men sober and orderly, Mr Carlyle despises, ridicules; "old clothes!" he cries, empty and ragged. It is not till a man has risen into frenzy, or some hot fanaticism, that he deserves his respect. An Irving, when his noble spirit, kindled to fever heat, is seized with delirium, becomes worthy of some admiration. A Cromwell is pronounced emphatically to have believed in a God, and therefore to have been "by far the remarkablest governor we have had here for the last five centuries or so." Meanwhile, is it the faith of an Irving, or the God of a Cromwell, that our subtle-minded author would have us adopt, or would adopt himself? If he scorn the easy, methodical citizen, who plods along the beaten tracks of life, looking occasionally, in his demure, self-satisfied manner, upwards to the heavens, but with no other result than to plod more perseveringly along his very earthy track, it follows not that there is any one order of fanatic spirits with whom he would associate, to whose theology he would yield assent. Verily, no. He demands faith—he gives no creed. What is it you teach? a plain-speaking man would exclaim; where is your church? have you also your thirty-nine articles? have you nine? have you one stout article of creed that will bear the rubs of fortune—bear the temptations of prosperity or a dietary system—stand both sunshine and the wind—which will keep virtue steady when disposed to reel, and drive back crime to her penal caverns of remorse? What would you answer, O philosopher! if a simple body should ask you, quite in confidence, where wicked people go to?

Were it not better for those to whom philosophy has brought the sad necessity of doubt, to endure this also patiently and silently, as one of the inevitable conditions of human existence? Were not this better than to rail incessantly against the world, for a want of that sentiment which they have no means to excite or to authorize?

The same inconsequence in politics. We have Chartism preached by one not a Chartist—by one who has no more his five points of Radicalism than his five points of Calvinistic divinity—who has no trust in democracy, who swears by no theory of representative government—who will never believe that a multitude of men, foolish and selfish, will elect the disinterested and the wise. Your constitution, your laws, your "horse-haired justice" that sits in Westminster Hall, he likes them not; but he propounds himself no scheme of polity. Reform yourselves, one and all, ye individual men! and the nation will be reformed; practise justice, charity, self-denial, and then all mortals may work and eat. This is the most distinct advice he bestows. Alas! it is advice such as this that the Christian preacher, century after century, utters from his pulpit, which he makes the staple of his eloquence, and which he and his listeners are contented to applaud; and the more contented probably to applaud, as, on all hands, it is tacitly understood to be far too good to be practised.

In fine, turn which way you will, to philosophy, to politics, to religion, you find Mr Carlyle objecting, denouncing, scoffing, rending all to pieces in his bold, reckless, ironical, manner—but teaching nothing. The most docile pupil, when he opens his tablets to put down the precious sum of wisdom he has learned, pauses—finds his pencil motionless, and leaves his tablet still a blank.

Now all this, and more of the same kind, which our astute and trenchant critic might urge, may be true, or very like the truth, but it is not the whole truth.

"To speak a little pedantically," says our author himself, in a paper called Signs of the Times, "there is a science of Dynamics in man's fortune and nature, as well as of Mechanics. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified, forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of love, and fear, and wonder, of enthusiasm, poetry—religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate 'motives,' as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment. Now it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared generally as moralists, poets, or priests, did, without neglecting the mechanical province, deal chiefly with the dynamical; applying, themselves chiefly to regulate, increase, and purify, the inward primary powers of man; and fancying that herein lay the main difficulty, and the best service they could undertake."—Misc. vol. ii. p. 277.

In such Dynamics it is that Mr Carlyle deals. To speak in our own plain common-place diction, it is to the elements of all religious feeling, to the broad unalterable principles of morality, that he addresses himself; stirring up in the minds of his readers those sentiments of reverence to the Highest, and of justice to all, even to the lowest, which can never utterly die out in any man, but which slumber in the greater number of us. It is by no means necessary to teach any peculiar or positive doctrine in order to exert an influence on society. After all, there is a moral heart beating at the very centre of this world. Touch it, and there is a responsive movement through the whole system of the world. Undoubtedly external circumstances rule in their turn over this same central pulsation: alter, arrange, and modify, these external circumstances as best you can, but he who, by the word he speaks or writes, can reach this central pulse immediately—is he idle, is he profitless?

Or put it thus: there is a justice between man and man—older, and more stable, and more lofty in its requisitions, than that which sits in ermine, or, if our author pleases, in "horse-hair," at Westminster Hall; there is a morality recognized by the intellect and the heart of all reflective men, higher and purer than what the present forms of society exact or render feasible—or rather say, a morality of more exalted character than that which has hitherto determined those forms of society. No man who believes that the teaching of Christ was authorized of heaven—no man who believes this only, that his doctrine has obtained and preserved its heavenly character from the successful, unanswerable, appeal which it makes to the human heart—can dispute this fact. Is he an idler, then, or a dreamer in the land, who comes forth, and on the high-road of our popular literature, insists on it that men should assume their full moral strength, and declares that herein lies the salvation of the world? But what can he do if the external circumstances of life are against him?—if they crush this moral energy?—if they discountenance this elevation of character? Alone—perhaps nothing. He with both hands is raising one end of the beam; go you with your tackle, with rope and pulley, and all mechanical appliances, to the other end, and who knows but something may be effected?

