Kitabı oku: «Fresh Fields», sayfa 14
Upon these facts Carlyle planted himself, and the gulf which he saw open between them and the beauties of universal suffrage was simply immense. Without disputing the facts here, we may ask if they really bear upon the question of popular government, of a free ballot? If so, then the ground is clean shot away from under it. The world is really governed and led by minorities, and always will be. The many, sooner or later, follow the one. We have all become abolitionists in this country, some of us much to our surprise and bewilderment; we hardly know yet how it happened; but the time was when abolitionists were hunted by the multitude. Marvelous to relate, also, civil service reform has become popular among our politicians. Something has happened; the tide has risen while we slept, or while we mocked and laughed, and away we all go on the current. Yet it is equally true that, under any form of government, nothing short of events themselves, nothing short of that combination of circumstances which we name fate or fortune, can place that exceptional man, the hero, at the head of affairs. If there are no heroes, then woe to the people who have lost the secret of producing great men.
The worthiest man usually has other work to do, and avoids politics. Carlyle himself could not be induced to stand for Parliament. "Who would govern," he says, "that can get along without governing? He that is fittest for it is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained." But constrained he cannot be, yet he is our only hope. What shall we do? A government by the fittest can alone save mankind, yet the fittest is not forthcoming. We do not know him; he does not know himself. The case is desperate. Hence the despair of Carlyle in his view of modern politics.
Who that has read his history of Frederick has not at times felt that he would gladly be the subject of a real king like the great Prussian, a king who was indeed the father of his people; a sovereign man at the head of affairs with the reins of government all in his own hands; an imperial husbandman devoted to improving, extending, and building up his nation as the farmer his farm, and toiling as no husbandman ever toiled; a man to reverence, to love, to fear; who called all the women his daughters, and all the men his sons, and whom to see and to speak with was the event of a lifetime; a shepherd to his people, a lion to his enemies? Such a man gives head and character to a nation; he is the head and the people are the body; currents of influence and of power stream down from such a hero to the life of the humblest peasant; his spirit diffuses itself through the nation. It is the ideal state; it is captivating to the imagination; there is an artistic completeness about it. Probably this is why it so captivated Carlyle, inevitable artist that he was. But how impossible to us! how impossible to any English-speaking people by their own action and choice; not because we are unworthy such a man, but because an entirely new order of things has arrived, and arrived in due course of time, through the political and social evolution of man. The old world has passed away; the age of the hero, of the strong leader, is gone. The people have arrived, and sit in judgment upon all who would rule or lead them. Science has arrived, everything is upon trial; private judgment is supreme. Our only hope in this country, at least in the sphere of governments, is in the collective wisdom of the people; and, as extremes so often meet, perhaps this, if thoroughly realized, is as complete and artistic a plan as the others. The "collective folly" of the people, Carlyle would say, and perhaps during his whole life he never for a moment saw it otherwise; never saw that the wisdom of the majority could be other than the no-wisdom of blind masses of unguided men. He seemed to forget, or else not to know, that universal suffrage, as exemplified in America, was really a sorting and sifting process, a search for the wise, the truly representative man; that the vast masses were not asked who should rule over them, but were asked which of two candidates they preferred, in selecting which candidates what of wisdom and leadership there was available had had their due weight; in short, that democracy alone makes way for and offers a clear road to natural leadership. Under the pressure of opposing parties, all the political wisdom and integrity there is in the country stand between the people, the masses, and the men of their choice.
Undoubtedly popular government will, in the main, be like any other popular thing, – it will partake of the conditions of popularity; it will seldom elevate the greatest; it will never elevate the meanest; it is based upon the average virtue and intelligence of the people.
There have been great men in all countries and times who possessed the elements of popularity, and would have commanded the suffrage of the people; on the other hand, there have been men who possessed many elements of popularity, but few traits of true greatness; others with greatness, but no elements of popularity. These last are the reformers, the innovators, the starters, and their greatness is a discovery of after-times. Popular suffrage cannot elevate these men, and if, as between the two other types, it more frequently seizes upon the last, it is because the former is the more rare.
