teachers of very opposite schools, among others Coleridge, Newman, and
Emerson in English; Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire in French.
Locke's writings formed part of the college course, and I became very
familiar with them, and fully shared Hallam's special admiration for
the little treatise 'On the Conduct of the Understanding,' while
Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Mill opened out wide and various
vistas in moral philosophy. The following passage from Coleridge,
which I chose as the motto of almost my first published writing,
exercised so great an influence over my later studies, and shows so
happily the direction in which I was endeavoring to turn my mind, that
I may be excused from quoting it at length:
'Let it be remembered by controversialists on all subjects, that every
speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates has its golden
as well as its dark side; that there is always some truth connected
with it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the
understanding; some moral beauty which has given it charms for the
heart. Let it be remembered that no assailant of an error can
reasonably hope to be listened to by its advocates, who has not proved
to them that he has seen the disputed subject in the same point of
view and is capable of contemplating it with the same feelings as
themselves; for why should we abandon a cause at the persuasion of one
who is ignorant of the reasons which have attached us to it?'
Adopting an illustration which had been employed by Bossuet for
another purpose, I came to believe that religious systems resemble
those pictures occasionally seen in the museums of the curious, which
appear at first to be mere incongruous assemblages of unconnected and
unmeaning figures, till they are regarded from one particular point of
view, when these figures immediately mass themselves into a regular
form, and the whole picture assumes a coherent and symmetrical
appearance. To discover in each system this point of view; to
cultivate that peculiar form of imagination which makes it possible to
realise how different forms of opinions are held by their more
intelligent adherents, appeared to me the first condition of
understanding them.
In this method of inquiry I was, at a little later period, much aided
by the writings of Bayle, a great critic who brought to the study of
opinions an almost unrivalled knowledge, and one of the keenest and
most detached of human intellects. Gradually, however, by a natural
and insensible process I passed into the habit of examining opinions
mainly from an historical point of view--investigating the
circumstances under which they grow up; their relation to the general
conditions of their time; the direction in which they naturally
develop; the part, whether for good or ill, which during long spaces
of time they have played in the world. It was first of all in
connection with the Roman Catholic controversy, with which we were
much occupied in Ireland, that I learnt to pursue this course. Of the
enormous and essential difference between matured Catholicism and the
Christianity of the New Testament, I never doubted, and my convictions
were much deepened by long travels in Italy, France, and Spain, during
which I endeavoured to study carefully Catholicism in its actual
workings as a popular religion, and not as it appears clarified and
rationalised in such books as the 'Exposition,' by Bossuet. I often
asked myself, who could have imagined from a perusal of the New
Testament that Christianity was intended to be a highly centralised
monarchy, governed with supreme divine authority by the Bishop of
Rome; that this bishop was to be connected, not with the great author
of the Epistle to the Romans, but with St. Peter; that the figure
which was to occupy the most prominent place in the devotions and
imaginations of millions of Christian worshippers was to be the Virgin
Mary, who is not so much as mentioned in the Epistles; that in the
immediate neighbourhood, and with the full sanction of the highest
ecclesiastical authorities, graven images were to be employed in
devotion as conspicuously as in a pagan temple, particular images
being singled out from all others for particular devotion by special
indulgences and by special miracles? I soon convinced myself that
popular Catholicism, as it exists in southern Europe and as it has
existed through a long course of centuries, is as literally
polytheistic and idolatrous as any form of paganism, though it has
many beauties, and though much of its very mingled influence has been
for good. In the teaching of my early youth, this transformation of
Christianity was described as the great predicted apostasy, the
mystery of iniquity, the work of Antichrist among mankind. Under the
influence of the historic method it assumed a different aspect, and
the mystery became very explicable. Hobbes had struck the keynote in a
passage of profound truth as well as of admirable beauty:
'If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical
dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the
ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave
thereof.'
Few evolutions in history, indeed, can be more clearly traced than the
successive stages through which Rome, by a gradual and very natural
process, obtained the primacy of Christendom. In the condition of
Europe, again, at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the
invasion, the triumph, and the rapid conversion of the barbarians, the
chief causes of the materialising transformation which Christian ideas
underwent appeared abundantly evident; and it became clear to me that
some such transformation was inevitable, and essential to their enduring
influence. Was it possible, I asked myself, that in ages of anarchy and
convulsion, any religion resembling Protestant Christianity could have
prevailed among great masses of wild and ignorant barbarians, with all
the associations and mental habits of idolaters, at a time when neither
rag paper nor printing was invented, and when a wide diffusion of the
Bible was absolutely impossible? But such methods of reasoning could not
stop there. I was naturally led to consider how different are the
measures of probability, the predispositions toward the miraculous, the
canons of evidence and proof, the standards and ideals of morals in
different ages, and how largely these differences affect the whole
question of evidence. I began to realise the existence of climates of
opinion; to observe how particular forms of belief naturally grow and
flourish in certain stages of intellectual development, and fade when
these conditions have changed; how much that is called apostasy and
imposture is in reality anachronism, the survival in one age of forms of
belief that were the appropriate product of an earlier one.
