BEAUTIFUL 
 THOUGHTS 
 
 
 4^^ 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 Chap,. __._._. Copyriiilit X(». 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
41980 
 
 LIbr«iy of Gor»..o->n« 
 ''\fcO (WIS ^ix.ii^iO 
 
 SEP 1 1900 
 
 SiO'^iO COPY. 
 
 OtulH DIVISION, 
 SFP 6 1.3Q 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900. BV 
 JAM KS POTT & CO 
 
 T/fy 
 
 /^ 
 
 74242 
 
PREFACE 
 
 EuGGED and uncouth as Carlyle's 
 style is, it yet has the merit of arresting 
 the attention of the reader, and forcing 
 him to dwell on the lessons which the 
 sage of Chelsea desires to inculcate. 
 Carlyle's object was to show that, how- 
 ever important the mere trappings and 
 insignia of rank and powder were, they 
 could not for long retain the respect 
 and veneration, of the world unless they 
 really were the outward symbols of 
 virile manhood. To Carlyle Might was 
 Eight, because he believed that Eight 
 was always strong and mighty by 
 reason of its inherent justice and force. 
 Hence Carlyle could be in sympathy 
 with the brutal Csesarism of Frederick 
 the Great or of Cromwell, as well as 
 with the equally brutal force of the un- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 known units who made up the People 
 in the days of the triumphant Revolution 
 in France. 
 
 All that was strong claimed his homage. 
 Shams and subterfuges were the butt 
 of his sarcasm because they were the 
 symbols of weakness. The really strong 
 man disdained all lies because he was 
 powerful enough to be truthful, oven if 
 truth was brutal in its expression. It is 
 in his delineation of the forces and pas- 
 sions that move great men and great 
 masses of people that Carlyle compels 
 our admiration, and has added to our 
 literature an abundance of " Beautiful 
 Thoughts." Thoughts that are "Beauti- 
 ful," not by reason of their elegance of 
 diction or of expression, but "Beautiful" 
 in their strength and ruggedness, having 
 the beauty not of the flower but of the 
 grey granite that towers above the pretty 
 verdure at its feet. 
 
JANUARY 
 
January ist. 
 
 Hope deferred maketh the heart 
 sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is 
 but deferred ; not abolished, not abolish- 
 able. It is very notable and touching, 
 how this same Hope does still light on- 
 wards the French Nation through all its 
 wild destinies. For we shall still find 
 Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, 
 be it for anger and menace; as a mild 
 heavenly light is shown; as a red con- 
 flagration it shines: burning sulphurous 
 blue, through darkest regions of Terror 
 it still shines; and goes not out at all, 
 since Desperation itself is a kind of 
 
8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Hope. Thus is our Era still to be 
 named of Hope, though in the saddest 
 sense, — when there is nothing left but 
 Hope. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 January 2d. 
 The wealth of a man is the number of 
 things which he loves and blesses, which 
 he is loved and blessed by ! 
 
 Past and Present 
 
 January jd. 
 A healthy nature may or may not be 
 great; but there is no great nature that 
 is not healthy. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 January 4th. 
 Obedience is our universal duty and 
 destiny; wherein whoso will not bend 
 must break : too early and too thoroughly 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE g 
 
 we cannot be trained to know that 
 Would, in this world of ours, is as mere 
 Zero to Should, and for most part 
 as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 
 
 January 3th. 
 In a valiant suffering for others, not 
 in a slothful making others suffer for us, 
 did nobleness ever lie. The chief of 
 men is he who stands in the van of men ; 
 fronting the peril which frightens back 
 all others ; which, if it be not vanquished, 
 will devour the others. Every noble 
 crown is, and on Earth will forever be, 
 a crown of thorns. 
 
 Fas( and Present. 
 
 January 6th. 
 Clothes gave us individuality, dis- 
 tinctions, social pohty; Clothes have 
 
lo BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 made Men of us; they are threatening 
 to make Clothes-screens of us. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 January yth. 
 
 In Books lies the soul of the whole 
 Past Time; the articulate audible voice 
 of the Past, when the body and mate- 
 rial substance of it has altogether van- 
 ished like a dream. Mighty fleets and 
 armies, harbours and arsenals, vast 
 cities, high-domed, many-engined, — 
 they are precious, great: but what do 
 they become ? Agamemnon, the many 
 Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their 
 Greece; all is gone now to some ruined 
 fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and 
 blocks: but the Books of Greece! 
 There Greece, to every thinker,still very 
 literally lives; can be called up again 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE ii 
 
 into life. No magic Rune is stranger 
 than a Book. All that Mankind has 
 done, thought, gained or been : it is 
 lying as in magic preservation in the 
 pages of Books. They are the chosen 
 possession of men. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 January 8th. 
 
 But indeed, in all things, writing or 
 other, which a man engages in, there 
 is the indispensablest beauty in know- 
 ing how to get do?ie. A man frets him- 
 self to no purpose ; he has not the 
 sleight of the trade; he is not a crafts- 
 man, but an unfortunate borer and 
 bungler, if he know not when to have 
 done. Perfection is unattainable: no 
 carpenter ever made a mathematically 
 accurate right-angle in the world; yet 
 
12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 all carpenters know when It is right 
 
 enough, and do not botch it, and lose 
 
 their wages, by making it too right. 
 
 Too much painstaking speaks disease 
 
 in one's mind, as well as too little. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 January gth. 
 
 There are but two ways of paying 
 debt: increase of industry in raising 
 income, increase of thrift in laying it 
 out. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January lOth. 
 
 I venture to assert, that the exercise 
 of priv^ate judgment, faithfully gone 
 about, does by no means necessarily 
 end in selfish independence, isolation; 
 but rather ends necessarily in the oppo- 
 site of that. It is not honest inquiry 
 
FROM THOMA S CARLYLE 13 
 
 that makes anarchy; but it is error, 
 insincerity, half-belief and untruth that 
 make it. A man protesting against etror 
 is on the way towards uniting himself with 
 all men that believe in truth. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 January nth. 
 
 For if new-got gold is said to burn 
 the pockets till it be cast forth into 
 circulation, much more may new Truth. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 January 12th. 
 
 Mammon is like Fire; the usefulest 
 of all servants, if the frightfulest of all 
 masters. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January iph. 
 
 Frightful to all men is death ; from 
 of old named King of Terrors. Our 
 
14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 little compact home of an Existence, 
 where we dwelt complaining, yet as in 
 a home, is passing, in dark agonies, 
 into an Unknown of Separation, For- 
 eignness, unconditioned Possibility. 
 The Heathen Emperor asks of his soul : 
 Into what places art thou now depart- 
 ing ? The Catholic King must answer: 
 To the Judgment-bar of the Most High 
 God ! Yes, it is a summing-up of Life ; 
 a final settling, and giving-in the *'ac- 
 count of the deeds done in the body:" 
 they are done now; and lie there un- 
 alterable, and do bear their fruits, long 
 as eternity shall last. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 January 14th. 
 
 Habit is our primal, fundamental 
 law; Habit and Imitation, there is 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 15 
 
 nothing more perennial in us than these 
 two. They are the source of all Work- 
 ing and all Apprenticeship, of all 
 Practice and all Learning, in this world. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January i^th. 
 
 The world has to obey him who 
 thinks and sees in the world. The 
 world can alter the manner of that; 
 can either have it as blessed continuous 
 summer sunshine, or as unblessed black 
 thunder and tornado, with unspeakable 
 difference of profit for the world ! The 
 manner of it is very alterable; the 
 matter and fact of it is not alterable 
 by any power under the sky. Light; 
 or failing that, lightning; the world 
 can take its choice. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
i6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 January i6th. 
 
 Truly a thinking Man is the worst 
 enemy the Prince of Darkness can have ; 
 every time such a one announces him- 
 self, I doubt not, there runs a shudder 
 through the Nether Empire; and new 
 Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, 
 to, if possible, entrap him, and hood- 
 wink and handcuff him. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 January lyth. 
 
 We take it for granted, the most 
 rigorous of us, that all men who have 
 made anything are expected and en- 
 titled to make the loudest possible 
 proclamation of it; call on a discerning 
 public to reward them for it. Every 
 man his own trumpeter; that is, to a 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 1 7 
 
 really alarming extent, the accepted 
 rule. 
 
 Past and Prtsent. 
 
 January i8th. 
 
 The suffering man ought really " to 
 consume his own smoke; " there is no 
 good in emitting smoke till you have 
 made it mio fire, — which, in the meta- 
 phorical sense too, all smoke is capa- 
 ble of becoming! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 January igth. 
 
 Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any 
 part of thy Life, in a satisfactory man- 
 ner. Give it, like a royal heart; et 
 the price be Nothing: thou hast then, 
 in a certain sense, got All for it! The 
 heroic man, — and is not every man. 
 
18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 God be thanked, a potential hero ? — 
 has to do so, in all times and circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January 20th. 
 
 An unbelieving Eighteenth Century 
 is but an exception, — such as now and 
 then occurs. I prophesy that the 
 world will once more become sincere ; 
 a believing world; with mariy Heroes 
 in it, a heroic world! It will then be 
 a victorious world, never till then. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 January 21st. 
 Nature, like the Sphinx, is of wom- 
 anly celestial loveliness and tenderness; 
 the face and bosom of a goddess, but 
 ending in claws and the body of a 
 lioness. There is in her a celestial 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 19 
 
 beauty, — which means celestial order, 
 pliancy to wisdom; but there is also a 
 darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are 
 infernal. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January 2 2d. 
 
 Meanwhile, observe with joy, so 
 cunningly has Nature ordered it, that 
 whatsover man ought to obey he can- 
 not but obey. Before no faintest rev- 
 elation of the Godlike did he ever 
 stand irreverent; least of all, when the 
 Godlike showed itself revealed in his 
 fellowman. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 January 2sd. 
 
 Where thou findest a Lie that is op- 
 pressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist 
 
20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 there only to be extinguished; they 
 wait and cry earnestly for extinction. 
 Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit 
 thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with 
 headlong selfish violence; but in clear- 
 ness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, 
 almost with pity. Thou wouldst not 
 replace such extinct Lie by a new Lie, 
 which a new Injustice of thy own were; 
 the parent of still other Lies ? Whereby 
 the latter end of that business were 
 worse than the beginning. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 January 24th. 
 
 Under all speech that is good for 
 anything there lies a silence that is 
 better. Silence is deep as Eternity; 
 speech is shallow as Time. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 21 
 
 January 2^th. 
 
 The merit of originality is not novelty ; 
 it is sincerity. The believing man is 
 the original man; whatsoever he be- 
 lieves he believes it for himself, not 
 for another. Every son of Adam can 
 become a sincere man, an original man, 
 in this sense; no mortal is doomed to 
 be an insincere man. Whole ages, 
 what we call ages of Faith, are original; 
 all men in them, or the most of men 
 in them, sincere. These are the great 
 and fruitful ages: every worker, in all 
 spheres, is a worker not on semblance 
 but on substance; every work issues in 
 a result: the general sum of such work 
 is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends 
 towards one goal; all of it is additive^ 
 none of it subtractive. There is true 
 
22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 union, true kingship, loyalty, all true 
 and blessed things, so far as the poor 
 Earth can produce blessedness for men. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 January 26th. 
 
 Meanwhile, what theory is so cer- 
 tain as this, That all theories, were 
 they never so earnest, painfully elabo- 
 rated, are, and, by the very conditions 
 of them, must be incomplete, question- 
 able, and even false ? Thou shalt know 
 that this Universe is, what it professes 
 to be, an infinite one. Attempt not to 
 swallow it, for thy logical digestion; 
 be thankful, if skilfully planting down 
 this and the other fixed pillar in the 
 chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 23 
 
 January 2yth. 
 
 Of a truth, if man were not a poor 
 hungry dastard, and even much of a 
 blockhead withal, he would cease criti- 
 cising his victuals to such extent; and 
 criticise himself rather, what he does 
 with his victuals! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January 28th. 
 
 Silence and Secrecy ! Altars might 
 still be raised to them (were this an 
 altar-building time) for universal wor- 
 ship. Silence is the element in which 
 great things fashion themselves to- 
 gether ; that at length they may emerge, 
 full-formed and majestic, into the day- 
 light of Life, which they are thence- 
 forth to rule. Not William the Silent 
 only,but all the considerable men I have 
 
24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 known, and the most undipromatic and 
 unstrategicof these,foreboretobabbleof 
 what they were creating and projecting. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 January 2<)th. 
 To speak in the ancient dialect, we 
 "have forgotten God;" — in the most 
 modern dialect and very truth of the 
 matter, we have taken up the Fact of 
 this Universe as it is not. We have 
 quietly closed our eyes to the eternal 
 Substance of things, and opened them 
 only to the Shows and Shams of things. 
 We quietly believe this Universe to be 
 intrinsically a great unintelligible Per- 
 haps; extrinsically, clear enough, it is 
 a great, most extensive Cattlefold and 
 Workhouse, with most extensive 
 Kitchen-ranges, Dining-tables, — where- 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 25 
 
 at he is wise who can find a place! 
 All the Truth of this Universe is un- 
 certain ; only the profit and loss of it, 
 the pudding and praise of it, are and 
 remain very visible to the practical man. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 January ^oth, 
 
 Man and his Life rest no more on 
 hoUowness and a Lie, but on solidity 
 and some kind of Truth. Welcome, 
 the beggarliest truth, so it de one, in 
 exchange for the royallest sham ! 
 Truth of any kind breeds ever new and 
 better truth ; thus hard granite rock will 
 crumble down into soil, under the blessed 
 skyey influences; and cover itself with 
 verdure, with fruitage and umbrage. But 
 as for Falsehood, which in like contrary 
 manner, grows ever falser, — what can 
 
26 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 it,or what should it do but decease, being 
 ripe; decompose itself, gently or even 
 violently, and return to the Father of 
 it, — too probably in flames of fire ? 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 January ^ist. 
 
 What is tolerance ? Tolerance has 
 to tolerate the ?/«essential ; and to see 
 well what that is. Tolerance has to be 
 noble, measured, just in its very wrath, 
 when it can tolerate no longer. But, 
 on the whole, we are not altogether 
 here to tolerate! We are here to re- 
 sist, to control and vanquish withal. 
 We do not "tolerate" Falsehoods, Iniq- 
 uities, when they fasten on us; we say 
 to them, Thou art false and unjust. We 
 are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and 
 put an end to them, in some wise way. 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
February isf. 
 
 On the whole, how unknown is a 
 man to himself; or a public Body of 
 men to itself! ^sop's fly sat on 
 the chariot-wheel, exclaiming. What a 
 dust I do raise ! Great Governors, clad 
 in purple with fasces and insignia, are 
 governed by their valets, by the pout- 
 ing of their women and children; or, 
 in Constitutional countries, by the par- 
 agraphs of their Able Editors. Say 
 not, I am this or that; I am doing this 
 or that ! For thou knowest il not, thou 
 knowest only the name it as yet goes 
 by. A purple Nebuchadnezzar rejoices 
 to feel himself now verily Emperor of 
 this great Babylon which he has 
 builded; and is a nondescript biped- 
 
30 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 quadruped, on the eve of a seven-years 
 course of grazing! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 Fehruary 2d. 
 
 Thought without reverence is barren, 
 perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like 
 Cookery with the day that called it 
 forth; does not live, like sowing, in 
 successive tilths and wider-spreading 
 harvests, bringing food and plenteous 
 increase to all time. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 February ^d. 
 
 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! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 3 1 
 
 February 4th. 
 
 The uttered part of a man's life, let 
 us always repeat, bears to the unuttered 
 unconscious part a small unknown pro- 
 portion ; he himself never knows it, 
 much less do others- Give him room, 
 give him impulse ; he reaches down to 
 the Infinite with that so straitly-im- 
 prisoned soul of his; and can do mir- 
 acles if need be! It is one of the 
 comfortablest truths that great men 
 abound, though in the unknown 
 state. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 
 
 February ^th. 
 
 Sense can support herself handsome- 
 ly, in most countries, for some eighteen- 
 pence a day ; but for Fantasy planets and 
 
33 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 solar systems will not suffice. Witness 
 your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet 
 drinking no better red wine than he 
 had before. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 February 6tli. 
 
 If Hero mean siiiccre nian, why may 
 not every one of us be a Hero ? A 
 world all sincere, a believing world: 
 the like has been; the like will again 
 be, — cannot help being. That were 
 the right sort of Worshippers for 
 Heroes: never could the truly Better 
 be so reverenced as where all were 
 True and Good ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 February yth. 
 
 My brother, the brave man has to 
 give his Life away Give it, I advise 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 33 
 
 thee; — thou dost not expect to sell thy 
 Life in an adequate manner ? What 
 price, for example, would content thee? 
 The just price of thy Life to thee, — 
 why, God's entire Creation to thyself, 
 the whole Universe of Space, the whole 
 Eternity of Time, and what they hold: 
 that is the price which would content 
 thee; that, and if thou wilt be candid, 
 nothing short of that! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 February 8th. 
 
