His attitude towards efficiency was also the direct opposite of the
present German conception of it. To him efficiency was a matter of
adaptation and improvisation, while the German theory is that it is a
question of fixed method and elaborate mechanism. Nobody ever despised
more than Carlyle the perennial fallacy that things can be done better
by the hocus pocus of procedure than by the intelligent application of
the available means to the end desired. He censured any effort to
achieve things automatically. He was never tired of ridiculing trust in
formulas. He insisted that the intelligence must be unfettered by
preconceptions or by a rigid plan. His hero was a man who had "swallowed
all the formulas," and who proceeded to adapt means to ends in any way
that was effective, passing rough-shod over theory, convention, dogmas,
or any other restrictions on his freedom of action. It is true that he
did insist on the necessity of having accurate and comprehensive
knowledge, and on thoroughness and other essentials of what the Germans
regard as scientific procedure. These things, however, were to him not
major but minor virtues. They were the auxiliaries to success, but they
were never to be considered as sufficient to ensure success, for they
had always to be supplemented by intelligence and insight. This is shown
by his depreciation of mere "beaver" industry, and by his fondness for
satirizing "pipe-clay," by which he meant senseless military routine. No
crime, in his eyes, was worse than a failure to recognize the dominant
importance of the sensibly and intellectually imponderable and
intangible elements that are part of every human problem; so that he
reprehended as vices the very things that have been most characteristic
of the Germans during the present war.
Another thing that Carlyle abused and the Germans display, is
insincerity. Nothing comes in for more invective from him than this, and
to him it meant primarily a subjective attitude. Vanity was its chief
cause, in his opinion. Truth, however unpalatable, must be recognized;
while fiction, however flattering, must be scorned. Personal
relationships must not sway our judgment, and he railed with especial
violence against unwarranted optimism inspired by conceit. He pointed
out, as one of Frederick the Great's chief virtues, the fact that he was
influenced by no delusions created by vanity or sentimentality. He says
Frederick looked facts squarely in the face, and instances his once
offending his brother, the Crown Prince, by telling him that he had
surrounded himself with flatterers, and reminding him that the
Austrians, his enemies in the field, would not flatter him. Carlyle also
points out that Frederick's wars were all conducted on a frank basis, so
far, at least, as acknowledgment to himself of the real situation was
concerned. There was no indulgence in the theatrical or the spectacular,
certainly in none that deceived only himself. Frederick wasted no energy
in striving for apparent triumphs that had no practical worth. He
disregarded purely political or sentimental influences. Berlin was twice
entered by the enemy during the Seven Years War, because Frederick never
paid a military price for a political or a temporary victory, but he
yielded territory whenever strategy demanded it. How different is this
from Germany's present military policy, which sacrifices permanent
advantages for the appearance of victory, and does not succeed in
achieving even a convincing appearance of that? It is plain that the
cheap posturing of the German military policy is just the sort of thing
Carlyle hated and despised, and nobody who has read him more than
casually can have escaped realizing that his insistence on the necessity
of recognizing fact in an honest and unbiased manner is a condemnation
of the delight in conscious and unconscious mendacity displayed by the
present German government.
Stupidity he warned against as one of the chief implements of the devil.
There is no other crime, he often said, for morality is largely a matter
of intelligence. Better be a villain than a fool, he implies, by quoting
approvingly the boast of the Scotch family that it had produced "many a
blackguard but not one blockhead." The mind which cannot or will not
perceive the obvious, or which persists in denying the unflattering, is
not only hopeless but vicious. Preferring to credit their prejudices or
their desires, instead of the lesson of events, was the chief crime he
ascribed to the men he held responsible for the worst catastrophes of
history. For mere density and well-intentioned incompetence, as in the
case of Louis XVI, he had some pity; but for stupidity arising from
wanton obstinacy and arrogance he had nothing but wrath and scorn. It
would be difficult to find in history a parallel for the infatuated
folly of the German military and political policy during this war, but
we find Carlyle reprehending less aggravated and perverse displays of
trust in bombast, brutality, and pretension, in the case of countries
like Spain and Austria; and this is only one of many things that show
how monstrous in his eyes would seem the insensate policy which has made
Germany the shame of civilization, and has alienated from her every
country in the world except a few contiguous ones that tolerate or
assist her through fear or rapacity.
What proves the German policy most at variance with Carlyle's
philosophy, however, is the fact that it is guided by materialistic and
cynical convictions. His basic belief was that the fundamental law of
existence is morality; they jeer at any power that is not material.
Besides this, he believed that reliance on the baser qualities of human
nature can never lead anywhere but to perdition. The leadership which
aims to secure itself by appealing to the selfishness or by satisfying
the folly of mankind, is courting disaster. The German policy boastfully
proceeds on the assumption that the only motives that govern human
action are self interest of some base sort, and it credits humanity with
as little intelligence as morality. It is true that Carlyle had slight
respect for the intelligence or the integrity of the masses, but he
insisted that nobility is inherent in human nature, and that a hero who
knows how to arouse it, invariably appears whenever a government becomes
so unjust or so incompetent as to be intolerable. The German theory is
that the weak have no friends; Carlyle's conviction was that nature
avenges all injustice. The Germans declare that might makes right;
Carlyle preached that right makes might, and on every question of
fundamental morality he was diametrically opposed to them. "Savage
animalism is nothing; inventive spiritualism is all," he writes in one
place, and implies in a thousand. The Germans proceed on exactly the
opposite assumption. They trust in nothing but force, and the
neo-Darwinism that guides their policy is only a combination of the
ideas he denounced in the works of such men as Hume, Bentham, Comte, and
Darwin himself, mixed with a sentimental egoism that he abominated above
everything else.