A writer of extraordinary brilliancy and power was at this time
exercising a great influence either of attraction or repulsion on all
serious students of history. Those who are old enough to remember the
appearance of the first volume of Buckle's 'History,' in 1857, and of
the second volume, in 1861, will remember also how rapidly and how
passionately it divided opinion. It was in truth a book in which
extraordinary merits were balanced by extraordinary defects. On the
special subject of the growth of religions, which most interested me,
it was peculiarly deficient, for with all his great gifts Buckle was
almost colour-blind to the devotional and reverential aspect of things,
and he had little more power than Whately of projecting himself into
the beliefs, ideals, and modes of thought of other men and ages. His
unqualified, undiscriminating contempt for the ages of superstition is
the more remarkable, because fifteen years before the appearance of his
first volume, Comte, with whom Buckle had some affinity, and for whom
he expressed great admiration, had been placing those ages on a
pinnacle of extravagant eulogy. His doctrine that there is no real
progress in moral ideas and no real history of morals, I have always
believed to be profoundly untrue, and to have vitiated a large part of
his conclusions; and although he rendered valuable service in showing
by ample illustrations that the capital changes in history are much
less due to the great men who directly effected them than to the long
train of intellectual, political, or industrial tendencies that had
prepared them, he pushed this, like many of his other generalisations,
to exaggeration and even to extravagance. Individuals, and even
accidents, have had a great modifying and deflecting influence in
history, and sometimes the part they have played can scarcely be
over-estimated. If, as I have elsewhere said, a stray dart had struck
down Mohammed in one of the early skirmishes of his career, there is no
reason to believe that the world would have seen a great military and
monotheistic religion arise in Arabia, powerful enough to sweep over a
large part of three continents, and to mould during many centuries the
lives and characters of about a fifth part of the human race. In one
respect, too, Buckle was singularly unfortunate in the time in which he
appeared. From the days of Bacon and Locke to the days of Condillac and
Bentham, it had been the tendency of advanced liberal thinkers to
aggrandise as much as possible the power of circumstances and
experience over the individual, and to reduce to the narrowest limits
every influence that is innate, transmitted, or hereditary. They
represented man as essentially the creature of circumstances, and his
mind as a sheet of blank paper on which education might write what it
pleased. Buckle pushed this habit of thought so far that he even
questioned the reality of such an evident and well-known fact as
hereditary insanity. But only two years after the appearance of the
first volume of the 'History of Civilisation,' Darwin published his
'Origin of Species,' which gradually effected a revolution in
speculative philosophy almost as great as it effected in natural
science; and from that time the supreme importance of inborn and
hereditary tendencies has become the very central fact in English
philosophy. It must be added that Buckle had many of the distinctive
faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men,
and had formed his mind almost exclusively by solitary, unguided study.
He had a very imperfect appreciation of the extreme complexity of
social phenomena, an excessive tendency to sweeping generalisations,
and an arrogance of assertion which provoked much hostility. His wide
and multifarious knowledge was not always discriminating, and he
sometimes mixed good and bad authorities with a strange indifference.
This is a long catalogue of defects, but in spite of them Buckle
opened out wider horizons than any previous writer in the field of
history. No other English historian had sketched his plan with so bold
a hand, or had shown so clearly the transcendent importance of
studying not merely the actions of soldiers, politicians, and
diplomatists, but also those great connected evolutions of
intellectual, social, and industrial life on which the type of each
succeeding age mainly depends. To not a few of his contemporaries he
imparted an altogether new interest in history, and his admirable
literary talent, the vast range of topics which he illuminated with a
fresh significance, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge and for
freedom that pervades his work, made its appearance an epoch in the
lives of many who have passed far from its definite conclusions. The
task which he had undertaken was almost too vast for the longest life,
and when he died at Damascus, in 1862, he had not yet completed his
fortieth year, and his judgment was probably still far from its full
maturity. A few lines of Pliny which I wrote on the title-page of his
history, will suffice to show the feelings with which I heard of his
death:
'Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum qui immortale
aliquid parant. Nam qui voluptatibus dediti quasi in diem vivunt,
vivendi causas quotidie finiunt; qui vero posteros cogitant et
memoriam sui operibus extendunt, his nulla mors non repentina est, ut
quæ semper inchoatum aliquid abrumpat.'