 Masses, indeed; and yet, singular to 
 say, if, with an effort of imagination, 
 thou follow them, over broad France, 
 into their clay hovels, into their garrets 
 and hutches, the masses consist all of 
 units. Every unit of whom has his 
 
34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 own heart and sorrows; stands covered 
 there with his own skin, and if you 
 prick him he will bleed. O purple 
 Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence; 
 thou, for example, Cardinal Grand- 
 Almoner, with thy plush covering of 
 honour, who hast thy hands strength- 
 ened with dignities and moneys, and 
 art set on thy world watch-tower sol- 
 emnly, in sight of God, for such ends, 
 — what a thought: that every unit of 
 these masses is a miraculous Man, even 
 as thyself art; struggling, with vision, 
 or with blindness, for Jiis infinite King- 
 dom (this life which he has got, once 
 only, in the middle of Eternities); with 
 a spark of the Divinity, what thou cal- 
 lest an immortal soul, in him! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL VLB 3 5 
 
 February gth. 
 
 "That there should one Man die Igno- 
 rant who had capacity for Knowledge, 
 this I call a tragedy,' were it to happen 
 more than twenty times in the minute, 
 as by some computations it does. The 
 miserable fraction of Science which our 
 united Mankind, in a wide Universe of 
 Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, 
 with all diligence, imparted to all ? 
 
 Sartor Resartus 
 
 February loth. 
 
 For the Earth, I say, is an earnest 
 place; Life is no grimace, but a most 
 serious fact. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 February nth. 
 
 Luther learned 7ww that a man was 
 saved not by si?iging masse s^ but by the 
 
36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 infinite grace of God; a more credible 
 hypothesis. He gradually got himself 
 founded, as on the rock. No wonder 
 he should venerate the Bible, which 
 had brought this blessed help to him. 
 He prized it as the Word of the Highest 
 7nust be prized by such a 7nan. He de- 
 termined to hold by that: as through life 
 and to death he firmly did. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 February 12th. 
 
 Blessed is the healthy nature; it is 
 the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not 
 incoherent, self-distracting, self-de- 
 structive one! In the harmonious 
 adjustment and play of all the faculties, 
 the just balance of oneself gives a just 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLH 37 
 
 feeling towards ah men and all things. 
 Glad light from within radiates out- 
 wards, and enlightens and embel- 
 lishes. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Fehrtiary i^th. 
 
 There is a clear truth in the idea 
 that a struggle from the lower classes 
 of society, towards the upper regions 
 and rewards of society, must ever con- 
 tinue. Strong men are born there, 
 who ought to stand elsewhere than 
 there. The manifold, inextricably 
 complex, universal struggle of these 
 constitutes, and must constitute, what 
 is called the progress of society. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February 14th. 
 
 A paradoxical philosopher, carrying 
 to the uttermost length that aphorism 
 of Montesquieu's, '' Happy the people 
 whose annals are tiresome," has said, 
 "Happy the people whose annals are 
 vacant." In which saying, mad as it 
 looks, may there not still be found 
 some grain of reason ? For truly, as 
 it has been written, " Silence is divine," 
 and of Heaven; so in all earthly things 
 too there is a silence which is better 
 than any speech. Consider it well, 
 the Event, the thing which can be 
 spoken of and recorded, is it not, in 
 all cases, some disruption, some solu- 
 tion of continuity ? Were it even a 
 glad Event, it invoh^es change, involves 
 loss (of active Force); and so far, either 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 39 
 
 in the past or in the present, is an irreg- 
 ularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance 
 were our blessedness; not dislocation 
 and alteration, — could they be avoided. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 February i§th. 
 
 The man who cannot laugh is not 
 only fit for treasons, stratagems, and 
 spoils; but his whole life is already a 
 treason and a stratagem. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 February i6th. 
 
 To reconcile Despotism with Free- 
 dom: — well, is that such a mystery? 
 Do you not already know the way ? 
 
40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 It is to make your Despotism just. 
 Rigorous as Destiny; but just too, as 
 Destiny and its Laws. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 Fehrnary lyth. 
 
 The Constitution, the set of Laws, 
 or prescribed Habits of Acting, that 
 men will live under, is the one which 
 images their Convictions, — their Faith 
 as to this wondrous Universe, and 
 what rights, duties, capabilities they 
 have there; which stands sanctioned, 
 therefore, by Necessity itself; if not 
 by a seen Deity, then by an unseen 
 one. Other Laws, whereof there are 
 always enough ready-mdidQ, are usurpa- 
 tions; which men do not obey, but 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 41 
 
 rebel against it, and abolish, by their 
 earliest convenience. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 February i8th. 
 
 A fundamental mistake to call vehe- 
 mence and rigidity strength! A man 
 is not strong who takes convulsion fits; 
 though six men cannot hold him then.> 
 He that can walk under the heaviest 
 weight without staggering, he is the 
 strong man. We need forever,/espe- 
 cially in these loud-shrieking days, to 
 remind ourselves of that. A man who 
 cdinnoi hold his peace, till the time comes 
 for speaking and acting, is no right 
 man. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February ipth. 
 
 Honour to the strong man, in these 
 ages, who has shaken himself loose of 
 shams and is something. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 February 20th. 
 
 Every noble work is at first " impos- 
 sible." In very truth, for every noble 
 work the possibilities will lie diffused 
 through Immensity: inarticulate, un- 
 discoverable except to faith. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 February 21st. 
 
 How true also, once more, is it that 
 no man or Nation of men, conscious of 
 doing a great thing, was ever, in that 
 thing, doing other than a small one! 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 43 
 
 O Champ-de-Mars Federation, with 
 three hundred drummers, twelve hun- 
 dred wind-musicians, and artillery 
 planted on height after height to boom 
 the tidings of it all over France, in a 
 few minutes! Could no Atheist-Nai- 
 geon contrive to discern, eighteen 
 centuries off, those Thirteen most poor 
 mean-dressed men, at frugal Supper, 
 in a mean Jewish dwelling, with no 
 symbol but hearts God-initiated into 
 the " Divine depth of Sorrow," and a 
 Do this in remembrance of me ; — and so 
 cease that small difficult crowing of 
 his, if he were not doomed to it ? 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 February 22d. 
 Labour is not a devil, even while 
 encased in Mammonism: Labour is 
 
44 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ever an imprisoned God, writhing un- 
 consciously or consciously to escape 
 out of Mammonisni ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 February 2jd. 
 
 Despise not the rag from which man 
 makes Paper, or the litter from which 
 the Earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed 
 no meanest object is insignificant; all 
 objects are as windows, through which 
 the philosophic eye looks into Infini- 
 tude itself. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 /February j.fth. 
 On all hands of us, there is the an- 
 nouncement, audible enough, that the 
 old Empire of Routine has ended; that 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 45 
 
 to say a thing has long been, is no 
 reason for its continuing to be. The 
 things which have been are fallen into 
 decay, are fallen into incompetence; 
 large masses of mankind, in every 
 society of our Europe, are no longer 
 capable of living at all by the things 
 which have been. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 Fehruary 2^th. 
 
 Work is of a religious nature :- — work 
 is of a brave nature; which it is the 
 aim of all religion to be. "All work 
 of man is as the swimmer's:" a waste 
 ocean threatens to devour him; if he 
 front it not bravely, it will keep its 
 word. By incessant wise defiance of 
 it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold 
 
46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 how it loyally supports him, bears him 
 as its conijucror along, 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 Pcbniary 26th. 
 
 When a man's life feels itself to be 
 sick and an error, no voting of by- 
 standers can make it well and a truth 
 again. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Fchruary 2/th. 
 
 At all turns, a man who \\'\\\.do faith- 
 fully, needs to believe firmly. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 February 28th. 
 
 With these signs of the times, it is 
 not surprising that the dominant feel- 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 47 
 
 ing all over France was still continually 
 Hope ? O blessed Hope, sole boon 
 of man; whereby, on his strait prison 
 walls, are painted beautiful far-stretch- 
 ing landscapes; and into the night of 
 very Death is shed holiest dawn! 
 Thou art to all an indefeasible posses- 
 sion in this God's-world: to the wise 
 a sacred Constantine's-banner, written 
 on the eternal skies; under which they 
 shall conquer, for the battle itself is 
 victory: to the foolish some secular 
 mirage, or shadow of still waters, 
 painted on the parched Earth; whereby 
 at least their dusty pilgrimage, if de- 
 vious, becomes cheerfuller, becomes 
 possible. 
 