But there is a good deal of delusion about the proneness of the multitude to run after quacks and charlatans: a multitude runs, but a larger multitude does not run; and those that do run soon see their mistake. Real worth, real merit, alone wins the permanent suffrage of mankind. In every neighborhood and community the best men are held in highest regard by the most persons. The world over, the names most fondly cherished are those most worthy of being cherished. Yet this does not prevent that certain types of great men – men who are in advance of their times and announce new doctrines and faiths – will be rejected and denied by their contemporaries. This is the order of nature. Minorities lead and save the world, and the world knows them not till long afterward.
No man perhaps suspects how large and important the region of unconsciousness in him, what a vast, unknown territory lies there back of his conscious will and purpose, and which is really the controlling power of his life. Out of it things arise, and shape and define themselves to his consciousness and rule his career. Here the influence of environment works; here the elements of race, of family; here the Time-Spirit moulds him and he knows it not; here Nature, or Fate, as we sometimes name it, rules him and makes him what he is.
In every people or nation stretches this deep, unsuspected background. Here the great movements begin; here the deep processes go on; here the destiny of the race or nation really lies. In this soil the new ideas are sown; the new man, the despised leader, plants his seed here, and if they be vital they thrive, and in due time emerge and become the conscious possession of the community.
None knew better than Carlyle himself that, whoever be the ostensible potentates and lawmakers, the wise do virtually rule, the natural leaders do lead. Wisdom will out: it is the one thing in this world that cannot be suppressed or annulled. There is not a parish, township, or community, little or big, in this country or in England, that is not finally governed, shaped, directed, built up by what of wisdom there is in it. All the leading industries and enterprises gravitate naturally to the hands best able to control them. The wise furnish employment for the unwise, capital flows to capital hands as surely as water seeks water.
"Winds blow and waters roll
Strength to the brave."
There never is and never can be any government but by the wisest. In all nations and communities the law of nature finally prevails. If there is no wisdom in the people, there will be none in their rulers; the virtue and intelligence of the representative will not be essentially different from that of his constituents. The dependence of the foolish, the thriftless, the improvident, upon his natural master and director, for food, employment, for life itself, is just as real to-day in America as it was in the old feudal or patriarchal times. The relation between the two is not so obvious, so intimate, so voluntary, but it is just as vital and essential. How shall we know the wise man unless he makes himself felt, or seen, or heard? How shall we know the master unless he masters us? Is there any danger that the real captains will not step to the front, and that we shall not know them when they do? Shall we not know a Luther, a Cromwell, a Franklin, a Washington?
"Man," says Carlyle, "little as he may suppose it, is necessitated to obey superiors; he is a social being in virtue of this necessity; nay, he could not be gregarious otherwise; he obeys those whom he esteems better than himself, wiser, braver, and will forever obey such; and ever be ready and delighted to do it." Think in how many ways, through how many avenues, in our times, the wise man can reach us and place himself at our head, or mould us to his liking, as orator, statesman, poet, philosopher, preacher, editor. If he has any wise mind to speak, any scheme to unfold, there is the rostrum or pulpit and crowds ready to hear him, or there is the steam power press ready to disseminate his wisdom to the four corners of the earth. He can set up a congress or a parliament and really make and unmake the laws, by his own fireside, in any country that has a free press. "If we will consider it, the essential truth of the matter is, every British man can now elect himself to Parliament without consulting the hustings at all. If there be any vote, idea, or notion in him, or any earthly or heavenly thing, cannot he take a pen and therewith autocratically pour forth the same into the ears and hearts of all people, so far as it will go?" ("Past and Present.") Or, there is the pulpit everywhere waiting to be worthily filled. What may not the real hero accomplish here? "Indeed, is not this that we call spiritual guidance properly the soul of the whole, the life and eyesight of the whole?" Some one has even said, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care not who makes the laws." Certainly the great poet of a people is its real Founder and King. He rules for centuries and rules in the heart.