I do not purpose to pursue these recollections further. I had drifted
far from my Cork living and very decisively into the ways of
literature, and after I left the university I spent about four years
on the Continent. I read much in foreign libraries, and I also derived
great profit as well as keen pleasure from the study of Italian art,
which throws an invaluable light on the branches of history I was then
investigating. In its earlier phase especially, before the sense of
beauty dominates over the idea, art represents with a singular
fidelity not only the religious beliefs of men, but also the far more
delicate and evanescent shades of their realisations, ideals, and
emotions.
The result of those years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With
many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great
sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been
formed, and to this sincerity it probably owed no small part of its
success.
CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE.
When Carlyle came to London in 1831, bringing with him the 'Sartor
Resartus,' which is now perhaps the most famous of all his works, it
is well known that he applied in turn to three of the principal
publishers in London, and that each of them, after due deliberation,
positively refused to print his manuscript. When at last, with great
difficulty, he procured its admission into 'Fraser's Magazine,'
Carlyle was accustomed to say that he only knew of two men who found
anything to admire in it. One of them was the great American writer,
Emerson, who afterwards superintended its publication in America. The
other was a priest from Cork, who wrote to say that he wished to take
in 'Fraser's Magazine' as long as anything by this writer appeared in
it. On the other hand, several persons told Fraser that they would
stop taking in the magazine if any more of such nonsense appeared in
it. The editor wrote to Carlyle that the work had been received with
'unqualified disapprobation.' Five years elapsed before it was
reprinted as a separate book, and in order that it should be reprinted
it was found necessary for a number of Carlyle's private friends to
club together and guarantee the publisher from loss by engaging to
take three hundred copies. But when, a few years before his death, a
cheap edition of Carlyle's works was published, 'Sartor Resartus' had
acquired such a popularity that thirty thousand copies were almost
immediately sold, and since his death it has been reprinted in a
sixpenny form; it has penetrated far and wide through all classes, and
it is now, I suppose, one of the most popular and most influential of
the books that were published in England in the second quarter of the
century.
Such a contrast between the first reception and the later judgment of
a book is very remarkable, and it applies more or less to all
Carlyle's earlier writings. It is a memorable fact in the literary
history of the nineteenth century that one of the greatest and most
industrious writers in England lived for many years in such poverty
that he often thought of abandoning literature and emigrating to the
colonies, and he would probably have done so if he had not found in
public lecturing a means of supplying his frugal wants. The cause of
this long-continued neglect is partly, no doubt, to be found in his
style, for, like Browning, Carlyle wrote an English which was so
contorted and sometimes so obscure that his readers had to be slowly
educated into understanding, or at least enjoying, it. But there are
other and deeper causes which I propose to devote the short time at my
disposal to indicating.
It has been truly said that there are two great classes among writers.
There are those who are echoes and there are those who are voices.
There are some writers who represent faithfully and express strongly
the dominant tendencies, opinions, habits, characteristics of their
age, collecting as in a focus the half-formed thoughts that are
prevailing around them, giving them an articulate voice, and by the
force of their advocacy greatly strengthening them. There are others
who either start new ways of thinking for which the public around
them are still unprepared, or who throw themselves in opposition to
the dominant tendencies of their times, pointing out the evils and
dangers connected with them, and dwelling specially on neglected
truths. It is not surprising that the first class are by far the most
popular. The public is much like Narcissus in the fable, who fell in
love with his own reflection in the water. All men like to find their
own opinions expressed with a power and eloquence they cannot
themselves attain, and most men dislike a writer who, in the first
flush of a great enthusiasm, points out all that can be said on the
other side. But when the first enthusiasm is over--when the prevailing
tendency has fully triumphed and the evils and defects connected with
it are disclosed--the words of this unpopular or neglected teacher
will begin to gather weight. It will be found that although he may not
have been wiser than those who advocated the other side, yet his words
contained exactly that kind of truth which was most needed or most
generally forgotten, and his reputation will steadily rise.
This appears to me to have been very much the position which Carlyle
occupied towards the chief questions of his day, and it explains, I
think, in a great degree the growth of his influence. It is
remarkable, indeed, how many things there are in his writings which
appeared paradoxes when he wrote, and which now seem almost truisms.