 French Revolution 
 
48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February zgth. 
 " Protection of property," of what is 
 "mine'* means with most men protection 
 of money, — the thing which, had I a 
 thousand padlocks over it, is least of 
 all min^; is, in a manner, scarcely worth 
 calling mine! 
 
 /^asi and Present, 
 
MARCH 
 
March ist. 
 Great is Bankruptcy: the great bot- 
 tomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, 
 public and private, do sink, disappear- 
 ing; whither, from the first origin of 
 them, they were all doomed. For 
 Nature is true and not a lie. No he 
 you can speak or act but it will come, 
 after longer or shorter circulation, like 
 a Bill drawn on Nature's Realty, and 
 be presented there for payment, — with 
 the answer, ?to effects. Pity only that 
 it often had so long a circulation: 
 that the original forger were so seldom 
 he who bore the final smart of it ! Lies, 
 and the burden of evil they bring, are 
 passed on; shifted from back to back, 
 and from rank to rank; and so land 
 
52 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, 
 who with spade and mattock, with 
 sore heart and empty wallet, daily come 
 in contact with reality, and can pass the 
 cheat no further. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 March 2d. 
 
 To learn obeying is the fundamental 
 art of governing. How much would 
 many a serene Highness have learned, 
 had he travelled through the world with 
 water-jug and empty wallet, sine omni 
 expejisa; and at his victorious return, 
 sat down not to newspaper-paragraphs 
 and city-illuminations, but at the foot 
 of St. Edmund's Shrine to shackles 
 and bread and water! He that cannot 
 be servant of many, will never be 
 master, true guide and deliverer of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 53 
 
 many; — that is the meaning of true 
 mastership. 
 
 Past and Prestnt. 
 
 March 3d. 
 What you see, yet cannot see over, 
 is as good as infinite. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 March 4th. 
 
 Habit is the deepest law of human 
 nature. It is our supreme strength; 
 if also, in certain circumstances, our 
 miserablest weakness. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 March 5th. 
 
 If we think of it, all that a Univer- 
 sity, or final highest School can do for 
 us, is still but what the first School be- 
 
54 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 gan doing, — teach us to read. We 
 learn to read, in various languages, in 
 various sciences; we learn the alphabet 
 and letters of all manner of Books. 
 But the place where we are to get knowl- 
 edge, even theoretic knowledge, is the 
 Books themselves! It depends on 
 what wo read, after all manner of Pro- 
 fessors have done their best for us. 
 The true University of these days is a 
 collection of Books. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 March 6th. 
 
 Perhaps our greatest poets are the 
 tmite Miltons; the vocals are those 
 whom by happy accident we lay hold 
 of, one here, one there, as it chances, 
 and make vocal. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 55 
 
 March /th. 
 
 Discipline we called a kind of mir- 
 acle: in fact, is it not miraculous how 
 one man moves hundreds of thousands; 
 each unit of whom it may be loves him 
 not, and singly fears him not, yet has 
 to obey him, to go hither or go thither, 
 to march and halt, to give death, and 
 even to receive it, as if a Fate had 
 spoken; and the word-of-command 
 becomes, almost in the literal sense, a 
 magic-word. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 March 8th, 
 
 When Belief waxes uncertain, Prac- 
 tice too becomes unsound. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
56 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March Qth. 
 
 What is the use of health, or of life, 
 if not to do some work therewith ? 
 And what work nobler than transplant- 
 ing foreign Thought into the barren 
 domestic soil; except Indeed planting 
 Thought of your own, which the fewest 
 are privileged to do ? 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 March loth. 
 
 In all battles, if you await the issue, 
 each fighter has prospered according 
 to his right. His right and his might, 
 at the close of the account, were one 
 and the same. He has fought with 
 all his might, and in exact proportion 
 to all his right he has prevailed. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
FROM THOMA S CARL YLE 5 7 
 
 March nth. 
 
 Man, '' Symbol of Eternity im- 
 prisoned into Time ! '' is not thy works, 
 which are all mortal, infinitely little, 
 and the greatest no greater than the 
 least, but only the Spirit thou workest 
 in, that can have worth or continuance. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 March 12th. 
 
 Men believe in Bibles, and disbe- 
 lieve in themS but of all Bibles the 
 frightfullest to disbelieve in is this 
 " Bible of Universal History/' This 
 is the Eternal Bible and God's-book, 
 " which every born man," till once the 
 soul and eyesight are extinguished in 
 him, '* can and must, with his own eyes, 
 see the God's- Finger writing!" 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March ijth. 
 
 As indeed this, and the like of this, 
 which we now call Scepticism, is pre- 
 cisely the black malady and life-foe, 
 against which all teaching and dis- 
 coursing since man's life began has 
 directed itself; the battle of Belief 
 against Unbelief is the never-ending 
 battle! Neither is it in the way of 
 crimination that one would wish to 
 speak. Scepticism, for that century, 
 we must consider as the decay of old 
 ways of believing, the preparation afar 
 off for new, better and wider ways, — 
 an inevitable thing. We will not blame 
 men for it; we will lament their hard 
 fate. We will understand that destruc- 
 tion of old forms is not destruction of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 59 
 
 everlasting substatues ; that Scepticism, 
 as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, 
 is not an end but a beginning. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 j March 14th. 
 
 For men's hearts ought not to be 
 set against one another; but set with 
 one another, and all against the Evil 
 Thing only. 
 
 Fast and Present. 
 
 March i^th. 
 
 Of this thing, however, be certain: 
 wouldst thou plant for Eternity, then 
 plant into the deep infinite faculties of 
 man his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst 
 thou plant for Year and Day, then 
 plant into his shallow superficial fac- 
 
6o BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ulties, his Self-love and Arithmetical 
 Understanding, what will grow there. 
 
 Sartor Rtsartus. 
 
 March i6th. 
 
 When a Nation is unhappy, the 
 old Prophet was right and not wrong 
 in saying to it: Ye have forgotten God, 
 ye have quitted the ways of God, or 
 ye would not have been unhappy. It 
 is not according to the laws of Fact 
 that ye have lived and guided your- 
 selves, but according to the laws of 
 Delusion, Imposture, and wilful and 
 unwilful Mistake of Fact ; behold there- 
 fore the Unveracity is worn out; Na- 
 ture's long suffering with you is ex- 
 hausted; and ye are here. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 6i 
 
 March lyth. 
 
 As for man, his conflict is continual 
 with the spirit of contradiction, that is 
 without and within; with the evil 
 spirit (or call it, with the weak, most 
 necessitous, pitiable spirit), that is in 
 others and in himself. His walk, like 
 all walking (say the mechanicians), is 
 a series oi falls. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 March i8th. 
 
 Is not Light grander than Fire ? It 
 is the same element in a state of purity. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 March ipth. 
 Between vague wavering Capability 
 and fixed indubitable Performance, 
 what a difference! A certain inarticu- 
 
62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 late Self-consciousness dwells dimly in 
 us ; which only our works can render 
 articulate and decisively discernible. 
 Our Works are the mirror wherein the 
 spirit first sees its natural lineaments. 
 Hence, too, the folly of that impossible 
 Precept, Knoii) thyself ; till it be trans- 
 lated into this partially possible one, 
 Knoiv what thou canst ivork at. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 March 20th. 
 
 "Infinite admiration," we are taught, 
 "means worship." 
 
 Pas/ and Present. 
 
 March 21st. 
 As if Thought, Power, of Thinking, 
 were not, at all times, in all places and 
 situations of the world, precisely the 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 63 
 
 thing that was wanted. The fatal man, 
 is he not always the imthinking man, the 
 man who cannot think and see; but only 
 grope, and hallucinate, and missQt the 
 nature of the thing he works with? He 
 missees it, mistakes it as we say ; takes it 
 for one thing, and it is another thing, — 
 and leaves him standing like a futility 
 there ! He is the fatal man : unutterably 
 fatal, put in the high places of men. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 March 22d. 
 
 For indeed it is well said^ "in every 
 object there is inexhaustible meaning; 
 the eye sees in it what the eye brings 
 means of seeing." To Newton and to 
 Newton's Dog Diamond, what a different 
 pair of Universes ; while the painting on 
 
64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the optical retina of both was, most like- 
 ly, the same. • 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 March 2^d, 
 Ah yes, soil, with or without plough- 
 ing, is the gift of God. The soil of all 
 countries belongs evermore, in a very 
 considerable degree, to the Almighty 
 Maker ! The last stroke of labor be- 
 stowed on it is not the making of its 
 value, but only the increasing thereof. 
 
 Pasi and Present. 
 