In more primitive times, and amid more rudely organized communities, the hero, the strong man, could step to the front and seize the leadership like the buffalo of the plains or the wild horse of the pampas; but in our time, at least among English-speaking races, he must be more or less called by the suffrage of the people. It is quite certain that, had there been a seventeenth or eighteenth century Carlyle he would not have seen the hero in Cromwell, or in Frederick, that the nineteenth century Carlyle saw in each. In any case, in any event, the dead rule us more than the living; we cannot escape the past. It is not merely by virtue of the sunlight that falls now, and the rain and dew that it brings, that we continue here; but by virtue of the sunlight of æons of past ages.
"This land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following and their representatives, if you can find them: all the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England." "Work? The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies silent under my feet in this world, and escorts and attends me and supports and keeps me alive, wheresoever I walk or stand, whatsoever I think or do, gives rise to reflections!" In our own politics, has our first President ever ceased to be President? Does he not still sit there, the stern and blameless patriot, uttering counsel?
Carlyle had no faith in the inherent tendency of things to right themselves, to adjust themselves to their own proper standards; the conservative force of Nature, the checks and balances by which her own order and succession is maintained; the Darwinian principle, according to which the organic life of the globe has been evolved, the higher and more complex forms mounting from the lower, the true palingenesia, the principle or power, name it Fate, name it Necessity, name it God, or what you will, which finally lifts a people, a race, an age, and even a community above the reach of choice, of accident, of individual will, into the region of general law. So little is life what we make it, after all; so little is the course of history, the destiny of nations, the result of any man's purpose, or direction, or will, so great is Fate, so insignificant is man! The human body is made up of a vast congeries or association of minute cells, each with its own proper work and function, at which it toils incessantly night and day, and thinks of nothing beyond. The shape, the size, the color of the body, its degree of health and strength, etc., – no cell or series of cells decides these points; a law above and beyond the cell determines them. The final destiny and summing up of a nation is, perhaps, as little within the conscious will and purpose of the individual citizens. When you come to large masses, to long periods, the law of nature steps in. The day is hot or the day is cold, the spring is late or the spring is early; but the inclination of the earth's axis makes the winter and summer sure. The wind blows this way and blows that, but the great storms gyrate and travel in one general direction. There is a wind of the globe that never varies, and there is the breeze of the mountain that is never two days alike. The local hurricane moves the waters of the sea to a depth of but a few feet, but the tidal impulse goes to the bottom. Men and communities in this world are often in the position of arctic explorers, who are making great speed in a given direction while the ice-floe beneath them is making greater speed in the opposite direction. This kind of progress has often befallen political and ecclesiastical parties in this country. Behind mood lies temperament; back of the caprice of will lies the fate of character; back of both is the bias of family; back of that, the tyranny of race; still deeper, the power of climate, of soil, of geology, the whole physical and moral environment. Still we are free men only so far as we rise above these. We cannot abolish fate, but we can in a measure utilize it. The projectile force of the bullet does not annul or suspend gravity; it uses it. The floating vapor is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.
Carlyle, I say, had sounded these depths that lie beyond the region of will and choice, beyond the sphere of man's moral accountability; but in life, in action, in conduct, no man shall take shelter here. One may summon his philosophy when he is beaten in battle, and not till then. You shall not shirk the hobbling Times to catch a ride on the sure-footed Eternities. "The times are bad; very well, you are there to make them better." "The public highways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating that motion is impossible." ("Chartism.")