Thus at a time when the political and intellectual ascendency of
France over the Continent was at its height, Carlyle was one of the
few men who clearly recognised the essential greatness that lay hid in
Germany, and especially in Prussia--a greatness which after the wars
of 1866 and 1870 became very evident to the world. He was one of the
first men in England to recognise the importance of German
literature, and especially the supreme greatness of Goethe. His
translation of 'Wilhelm Meister' was published in 1824, and his noble
essay on Goethe in 1832; but at first it seemed to find scarcely any
echo. The editor for whom he wrote it reported that all the opinions
he could gather about this essay were 'eminently unfavourable.' De
Quincey, who of all English critics was believed to know Germany best,
and Jeffrey, who exercised the greatest influence on English literary
opinion, combined to depreciate or ridicule Goethe. But there is now
no educated man who disputes that Carlyle in this matter was
essentially right, and that his critics were wholly wrong. And to turn
to subjects more directly connected with England, Carlyle wrote at a
time when the whole school of what was called advanced thought rested
upon the theory that the province of Government ought to be made as
small as possible, and that all the relations of classes should be
reduced to simple, temporary contracts founded on mutual interest.
According to this theory, it was the one duty of Government to keep
order. For the rest it should stand aside, and not attempt to meddle
in social or industrial questions. The most complete liberty of
thought and action should be established, and everything should be
left to unrestricted competition--to the free play of unprivileged,
untrammelled, unguided social forces. This was the theory which was
called orthodox political economy--the _laisser-faire_ system--the
philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly
denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,'
as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among
men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, or
even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man was
a mere money tie. He maintained that what he called the condition of
England question, or, in other words, the great mass of struggling,
anarchical poverty that was growing up in the chief centres of
population, was a question which imperiously demanded the most
strenuous Government intervention--which was, in fact, far more
important than any of the purely political questions. The whole system
of factory legislation, the whole system of legislation about working
men's dwellings, which has taken place in this century, has been a
realisation of the ideas of Carlyle. When Carlyle first wrote, it was
the received opinion that the education of the people was a matter in
which the Government should in no degree interfere, and that it ought
to be left altogether to individuals, or Churches, or societies. In
his work on Chartism, which was published as early as 1834, Carlyle
argued that the 'universal education of the people' was an
indispensable duty of the Government. It was not until about twenty
years ago that this duty was fully recognised in England. In the same
work he maintained that State-aided, State-organised, State-directed
emigration must one day be undertaken on a large scale, as the only
efficient agent in coping with the great masses of growing pauperism.
In his 'Past and Present,' which was published in 1843, he threw out
another idea which has proved very prolific, and which is probably
destined to become still more so. It is that it may become both
possible and needful for the master worker 'to grant his workers
permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs.'
It is evident how much less strange those ideas appear now than they
did when they were first put out some fifty years ago. One of the
most remarkable changes that has taken place during the lives of men
who are still of middle age has been in the opinion of advanced
thinkers about the function of Government. In the early days of
Carlyle the whole set, or lie, of opinion in England was towards
cutting in all directions the bands of Government control, diminishing
as much as possible the sphere of Government functions or
interference. It was a revolt against the old Tory system of paternal
Government, against the system of Guilds, against the State
regulations which once prevailed in all departments of industrial
life. In the present generation it is not too much to say that the
current has been absolutely reversed. The constantly increasing
tendency, whenever any abuse of any kind is discovered, is to call
upon Parliament to make a law to remedy it. Every year the network of
regulation is strengthened; every year there is an increasing
disposition to enlarge and multiply the functions, powers, and
responsibilities of Government. I should not be dealing sincerely with
you if I did not express my own opinion that this tendency carries
with it dangers even more serious than those of the opposite
exaggerations of a past century: dangers to character by sapping the
spirit of self-reliance and independence; dangers to liberty by
accustoming men to the constant interference of authority, and
abridging in innumerable ways the freedom of action and choice. I wish
I could persuade those who form their estimate of the province of
Government from Carlyle's 'Past and Present' and 'Latter-day
Pamphlets' to study also the admirable little treatise of Herbert
Spencer, called 'The Man and the State,' in which the opposite side is
argued. What I have said however, is sufficient to show how
remarkably Carlyle, in some of the parts of his teaching that were
once the most unpopular, anticipated tendencies which only became very
apparent in practical politics when he was an old man or after his
death.