 March 24th. 
 Any man may get through work rapid- 
 ly who easily satisfies himself about it. 
 Print the talk of any man, there will be 
 a thick octavo volume daily; make his 
 writing three times as good as his talk, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 65 
 
 there will be the third part of a volume 
 daily, which still is good work. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 March 2^th. 
 
 Deep in the heart of the noble man it 
 lies forever legible, that, as an Invisible 
 Just God made him, so will and must 
 God's Justice and this only, were it never 
 so invisible, ultimately prosper in all con- 
 troversies and enterprises and battles 
 whatsoever. What an Influence; ever- 
 present, — like a Soul in the rudest Cali- 
 ban of a body ; like a ray of Heaven, and 
 illuminative creative Fiat-Lux, in the 
 wastest terrestrial Chaos ! Blessed divine 
 Influence, traceable even in the horror of 
 Battlefields and garments rolled in blood : 
 how it ennobles even the Battlefield ; and, 
 
66 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 in place of a Chactaw Massacre, makes 
 it a Field of Honour ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 March 26th. 
 Not our Logical, IMensurative faculty, 
 but our Imaginative one is King over us ; 
 I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead 
 us heavenward ; or Magician and Wizard 
 to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the 
 basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the 
 implement of Fantasy ; the vessel it 
 drinks out of? 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 March 2/th. 
 Observe, however, beyond the Atlan- 
 tic, has not the new day verily dawned ! 
 Dem.ocracy, as we said, is born; storm- 
 girt, is struggling for life and victory. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 67 
 
 A sympathetic France rejoices over the 
 Rights of Man ; in all saloons, it is said, 
 What a spectacle ! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 March 28th. 
 First must the dead Letter of Religion 
 own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into 
 dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, 
 freed from this its charnel-house, is to 
 arise on us, newborn of Heaven, and 
 with new healing under its wings. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 March 2^th. 
 Yes, the wise man too speaks, and acts, 
 in Formulas ; all men do so. In general 
 the more completely cased with Formulas 
 a man may be, the safer, happier it is for 
 him. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March ^oth. 
 Great is Journalism. Is not every 
 Able Editor a Ruler of the World, being 
 a persuader of it ; though self-elected, 
 yet sanctioned, by the sale of his Num- 
 bers? Whom indeed the world has the 
 readiest method of deposing, should need 
 be: that of merely doing nothing to him ; 
 which ends in starvation ! 
 
 I'rench Revolution. 
 
 March ^rsf. 
 lie that can write a true Book, to per- 
 suade England, is not he the Bishop and 
 Archbishop, the Primate of England and 
 of All England? I many a time say, 
 the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, 
 Poems, Books, these arc the real work- 
 ing effective Church of a modern 
 country. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
APRIL 
 
April 1st. 
 
 Hast thou considered how each man's 
 heart is so tremulously responsive to 
 the hearts of all men ; hast thou noted 
 how omnipotent is the very sound of 
 many men? How their shriek of indig- 
 nation palsies the strong soul ; their howl 
 of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? 
 The Ritter Gliick confessed that the 
 ground-tone of the noblest passage, in 
 one of his noblest Operas, was the voice 
 of the Populace he had heard at Vienna, 
 crying to their Kaiser: Bread! Bread! 
 Great is the combined voice of men ; the 
 utterance of their instincts, which are 
 truer than their thoughts: it is the great- 
 
72 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 est a man encounters, among the sounds 
 and shadows, which make up this World 
 of Time. He who can resist that, has 
 his footing somewhere beyond Time. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 'April 2d. 
 
 A brave man, strenuously fighting, 
 fails not of a little triumph, now and 
 then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere 
 we try at least to give the adversary as 
 good as he brings ; and, with swift force 
 or slow watchful manoeuvre, extinguish 
 this and the other solecism, leave one 
 solecism less in God's Creation ; and so 
 proceed with our battle, not slacken or 
 surrender in it ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 73 
 
 April 3d. 
 
 For there is no heroic poem in the 
 world but is at bottom a biography, the 
 Hfe of a man : also, it may be said, there 
 is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, 
 but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed 
 or unrhymed. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 April 4th. 
 
 What changes are wrought, not by 
 Time, yet in Time. For not Mankind 
 only, but all that Mankind does or be- 
 holds, is in continual growth, re-genesis 
 and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth 
 thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, 
 ever-working Universe : it is a seed-grain 
 that cannot die; unnoticed to-day (says 
 
74 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 one), it will be found flourishing as 
 a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a 
 Hemlock-forest!) after a thousand 
 years. 
 
 Sartor Resartits. 
 
 'April f,th. 
 
 Reality is of God's making; it is alone 
 strong. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 April 6th. 
 
 Men's years are numbered, and the 
 tale of Mirabeau's was now complete. 
 Important, or unimportant ; to be men- 
 tioned in World-History for some cen- 
 turies, or not to be mentioned there be- 
 yond a day or two, — it matters not to 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 75 
 
 peremptory Fate. From amid the press 
 of ruddy busy Life, the Pale Messenger 
 beckons silently: wide-spreading inter- 
 ests, projects, salvation of French Mon- 
 archies, what thing soever man has on 
 hand, he must suddenly quit it all, 
 and go. Wert thou saving French Mon- 
 archies ; wert thou blacking shoes on the 
 Pont Neuf! The most important of 
 men cannot stay; did the World's His- 
 tory depend on an hour, that hour is not 
 to be given. Whereby, indeed, it comes 
 that these same would-have-beens are 
 mostly a vanity ; and the World's History 
 could never in the least be what it would, 
 or might, or should, by any manner of 
 potentiality, but simply and altogether 
 what it is. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
76 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 April /th. 
 
 Eloquence in three languages is good ; 
 but it is not the best. To us, as already 
 hinted, the Lord Abbot's eloquence is less 
 admirable than his /^eloquence, his great 
 invaluable **talent of silence !" 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April 8th. 
 
 Man is, properly speaking, based upon 
 Hope, he has no other possession but 
 Hope; this world of his is emphatically 
 the Place of Hope. 
 
 Sartor Resarius. 
 
 April p///. 
 
 Literature is our Parliament too. 
 Whoever can speak, speaking now to 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 77 
 
 the whole nation, becomes a power, a 
 branch of government, with inahenable 
 weight in law-making, in all acts of 
 authority. It matters not what rank he 
 has, wliat revenues or garnitures : the 
 requisite thing is, that he have a tongue 
 which others will listen to ; this and noth- 
 ing more is requisite. The nation is 
 governed by all that has tongue in 
 the nation: Democracy is virtually 
 there. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 April lOth. 
 
 It is not known that the Tongue of 
 Man is a sacred organ ; that Man him- 
 self is definable in Philosophy as an 
 "Incarnate Word." 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 April nth. 
 
 Levelling is comfortable, as we often 
 say: levelling, yet only down to oneself. 
 Your pale-white Creoles, have their 
 grievances: — and your yellow Quarter- 
 oons? And your dark-yellow Mulattoes? 
 And your Slaves soot-black? 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 April I2th. 
 
 Veracity : it is the basis of all ; and, 
 some say, means genius itself; the prime 
 essence of all genius whatsoever. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April i^th. 
 
 There is a great discovery still to be 
 made in Literature, that of paying 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 79 
 
 literary men by the quantity they do not 
 write. Nay, in sober truth, is not this 
 actually the rule in all writing; and, 
 moreover, in all conduct and acting? 
 Not what stands aboveground, but what 
 lies unseen under it, as the root and sub- 
 terrene element it sprang from and em- 
 blemed forth, determines the value. 
 
 Sir Walter Scett. 
 
 April 14th. 
 A High Class without duties to do is 
 like trees planted on precipices ; from the 
 roots of which all the earth has been 
 crumbling. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April i^th. 
 Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, 
 the language of the Devil; for which 
 
So BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 reason I have long since as good as re- 
 nounced it. 
 
 Sartor Re sarins. 
 
 April 1 6th. 
 
