The chief question about Carlyle at present, however, is not the extent
of his influence, but how far his teachings justify the theories and
practices now dominant in Germany. The Germans point to his advocacy of
their cause in 1870, and to his glorification of Frederick the Great, as
proofs that he would approve of, and even exalt, all that they have
done. The kaiser has quoted him in a widely discussed speech about "one
man with God being a majority," while less prominent Germans have freely
appealed to his authority. The English speaking world has seemed, on the
whole, disposed to admit that Carlyle's doctrines justify, or at least
tend to produce, ideas such as those that now obsess Germany. Some
writers, like the Mr. Hueffer already mentioned, have seized the
opportunity to belabor his memory as a traitor; while others have risen
up to defend him, although they seem to do so less from conviction than
a desire to deprive the Germans of support. Anyone who knows Carlyle
more than superficially, however, knows that the present German policy
would earn from him nothing but furious denunciation; and the reason
would not be because the Germans began the war, as D. A. Wilson argues
in _The Fortnightly Review_ for February, 1916, nor because he was
pro-Russian, nor because of any other personal prejudice or
predilection, but because the German nation today exhibits about all the
vices he inveighed against as most dangerous to the peace of the world
and the progress of civilization.
It would be idle to deny that Carlyle did exalt the German nation and
German policies to the English-speaking world, but we shall have to
qualify this exaltation if we accept Dr. Johnson's principle that an
author's works need editing a generation or so after their composition.
This dictum is based on the obvious necessity of recognizing that the
force of what a man says is conditioned by the current opinion of his
time and by his attitude towards it, and it also recognizes the truth of
one of Carlyle's own observations: "It is man's nature to change his
dialect from century to century; he cannot help it though he would." The
dialect of the nineteenth century was not that of the twentieth, and
Carlyle's use of it was affected by several things that still further
obscure his meaning for us. He opposed strongly what he regarded as many
popular fallacies of his time, and in opposing them he overemphasized
things that seemed to him to discredit or to disprove them. To the
undisciplined British populace, impatient of all control and clamoring
for the removal of all restrictions on individual liberty, he extolled
the docile German people; but it was not their absolute so much as their
comparative virtue that he was praising, and he would have recognized
that, under other circumstances, their submissiveness could prove a
vice, as, indeed, it has. Another fact, pointed out by Colonel T. W.
Higginson, a man whose extreme humanitarianism was calculated to make
him unsympathetic towards the eulogist of Dr. Francia, is that Carlyle
was a humorist and a man to whom the humorous attitude was second
nature. It will be necessary, therefore, to discount his praise of the
German people and of German institutions, for two reasons; the first,
because it was heightened to serve as a corrective to the tendency
towards license in his countrymen; and the second, because, as a
humorist, and also because of his ardent temperament, he invariably
indulged in over-statement.
There is much besides this to indicate that Carlyle's praise of Germany
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is anything but
evidence that he would endorse Kultur and Schrecklichkeit. His
fundamental teaching is that we must not be formal, rigidly logical, or
addicted to any fixed method of thinking. The nature of things must be
determined from their effects, and not from any external
characteristics. The national attributes of any people are not
permanent, but they are capable of wide variation, and much of his
invective and striking metaphor was poured forth in an effort to prove
that this variation is very largely a question of good or bad
leadership. In sustaining this thesis he traces the history of Germany
more completely than he does that of any other country; and he indicates
several periods, notably that of the Thirty Years' War, and the reign of
Frederick I, when Prussia, at least, was contemptible in its policies.
France, too, he argues, has not always been the mischief-maker of
Europe; for to him the French Revolution was a salutary outburst of the
native integrity of the French people, to sweep away the intolerable
hypocrisies and injustices of the Old Regime, and to improve not only
French, but human society as well.
* * * * *
It is plain, therefore, that he did not affirm the Germans to be
intrinsically good and the French intrinsically bad. His aim was to show
that nations rise in proportion to the extent to which their purposes
are just and their methods intelligent, and that they invariably fall if
they deal unjustly with their own citizens or their neighbors. Sometimes
he contrasted the French unfavorably with the Germans, as, for instance,
when he says that the martial ardor of the French may be compared to
blazing straw, while that of the Germans is more like the burning of
anthracite coal. This, however, is due to his having, like a great many
other people, an impression that the French are more likely to exhibit
superficial and glittering qualities, while the Germans are conspicuous
for the commonplace virtues of industry and thoroughness. Nothing was
more insidious, in his opinion, than to prefer brilliancy to solid
worth; and it was the danger of this preference he was emphasizing, more
than the native depravity of the French national character, when he
compared the Gallic temperament unfavorably with the Teutonic.