III
Caroline Fox, in her "Memoirs of Old Friends," reports a smart saying about Carlyle, current in her time, which has been current in some form or other ever since; namely, that he had a large capital of faith uninvested, – carried it about him as ready money, I suppose, working capital. It is certainly true that it was not locked up in any of the various social and religious safe-deposits. He employed a vast deal of it in his daily work. It took not a little to set Cromwell up, and Frederick. Indeed, it is doubtful if among his contemporaries there was a man with so active a faith, – so little invested in paper securities. His religion, as a present living reality, went with him into every question. He did not believe that the Maker of this universe had retired from business, or that he was merely a sleeping partner in the concern. "Original sin," he says, "and such like are bad enough, I doubt not; but distilled sin, dark ignorance, stupidity, dark corn-law, bastile and company, what are they?" For creeds, theories, philosophies, plans for reforming the world, etc., he cared nothing, he would not invest one moment in them; but the hero, the worker, the doer, justice, veracity, courage, these drew him, – in these he put his faith. What to other people were mere obstructions were urgent, pressing realities to Carlyle. Every truth or fact with him has a personal inclination, points to conduct, points to duty. He could not invest himself in creeds and formulas, but in that which yielded an instant return in force, justice, character. He has no philosophical impartiality. He has been broken up; there have been moral convulsions; the rock stands on end. Hence the vehement and precipitous character of his speech, – its wonderful picturesqueness and power. The spirit of gloom and dejection that possesses him, united to such an indomitable spirit of work and helpfulness, is very noteworthy. Such courage, such faith, such unshaken adamantine belief in the essential soundness and healthfulness that lay beneath all this weltering and chaotic world of folly and evil about him, in conjunction with such pessimism and despondency, was never before seen in a man of letters. I am reminded that in this respect he was more like a root of the tree of Igdrasil than like a branch; one of the central and master roots, with all that implies, toiling and grappling in the gloom, but full of the spirit of light. How he delves and searches; how much he made live and bloom again; how he sifted the soil for the last drop of heroic blood! The Fates are there, too, with water from the sacred well. He is quick, sensitive, full of tenderness and pity; yet he is savage and brutal when you oppose him, or seek to wrench him from his holdings. His stormy outbursts always leave the moral atmosphere clear and bracing; he does not communicate the gloom and despondency he feels, because he brings us so directly and unfailingly in contact with the perennial sources of hope and faith, with the life-giving and the life-renewing. Though the heavens fall, the orbs of truth and justice fall not. Carlyle was like an unhoused soul, naked and bare to every wind that blows. He felt the awful cosmic chill. He could not take shelter in the creed of his fathers, nor in any of the opinions and beliefs of his time. He could not and did not try to fend himself against the keen edge of the terrible doubts, the awful mysteries, the abysmal questions and duties. He lived and wrought on in the visible presence of God. This was no myth to him, but a terrible reality. How the immensities open and yawn about him! He was like a man who should suddenly see his relations to the universe, both physical and moral, in gigantic perspective, and never through life lose the awe, the wonder, the fear, the revelation inspired. The veil, the illusion of the familiar, the commonplace, is torn away. The natural becomes the supernatural. Every question, every character, every duty, was seen against the immensities, like figures in the night against a background of fire, and seen as if for the first time. The sidereal, the cosmical, the eternal, – we grow familiar with these or lose sight of them entirely. But Carlyle never lost sight of them; his sense of them became morbidly acute, preternaturally developed, and it was as if he saw every movement of the hand, every fall of a leaf, as an emanation of solar energy. A "haggard mood of the imagination" (his own phrase) was habitual with him. He could see only the tragical in life and in history. Events were imminent, poised like avalanches that a word might loosen. We see Jeffries perpetually amazed at his earnestness, the gradations in his mind were so steep; the descent from the thought to the deed was so swift and inevitable that the witty advocate came to look upon him as a man to be avoided.
"Daily and hourly," he says (at the age of thirty-eight), "the world natural grows more of a world magical to me; this is as it should be. Daily, too, I see that there is no true poetry but in reality."