 Union, organisation, spiritual and ma- 
 terial, a far nobler than any Popedom or 
 Feudalism in their truest days, I never 
 doubt, is coming for the world ; sure to 
 come. But on Fact alone, not on Sem- 
 blance and Simulacrum, will it be able 
 either to come, or to stand when come. 
 With union grounded on falsehood, and 
 ordering us to speak and act lies, we will 
 not have anything to do. Peace? A 
 brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome 
 grave is peaceable. We hope for a liv- 
 ing peace, not a dead one. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
FROM THOMA S CARL YLE 8i 
 
 April I'/th. 
 For Justice and Reverence are the 
 everlasting central Law of this Universe ; 
 and to forget them, and have all the 
 Universe against one, God and one's own 
 self for enemies, and only the Devil and 
 the Dragons for friends, is not that a 
 "lameness" like few? 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April i8th. 
 Man is not what one calls a happy ani- 
 mal ; his appetite for sweet victual is so 
 enormous. How, in this wild Universe, 
 which storms in on him, infinite, vague- 
 menacing, shall poor man find, say not 
 happiness, but existence, and footing to 
 stand on, if it be not by girding himself 
 together for continual endeavour and en- 
 
82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 durance? Woe, if in his heart there 
 dwelt no devout Faith ; if the word Duty 
 has lost its meaning for him ! For as to 
 this of Sentimentalism, so useful for 
 weeping with over romances and on 
 pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will 
 avail nothing ; nay less. The healthy 
 heart that said to itself, "How healthy 
 am I !" was already fallen into the fatal- 
 est sort of disease. Is not Sentimental- 
 ism twin-sister to Cant, if not one and 
 the same with it? Is not Cant the 
 materia prima of the Devil ; from which 
 all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations 
 body themselves; from which no true 
 thing can come? For Cant is itself 
 properly a double-distilled Lie; the sec- 
 ond-power of a Lie. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 83 
 
 April ipth. 
 
 Genius is "the inspired gift of God." 
 It is the clearer presence of God Most 
 High in a man. Dim, potential in all 
 men; in this man it has become clear, 
 actual. 
 
 Fas^ and Present. 
 
 'April 20th. 
 
 The Situation that has not its Duty, its 
 Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. 
 Yes here, in this poor, miserable, ham- 
 pered, despicable Actual, wherein thou 
 even now standest, here or nowhere is 
 thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and 
 working, believe, live, be free. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 April 2ist. 
 
 My friend, all speech and rumor is 
 shortlived, foolish, untrue. Genuine 
 Work alone, what thou workest faith- 
 fully, that is eternal, as the Almighty 
 Founder and World-Builder himself. 
 Stand thou by that ; and let "Fame" 
 and the rest of it go prating. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April 22d. 
 
 We say not that ; but we do say, that 
 ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat, 
 is battle (in a good or in a bad cause) 
 with bad success; that health alone is 
 victory. Let all men, if they can man- 
 age it, contrive to be healthy ! He who 
 in what cause soever sinks into pain and 
 disease, let him take thought of it; let 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 85 
 
 him know well that it is not good he has 
 arrived at yet, but surely evil, — may, or 
 may not be, on the way towards good. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 April 27d. 
 
 Alas, when madness of choler has gone 
 through the blood of men, and gibbets 
 have swung on this side and on that, 
 what will a parchment Decree and Lafay- 
 ette Amnesty do? Oblivious Lethe flows 
 not above ground! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 April 24th. 
 
 Insincere Speech, truly, is the prime 
 material of insincere Action. Action 
 hangs, as it were, dissolved in Speech, 
 in Thought whereof Speech is the shad- 
 ow; and precipitates itself therefrom. 
 
86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 The kind of Speech in a man betokens 
 the kind of Action you will get from him. 
 Our Speech, in these modern days, has 
 become amazing. Johnson complained, 
 ''Nobody speaks in earnest, Sir; there is 
 no serious conversation." 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April 2^th. 
 
 ^ Strange enough how creatures of the 
 human-kind shut their eyes to plainest 
 facts; and by the mere inertia of Obliv- 
 ion and Stupidity live at ease in the 
 midst of Wonders and Terrors. But 
 indeed man is, and was always, a block- 
 head and dullard ; much readier to feel 
 and digest, than to think and consider. 
 Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 87 
 
 his absolute lawgiver; mere use-and- 
 wont everywhere leads him by the nose: 
 thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but 
 a Creation of the World happen timce, 
 and it ceases to be marvellous, to be note- 
 worthy, or noticeable. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 April 26th. 
 
 Isolation is the sum-total of wretched- 
 ness to man. To be cut off, to be left 
 solitary : to have a world alien, not your 
 world ; all a hostile camp for you ; not a 
 home at all, of hearts and faces who are 
 yours, whose you are! It is the fright- 
 fulest enchantment; too truly a work of 
 the Evil One. 
 
 Pasf and Present. 
 
88 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 / April 2ph. 
 
 Shall Courtesy be done only to the 
 rich, and only by the rich? In Good- 
 breeding, which differs, if at all, from 
 High-breeding, only as it gracefully re- 
 members the rights of others, rather than 
 gracefully insists on its own rights, I 
 discern no special connection with wealth 
 or birth : but rather that it lies in human 
 nature itself, and is due from all men 
 towards all men. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 'April 28th. 
 
 Let Cant cease, at all risks and at 
 all costs: till Cant cease, nothing else 
 can begin. Of human Criminals, in 
 these centuries, writes the Moralist, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 89 
 
 I find but one unforgivable: the 
 Quack. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 April 2^th. 
 
 The Land is Mother of us all ; nour- 
 ishes, shelters, gladdens, lovingly en- 
 riches us all ; in how many ways, from 
 our first wakening to our last sleep on 
 her blessed mother-bosom, does she, as 
 with blessed mother-arms enfold us 
 all. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 April soth. 
 
 Our life is compassed round with Ne- 
 cessity ; yet is the meaning of Life itself 
 no other than Freedom, than Voluntary , 
 Force : thus have we a warfare : in the 
 
90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 beginning, especially, a hard-fought 
 battle. For the God-given mandate, 
 Work thou in IVelldoiug, lies mysteri- 
 ously written, in Promethian, Prophetic 
 Characters, in our hearts ; and leaves us 
 no rest, night or day, till it be disciphered 
 and obeyed ; till it burn forth, in our 
 conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Free- 
 dom. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
MAY 
 
May 1st. 
 
 For ours is a most fictile world; and 
 man is the most fingent plastic of creat- 
 ures. A world not fixable; not fathom- 
 able! An unfathomable Somewhat, 
 which is Not we; which we can work 
 with, and live amidst, — and model, 
 miraculously in our miraculous Being, 
 and name World. — But if the very 
 Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic 
 teaches), are, in strict language, made by 
 those outward Senses of ours, how much 
 more, by the Inward Sense, are all Phe- 
 nomena of the spiritual kind: Dignities, 
 Authorities, Holies, Unholies ! Which 
 inward sense, moreover is not permanent 
 like the outward ones, but forever grow- 
 
94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ing and changing. Does not the Black 
 African take of Sticks and Old Clothes 
 (say, exported Monmouth-Strect cast- 
 clothes) what will suffice, and of these, 
 cunningly combining them, fabricate for 
 himself an Eidolon (Idol, or Thing 
 Seen), and name it Muinbo-Junibo; 
 which he can henceforth pray to. with 
 upturned awestruck eye, not without 
 hope ? The white European mocks ; but 
 ought rather to consider ; and see 
 whether he, at home, could -not do the like 
 a little more wisely. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 May 2d 
 
 Formulas too, as we call them, have a 
 reality in Human Life. They are real 
 as the very skin and muscular tissue of a 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 95 
 
 Man's Life ; and a most blessed indispen- 
 sable thing, so long as they have vitality 
 withal, and are a living skin and tissue 
 to him! No man, or man's life, can go 
 abroad and do business in the world 
 without skin and tissues. No; first of 
 all, these have to fashion themselves, — 
 as indeed they spontaneously and inevi- 
 tably do. Foam itself, and this is worth 
 thinking of, can harden into oyster-shell ; 
 all living objects do by necessity form 
 to themselves a skin. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May ^d. 
 
 Great truly is the Actual ; is the Thing 
 
 that has rescued itself from bottomless 
 
 deeps of theory and possibility, and 
 
 stands there as a definite indisputable 
 
96 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Fact, whereby men do work and live, 
 or once did so. Wisely shall men cleave 
 to that, while it will endure ; and quit 
 it with regret, when it gives way under 
 them. Rash enthusiast of Change, be- 
 ware ! Hast thou well considered all 
 that Habit does in this life of ours; how 
 all Knowledge and all Practice hang 
 wondrous over infinite abysses of the 
 Unknown, Impracticable ; and our whole 
 being is an infinite abyss, overarched by 
 Habit, as by a thin Earth-rind, labori- 
 ously built together? 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 May 4th. 
 
