in 1741; not with the Fall of the Bastile but with the Battle of
Mollwitz. This earliest of Frederick's victories was the first sign
'that indeed a new hour had struck on the Time Horologe, that a new
Epoch had arisen. Slumberous Europe, rotting amid its blind pedantries,
its lazy hypocrisies, conscious and unconscious: this man is capable of
shaking it a little out of its stupid refuges of lies and ignominious
wrappages, and of intimating to it afar off that there is still a
Veracity in Things, and a Mendacity in Sham Things,' and so forth, in
the well-known strain.[17] It is impossible to overrate the truly
supreme importance of the violent break-up of Europe which followed the
death of the Emperor Charles VI., and in many respects 1740 is as
important a date in the history of Western societies as 1789. Most of us
would probably find the importance of this epoch in its destructive
contribution, rather than in that constructive and moral quality which
lay under the movement of '89. The Empire was thoroughly shattered.
France was left weak, impoverished, humiliated. Spain was finally thrust
from among the efficient elements in the European State-system. Most
important of all, their too slight sanctity had utterly left the old
conceptions of public law and international right. The whole polity of
Europe was left in such a condition of disruption as had not been
equalled since the death of Charles the Great. The Partition of Poland
was the most startling evidence of the completeness of this disruption,
and if one statesman was more to be praised or blamed for shaking over
the fabric than another, that statesman was Frederick the Second of
Prussia. But then, in Mr. Carlyle's belief, there was equally a
constructive and highly moral side to all this. The old fell to pieces
because it was internally rotten. The gospel of the new was that the
government of men and kingdoms is a business beyond all others demanding
an open-eyed accessibility to all facts and realities; that here more
than anywhere else you need to give the tools to him who can handle
them; that government does by no means go on of itself, but more than
anything else in this world demands skill, patience, energy, long and
tenacious grip, and the constant presence of that most indispensable,
yet most rare, of all practical convictions, that the effect is the
inevitable consequent of the cause. Here was a revolution, we cannot
doubt. The French Revolution was in a manner a complement to it, as Mr.
Carlyle himself says in a place where he talks of believing both in the
French Revolution and in Frederick; 'that is to say both that Real
Kingship is eternally indispensable, and also that the destruction of
Sham Kingship (a frightful process) is occasionally so.'[18] It is
curious that an observer who could see the positive side of Frederick's
disruption of Europe in 1740, did not also see that there was a positive
side to the disruption of the French monarchy fifty years afterwards,
and that not only was a blow dealt to sham kingship, but a decisive
impulse was given to those ideas of morality and justice in government,
upon which only real kingship in whatever form is able to rest.
[17] _History of Frederick the Great_, iv. 328. See also vol. i., Proem.
[18] _Frederick the Great_, i. 9.
* * * * *
As to the other great factor in the dissolution of the old state, the
decay of ancient spiritual forms, Mr. Carlyle gives no uncertain sound.
Of the Reformation, as of the French Revolution, philosophers have
doubted how far it really contributed to the stable progress of European
civilisation. Would it have been better, if it had been possible, for
the old belief gradually as by process of nature to fall to pieces, new
doctrine as gradually and as normally emerging from the ground of
disorganised and decayed convictions, without any of that frightful
violence which stirred men's deepest passions, and gave them a sinister
interest in holding one or other of the rival creeds in its most
extreme, exclusive, and intolerant form? This question Mr. Carlyle does
not see, or, if he does see it, he rides roughshod over it. Every reader
remembers the notable passage in which he declares that the question of
Protestant or not Protestant meant everywhere, 'Is there anything of
nobleness in you, O Nation, or is there nothing?' and that afterwards it
fared with nations as they did, or did not, accept this sixteenth
century form of Truth when it came.[19]
[19] _Frederick_, i. bk. iii. ch. viii. 269-274.