It is not by teaching this or that dogma, political, philosophical, or religious, that Mr Carlyle is doing his work, and exerting an influence, by no means despicable, on his generation. It is by producing a certain moral tone of thought, of a stern, manly, energetic, self-denying character, that his best influence consists. Accordingly we are accustomed to view his works, even when they especially regard communities of men, and take the name of histories, as, in effect, appeals to the individual heart, and to the moral will of the reader. His mind is not legislative; his mode of thinking is not systematic; a state economy he has not the skill, perhaps not the pretension, to devise. When he treats of nations, and governments, and revolutions of states, he views them all as a wondrous picture, which he, the observer, standing apart, watches and apostrophizes, still revealing himself in his reflections upon them. The picture to the eye, he gives with marvellous vividness; and he puts forth, with equal power, that sort of world-wide reflection which a thinking being might be supposed to make on his first visit to our planet; but the space between—those intermediate generalizations which make the pride of the philosophical historian—he neglects, has no taste for. Such a writer as Montesquieu he holds in manifest antipathy. His History of the French Revolution, like his Chartism, like the work now before us, his Past and Present, is still an appeal to the consciousness of each man, and to the high and eternal laws of justice and of charity—lo, ye are brethren!

And although it be true, as our critic has suggested, that to enlarge upon the misery which lies low and wide over the whole ground-plot of civilized society, without at the same time devising an effectual remedy, is a most unsatisfactory business; nevertheless, this also must be added, that to forget the existence of this misery would not be to cure it—would, on the contrary, be a certain method of perpetuating and aggravating it; that to try to forget it, is as little wise as it is humane, and that indeed such act of oblivion is altogether impossible. If crowds of artizans, coming forth from homes where there is neither food nor work, shall say, in the words that our author puts into their mouths, "Behold us here—we ask if you mean to lead us towards work; to try to lead us? Or if you declare that you cannot lead us? And expect that we are to remain quietly unled, and in a composed manner perish of starvation? What is it that you expect of us? What is it that you mean to do with us?"—if, we say, such a question is asked, we may not be able to answer, but we cannot stifle it. Surely it is well that every class in the community should know how indissolubly its interest is connected with the well-being of other classes. However remote the man of wealth may sit from scenes like this—however reluctant he may be to hear of them—nothing can be more true than that this distress is his calamity, and that on him also lies the inevitable alternative to remedy or to suffer.

It accords with the view we have here taken of the writings of Mr Carlyle, that of all his works that which pleased us most was the one most completely personal in its character, which most constantly kept the reader in a state of self-reflection. In spite of all its oddities and vagaries, and the chaotic shape into which its materials have been thrown, the Sartor Resartus is a prime favourite of ours—a sort of volcanic work; and the reader stands by, with folded arms, resolved at all events to secure peace within his own bosom. But no sluggard's peace; his arms are folded, not for idleness, only to repress certain vain tremors and vainer sighs. He feels the calm of self-renunciation, but united with no monkish indolence. Here is a fragment of it. How it rebukes the spirit of strife and contention!

"To me, in this our life," says the Professor, "which is an internecine warfare with the time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this—'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of happiness in the world, something from my share; which, by the heavens, thou shalt not; nay, I will fight thee rather.' Alas! and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them! Can we not, in all such cases, rather say—'Take it, thou too ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wanted; take it with a blessing: would to heaven I had enough for thee!'"—P. 200.

Truisms! Preachments repeated from Solomon downwards! some quick, impatient reader, all animal irritability, will exclaim—Good, but it is the very prerogative of genius, in every age, to revive truisms such as these, and make them burn in our hearts. Many a man in his hour of depression, when resolution is sicklied over by the pale cast of thought, will find, in the writings of Carlyle, a freshening stimulant, better than the wine-cup, or even the laughter of a friend, can give. In some of his biographical sketches, with what force has he brought out the moral resolution which animated, or ought to have animated, the man of whom he is writing! We shall have occasion, by and by, to notice what, to our mind, appears a mere perversion of thought, and a mischievous exaggeration in our author, who, in his love of a certain energy of character, has often made this energy (apart from a moral purpose) the test and rule of his admiration. But at present turn to his admirable estimation of Dr Samuel Johnson, and the noble regret which he throws over the memory of Burns. A portion of the first we cannot resist extracting. What a keen mountain air, bracing to the nerves, mortal to languor and complaint, blows over us from passages such as these:—

"The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully. Johnson, in the eighteenth century, all as a man of letters, was, in good truth, 'the bravest of the brave.' What mortal could have more to war with? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered not; he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, prevailed. Whoso will understand what it is to have a man's heart, may find that, since the time of John Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore. Observe, too, that he never called himself brave, never felt himself to be so; the more completely was he so. No Giant Despair, no Golgotha Death-Dance, or Sorcerer's Sabbath of 'Literary Life in London,' appals this pilgrim; he works resolutely for deliverance; in still defiance steps stoutly along. The thing that is given him to do he can make himself do; what is to be endured he can endure in silence.