 All Works, each in their degree, are a 
 making of Madness sane ; — truly enough 
 
FROxM THOMAS CARLYLE 97 
 
 a religious operation ; which cannot be 
 
 n. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 carried on without rehgion 
 
 May 5th. 
 That great mystery of Time^ were 
 ithere no other; the ilHmitable, silent, 
 never-resting thing called Time, rolling, 
 rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-em- 
 bracing ocean-tide, on which we and all 
 the Universe swim like exhalations, like 
 apparitions which are, and then are not: 
 this is forever very literally a miracle; 
 a thing to strike us dumb, — for we have 
 no word to speak about it. 
 
 Heroes and Hero lVorshtJ>. 
 
 May 6th. 
 The Past is a dim indubitable fact: 
 the Future too is one, only dimmer; nay 
 
93 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 properly it is the sam^ fact in new dress 
 and development. For the Present holds 
 in it both the whole Past and the whole 
 Future; — as the Life-tree Igdrasil, 
 wide-waving, many-toned, has it roots 
 down deep in the Death-kingdoms, 
 among the oldest dead dust of men, and 
 with its boughs reaches always beyond 
 the stars ; and in all times and places 
 is one and the same Life-tree ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May yth. 
 It is well said, in every sense, that a 
 man's religion is the chief fact with re- 
 gard to him. A man's or a nation of 
 men's. By religion I do not mean here 
 the church-creed he professes, the articles 
 of faith which he will sign and, in words 
 or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 99 
 
 many cases not this at all. We see men 
 of all kinds of professed creeds attain to 
 almost all degrees of worth or worthless- 
 ness under each or any of them. This is 
 not what I call religion, this profession 
 and assertion ; which is often only a pro- 
 fession and assertion from the outworks 
 of the man, from the mere argumentative 
 region of him, if even so deep as that. 
 But the thing a man does practically be- 
 lieve (and this is often enough without 
 asserting it even to himself, much less to 
 others) ; the thing a man does practically 
 lay to heart, and know^ for certain, con- 
 cerning his vital relations to this mysteri- 
 ous Universe, and his duty and destiny 
 there, that is in all cases the primary 
 thing for him, and creatively determines 
 all the rest. 
 
 ' Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
loo BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 May 8th. 
 
 The Land, by mere hired Governors, 
 cannot be got governed. You cannot 
 hire men to govern the Land : it is by a 
 mission not contracted for in the Stock- 
 Exchange, but felt in their own hearts 
 as coming out of Heaven, that men can 
 govern a Land. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May gth. 
 
 By Symbols, accordingly, is man 
 guided and commanded, made happy, 
 made wretched. He everywhere finds 
 himself encompassed with Symbols, 
 recognised as such or not recognised : 
 the Universe is but one vast Symbol of 
 God ; nay, if thou wilt have it, what is 
 Man himself but a Symbol of God; is 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE loi 
 
 not all that he does symbolical ; a revela- 
 tion to Sense of the mystic god-given 
 Force that is in him ; a "Gospel of Free- 
 dom," which he, the "Messias of Nature," 
 preaches, as he can, by act and word? 
 Not a Hut he builds but is the visible 
 embodiment of a Thought; but bears 
 visible record of invisible things ; but is, 
 in the transcendental sense, symbolical 
 as well as real. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 / 
 
 May loth. 
 The first of all Gospels is this, that a 
 Lie cannot endure forever. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 May nth. 
 But indeed one of the infalliblest fruits 
 of Unwisdom in a Nation is that it can- 
 
I02 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 not get the use of what Wisdom is actu- 
 ally in it : that it is not governed by the 
 wisest it has, who alone have a divine 
 right to govern in all Nations ; but by 
 the sham-wisest, or even by the openly 
 not-so-wise if they are handiest other- 
 wise! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May 1 2th. 
 A man, be the Heavens ever praised, 
 is sufficient foi himself; yet were ten 
 men, united in Love, capable of being 
 and of doing what ten thousand singly 
 would fail in. Infinite is the help man 
 can yield to man. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 May 13 th. 
 A great soul, any sincere soul, knows 
 not what he is, — alternates between the 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 103 
 
 highest height and the lowest depth ; can 
 of all things the least measure — Himself ! 
 What others take him for, and what he 
 guesses that he may be : these two items 
 strangely act on one another, help to 
 determine one another. With all men 
 reverently admiring him; with his own 
 wild soul full of noble ardours and 
 affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness 
 and glorious new light; a divine Uni- 
 verse bursting all into godlike beauty 
 round him, and no man to whom the 
 like ever had befallen, what could he 
 think himself to be? 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 May 14th. 
 The Hill I first saw the Sun rise over, 
 when the Sun and I and all things were 
 yet in their auroral hour, who can di- 
 
104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 vorce me from it? Mystic, deep as the 
 world's centre, are the roots I have 
 struck into my Native Soil ; no tree that 
 grows is rooted so. From noblest 
 patriotism to humblest industrial Mech- 
 anism; from highest dying for your 
 country, to lowest quarrying and coal- 
 boring for it, a Nation's Life depends 
 upon its Land. Again and again we 
 have to say, there can be no true Aris- 
 tocracy but must possess the Land. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 May Ijfll. 
 Folly is that wisdom which is wise 
 only behindhand. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 May i6th. 
 The higher the Wisdom, the closer 
 was its neighborhood and kindred with 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 105 
 
 mere Insanity; literally so, — and thou 
 wilt, with a speechless feeling, observe 
 how highest Wisdom, struggling up into 
 this world, has oftentimes carried such 
 tinctures and adhesions of Insanity still 
 cleaving to it hither! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May 17th, 
 It is an everlasting duty, valid in our 
 day as in that, the duty of being 
 brave. Valour is still value. The first 
 duty for a man is still that of subduing 
 Fear. We must get rid of Fear ; we can- 
 not act at all till then. A man's acts are 
 slavish, not true but specious; his very 
 thoughts are false, he thinks too as a 
 slave and coward, till he have got Fear 
 under his feet. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
io6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 May 1 8th. 
 For if Government is, so to speak, the 
 outward skin of the Body PoHtic, hold- 
 ing the whole together and protecting it ; 
 and all your Craft-Guilds and Associa- 
 tions for Industry, of hand or of head, 
 are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular 
 and osseous Tissues, (lying under such 
 skin), whereby Society stands and 
 works ; — then is Religion the inmost 
 Pericardial and Nervous Tissue, which 
 ministers Life and Warm Circulation to 
 the whole. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 May igfh. 
 Day's-wages for Day's-work? con- 
 tinues he: The progress of Human So- 
 ciety consists even in this same, The 
 better and better apportioning of wages 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 107 
 
 to work. Give me this, you have given 
 me all. Pay to every man accurately 
 what he has worl ,d for, what he has 
 earned and done and deserved, — to this 
 man broad lands and honours, to that 
 man high gibbets and treadmills: what 
 more have I to ask? Heaven's King- 
 dom, which we daily pray for, has come : 
 God's will is done on Earth even as it 
 is in Heaven ! 
 
 Past and Presetit. 
 
 May 20th. 
 See deep enough, and you see musi- 
 cally; the heart of Nature being every- 
 where music, if you can only reach it. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship, 
 
 May 2ist, 
 The opinion that is sure of itself, as 
 the meagerest opinion may the soonest 
 
io8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 be, is the one to which all men will rally. 
 Great is Belief, were it never so meagre ; 
 and leads captive the doubting heart! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 May 22d. 
 On the whole, that humorist in the 
 Moral Essay was not so far out, who 
 determined on honouring health only ; 
 and so instead of humbling himself to 
 the high-born, to the rich and well- 
 dressed, insisted on doffing hat to the 
 healthy : coroneted carriages with pale 
 faces in them passed by as failures, 
 miserable and lamentable ; trucks with 
 ruddy-cheeked strength dragging at them 
 were greeted as successful and vener- 
 able. For does not health mean har- 
 mony, the synonym of all that is true, 
 justly-ordered, good ; is it not, in some 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 109 
 
 sense, the net-total, as shown by experi- 
 ment, of whatever worth is in us ? The 
 healthy man is the most meritorious pro- 
 duct of Nature so far as he goes. A 
 healthy body is good ; but a soul in right 
 health, — it is the thing beyond all others 
 to be prayed for; the blessedest thing 
 this earth receives of Heaven. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 May 23d. 
 It has ever been held the highest 
 wisdom for a man not merely to submit 
 to Necessity, — Necessity will make him 
 submit, — but to know and believe well 
 that the stern thing that Necessity had 
 ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing 
 wanted there. To ease his frantic pre- 
 tention of scanning this great God's- 
 World in his small fraction of a brain; 
 
no BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 to know that it had verily, though deep 
 beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that 
 the soul of it was Good; — that his part 
 in it was to conform to the Law of the 
 Whole, and in devout silence follow that ; 
 not questioning it, obeying it as unques- 
 tionable. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 May 24th. 
 For Nature and Fact, not Redtape and 
 Semblance, are to this hour the basis of 
 man's life ; and on those, through never 
 such strata of these, man and his life and 
 all his interests do. sooner or later, in- 
 fallibly come to rest, — and to be sup- 
 ported or be swallowed according as 
 they agree with those. The question is 
 asked of them, not, How do you agree 
 with Downing-street and accredited 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 1 1 1 
 