"The gist of my whole way of thought," he says again, "is to raise the natural to the supernatural." To his brother John he wrote in 1832: "I get more earnest, graver, not unhappier, every day. The whole creation seems more and more divine to me, the natural more and more supernatural." His eighty-five years did not tame him at all, did not blunt his conception of the "fearfulness and wonderfulness of life." Sometimes an opiate or an anæsthetic operates inversely upon a constitution, and, instead of inducing somnolence, makes the person wildly wakeful and sensitive. The anodyne of life acted this way upon Carlyle, and, instead of quieting or benumbing him, filled him with portentous imaginings and fresh cause for wonder. There is a danger that such a mind, if it takes to literature, will make a mess of it. But Carlyle is saved by his tremendous gripe upon reality. Do I say the ideal and the real were one with him? He made the ideal the real, and the only real. Whatever he touched he made tangible, actual, and vivid. Ideas are hurled like rocks, a word blisters like a branding-iron, a metaphor transfixes like a javelin. There is something in his sentences that lays hold of things, as the acids bite metals. His subtle thoughts, his marvelous wit, like the viewless gases of the chemist, combine with a force that startles the reader.
Carlyle differs from the ordinary religious enthusiast in the way he bares his bosom to the storm. His attitude is rather one of gladiatorial resignation than supplication. He makes peace with nothing, takes refuge in nothing. He flouts at happiness, at repose, at joy. "There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." "The life of all gods figures itself to us as a sublime sadness, – earnestness of infinite battle against infinite labor. Our highest religion is named the 'Worship of Sorrow.' For the Son of Man there is no noble crown, well worn or even ill worn, but is a crown of thorns." His own worship is a kind of defiant admiration of Eternal Justice. He asks no quarter, and will give none. He turns upon the grim destinies a look as undismayed and as uncompromising as their own. Despair cannot crush him; he will crush it. The more it bears on, the harder he will work. The way to get rid of wretchedness is to despise it; the way to conquer the devil is to defy him; the way to gain heaven is to turn your back upon it, and be as unflinching as the gods themselves. Satan may be roasted in his own flames; Tophet may be exploded with its own sulphur. "Despicable biped!" (Teufelsdrökh is addressing himself.) "What is the sum total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, death; and say the pangs of Tophet, too, and all that the devil and man may, will, or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart? Canst thou not suffer what so it be, and as a child of freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet while it consumes thee? Let it come, then; I will meet it and defy it." This is the "Everlasting No" of Teufelsdrökh, the annihilation of self. Having thus routed Satan with his own weapons, the "Everlasting Yea" is to people his domain with fairer forms; to find your ideal in the world about you. "Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of; what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or of that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic?" Carlyle's watchword through life, as I have said, was the German word Entsagen, or renunciation. The perfect flower of religion opens in the soul only when all self-seeking is abandoned. The divine, the heroic attitude is: "I ask not Heaven, I fear not Hell; I crave the truth alone, withersoever it may lead." "Truth! I cried, though the heavens crush me for following her; no falsehood, though a celestial lubberland were the price of apostasy." The truth, – what is the truth? Carlyle answers: That which you believe with all your soul and all your might and all your strength, and are ready to face Tophet for, – that, for you, is the truth. Such a seeker was he himself. It matters little whether we agree that he found it or not. The law of this universe is such that where the love, the desire, is perfect and supreme, the truth is already found. That is the truth, not the letter but the spirit; the seeker and the sought are one. Can you by searching find out God? "Moses cried, 'When, O Lord, shall I find thee? God said, Know that when thou hast sought thou hast already found me.'" This is Carlyle's position, so far as it can be defined. He hated dogma as he hated poison. No direct or dogmatic statement of religious belief or opinion could he tolerate. He abandoned the church, for which his father designed him, because of his inexorable artistic sense; he could not endure the dogma that the church rested upon, the pedestal of clay upon which the golden image was reared. The gold he held to, as do all serious souls, but the dogma of clay he quickly dropped. "Whatever becomes of us," he said, referring to this subject in a letter to a friend when he was in his twenty-third year, "never let us cease to behave like honest men."