France, for example, is the conspicuous proof of what overtook the
deniers. 'France saw good to massacre Protestantism, and end it, in the
night of St. Bartholomew, 1572. The celestial apparitor of heaven's
chancery, so we may speak, the genius of Fact and Veracity, had left his
writ of summons; writ was read and replied to in this manner.' But let
us look at this more definitely. A complex series of historic facts do
not usually fit so neatly into the moral formula. The truth surely is
that while the anxieties and dangers of the Catholic party in France
increased after St. Bartholomew, whose dramatic horror has made its
historic importance to be vastly exaggerated, the Protestant cause
remained full of vitality, and the number of its adherents went on
increasing until the Edict of Nantes. It is eminently unreasonable to
talk of France seeing good to end Protestantism in a night, when we
reflect that twenty-six years after, the provisions of the Edict of
Nantes were what they were. 'By that Edict,' the historian tells us,
'the French Protestants, who numbered perhaps a tenth of the total
population, 2,000,000 out of 20,000,000, obtained absolute liberty of
conscience; performance of public worship in 3500 castles, as well as in
certain specified houses in each province; a State endowment equal to
£20,000 a year; civil rights equal in every respect to those of the
Catholics; admission to the public colleges, hospitals, etc.; finally,
eligibility to all offices of State.' It was this, and not the Massacre,
which was France's reply to the Genius of Fact and Veracity. Again, on
the other side, England accepted Protestantism, and yet Mr. Carlyle of
all men can hardly pretend, after his memorable deliverances in the
_Niagara_, that he thinks she has fared particularly well in
consequence.
The famous diatribe against Jesuitism in the _Latter-Day Pamphlets_,[20]
one of the most unfeignedly coarse and virulent bits of invective in the
language, points plumb in the same direction. It is grossly unjust,
because it takes for granted that Loyola and all Jesuits were
deliberately conscious of imposture and falsehood, knowingly embraced
the cause of Beelzebub, and resolutely propagated it. It is one thing to
judge a system in its corruption, and a quite other thing to measure the
worth and true design of its first founders; one thing to estimate the
intention and sincerity of a movement, when it first stirred the hearts
of men, and another thing to pass sentence upon it in the days of its
degradation. The vileness into which Jesuitism eventually sank is a poor
reason why we should malign and curse those who, centuries before, found
in the rules and discipline and aims of that system an acceptable
expression for their own disinterested social aspirations. It is
childish to say that the subsequent vileness is a proof of the existence
of an inherent corrupt principle from the beginning; because hitherto
certainly, and probably it will be so for ever, even the most salutary
movements and most effective social conceptions have been provisional.
In other words, the ultimate certainty of dissolution does not nullify
the beauty and strength of physical life, and the putrescence of Jesuit
methods and ideas is no more a reproach to those who first found succour
in them, than the cant and formalism of any other degenerate form of
active faith, say monachism or Calvinism, prove Calvin or Benedict or
Bernard to have been hypocritical and hollow. To be able, however, to
take this reasonable view, one must be unable to believe that men can
be drawn for generation after generation by such a mere hollow lie and
villainy and 'light of hell' as Jesuitism has always been, according to
Mr. Carlyle's rendering. Human nature is not led for so long by lies;
and if it seems to be otherwise, let us be sure that ideas which do lead
and attract successive generations of men to self-sacrifice and care for
social interests, must contain something which is not wholly a lie.
[20] No. VIII. pp. 353-371.
Perhaps it is pertinent to remember that Mr. Carlyle, in fact, is a
prophet with a faith, and he holds the opposition kind of religionist in
a peculiarly theological execration. In spite of his passion for order,
he cannot understand the political point of view. The attempts of good
men in epochs of disorder to remake the past, to bring back an old
spiritual system and method, because that did once at any rate give
shelter to mankind, and peradventure may give it to them again until
better times come, are phenomena into which he cannot look with calm or
patience. The great reactionist is a type that is wholly dark to him.
That a reactionist can be great, can be a lover of virtue and truth, can
in any sort contribute to the welfare of men, these are possibilities to
which he will lend no ear. In a word, he is a prophet and not a
philosopher, and it is fruitless to go to him for help in the solution
of philosophic problems. This is not to say that he may not render us
much help in those far more momentous problems which affect the guidance
of our own lives.
End of Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I, by John Morley