 Semblance? but, how do you agree with 
 God's Universe and the actual Reality 
 of things? 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May 25th. 
 Indeed what wonders lie in every Day, 
 — had we the sight, as happily we have 
 not, to decipher: for is not every 
 meanest day "the conflux of two Eter- 
 nities !" 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
 May 26th. 
 Is there a man who pretends to live 
 luxuriously housed up ; screened from all 
 work, from want, danger, hardship, the 
 victory over which is what we name 
 work; — he himself to sit serene, amid 
 down-bolsters and appliances, and have 
 ail his work and battling done by other 
 
112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 men? And such man calls himself a 
 noh\e-vc\2in ! His fathers worked for 
 him, he says ; or successfully gambled for 
 him: here he sits; professes, not in sor- 
 row but in pride, that he and his have 
 done no work, time out of mind. It is 
 the law of the land, and is thought to 
 be the law of the Universe, that he, alone 
 of recorded men, shall have no task laid 
 on him, except that of eating his cooked 
 victuals, and not flinging himself out of 
 window. Once more I will say, there 
 was no stranger spectacle ever shown 
 under this Sun. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May 2yth. 
 
 Belief is great, life-giving. The his- 
 tory of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul- 
 elevating, great, so soon as it believes. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 113 
 
 May 28th. 
 There is one preacher who does preach 
 with effect, and gradually persuade all 
 persons: his name is Destiny, is Divine 
 Providence, and his Sermon the inflex- 
 ible Course of Things. Experience does 
 take dreadfully high school-wages ; but 
 he teaches like no other ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 May 2pth, 
 Poor human nature! Is not a man's 
 walking, in truth, always that: "a suc- 
 cession of falls ?" Man can do no other. 
 In this wild element of a Life, he has to 
 struggle onwards; now fallen deep- 
 abased ; and ever, with tears, repentance, 
 with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, 
 struggle again still onwards. That this 
 
114 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 struggle he a faithful unconquerable one : 
 that is the question of questions. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 May ^oth. 
 The latest Gospel in this world is, 
 Know thy work and do it. "Know thy- 
 self:" long enough has that poor ''self" 
 of thine tormented thee ; thou wilt never 
 get to "know" it, I believe! Think it 
 not thy business, this of knowing thyself ; 
 thou art an unknowable individual : know 
 what thou canst work at ; and work at 
 it like a Hercules ! That will be thy 
 better plan. 
 
 71/03; JJ^/. 
 
 It is most true that all available 
 Authority is mystic in its conditions, and 
 comes "by the grace of God." 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
JUNE 
 
nj 
 
 June 1st. 
 
 Great meanwhile is the moment, when 
 tidings of Freedom reach us ; when the 
 long-enthralled soul, from amid its 
 chains and squalid stagnancy, arises, 
 were it still only in blindness and bewil- 
 derment, and swears by Him that made 
 it, that it will be free! Free? Under- 
 stand that well, it is the deep command- 
 ment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole 
 being, to be free. Freedom is the one 
 purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of 
 all man's struggles, toilings and suffer- 
 ings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme is 
 such a moment (if thou have known it) : 
 first vision as of a flame-girt Sinai, in 
 this our waste Pilgrimage, — which 
 
ii8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 thenceforth wants not its pillar of cloud 
 by day and pillar of fire by night ! 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
 June 2d. 
 
 Sure enough, of all paths a man could 
 strike into, there is, at any given moment, 
 a best part for every man ; a thing which, 
 here and now, it were of all things wisest 
 for him to do ; — which could he be but 
 led or driven to do, he were then doing 
 *1ike a man," as we phrase it ! all men 
 and gods agreeing with him, the whole 
 Universe virtually exclaiming Well-done 
 to him ! His success, in such case, were 
 complete ; his felicity a maximum. This 
 path, to find this path and walk in it, is 
 the one thing needful for him, Whatso- 
 ever forwards him in that, let it come to 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 119 
 
 him even in the shape of blows and 
 spurnings, is Hberty: whatsoever hin- 
 ders him, were it wardmotes, open-ves- 
 tries, poUbooths, tremendous cheers, 
 rivers of heavy-wet, is slavery. 
 
 Past and Preseyit. 
 
 June ^d. 
 
 It seems to me a most mournful hy- 
 pothesis, that of quackery giving birth 
 to any faith, even in savage men. 
 Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives 
 death to all things. We shall not see 
 into the true heart of anything, if we 
 look merely at the quackeries of it; if 
 we do not reject the quackeries alto- 
 gether; as mere diseases, corruptions, 
 with which our and all men's sole duty 
 is to have done with them, to sweep 
 
I20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 them out of our thoughts as out of our 
 practice. Man everywhere is the born 
 enemy of Hes. 
 
 Heroes and Htro Worship. 
 
 June 4th. 
 
 Veracity, true simpHcity of heart, how 
 valuable are these always ! He that 
 speaks what \s really in him, will find 
 men to listen, though under never such 
 impediments. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 June ^th. 
 
 Thought, true labour of any kind, 
 highest virtue itself, is it not the 
 daughter of Pain? Born as out of the 
 black whirlwind ; — true effort, in fact, as 
 of a captive struggling to free himself: 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 121 
 
 that is Thought. 4n all ways we are ''to 
 become perfect through suffering/' 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 June 6th. 
 Posterity can do simply nothing for a 
 man. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 June yth. 
 The oak grows silently, in the forest, 
 a thousand years ; only in the thousandth 
 year, when the woodman arrives with his 
 axe, is there heard an echoing through 
 the solitude; and the oak announces it- 
 self when, with a far-sounding crash, it 
 falls. How silent too was the planting 
 of the acorn; scattered from the lap of 
 some wandering wind ! Nay, when our 
 oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its 
 
122 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 glad Events), what shout of proclama- 
 tion could there be? Hardly from the 
 most observant a word of recognition. 
 These things hefell not, they were slowly 
 done; not in an hour, but through the 
 flight of days : what was to be said of it ? 
 This hour seemed altogether as the last 
 was, as the next would be. 
 
 It is thus everywhere that foolish 
 Rumour babbles not of what was done, 
 but of what was misdone or undone ; and 
 foolish History (ever, more or less, the 
 written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) 
 knows so little that were not as well un- 
 known. Attila, Invasions, Walter-the- 
 Penniless, Crusades, Sicilian, Vespers, 
 Thirty- Years Wars : mere sin and 
 misery ; not work, but hindrance of work ! 
 For the Earth, all this while, was yearly 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 123 
 
 green and yellow with her kind harvests ; 
 the hand of the craftsman, the mind of 
 the thinker rested not: and so, after all, 
 and in spite of all, we have this so glori- 
 ous high-domed blossoming World ; con- 
 cerning which poor History may well 
 ask, with wonder, Whence it came? 
 She knows so little of it, knows so much 
 of what obstructed it, what would have 
 rendered it impossible. Such, neverthe- 
 less, by necessity or foolish choice, is 
 her rule and practice; whereby that 
 paradox, "Happy the people whose 
 annals are vacant," is not without its true 
 side. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 June 8th. 
 Think, would zve believe, and take 
 with us as our life-guidance, an allegory, 
 
124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 a poetic sport ? Not sport but earnest is 
 what we should require. It is a most 
 earnest thing to be ahve in this world ; 
 to die is not sport for a man. Man's life 
 never was a sport to him ; it was a stern 
 reality, altogether a serious matter to be 
 alive ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 June ptii. 
 Valiant Wisdom tilling and draining; 
 escorted by owl-eyed Pedantry, by owl- 
 ish and vulturish and many other forms 
 of Folly ; the valiant husbandman assidu- 
 ously tilling: the blind greedy enemy 
 too assiduously sowing tares! 
 
 Fast and Present. 
 
 June 1 0th. 
 All that he does, and brings to pass, 
 is the vesture of a thought. This London 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 1 25 
 
 City, with all its houses, palaces, steam- 
 engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasur- 
 able traffic and tumult, what is it but a 
 Thought, but millions of Thoughts made 
 into One; — a huge immeasurable Spirit 
 of a Thought^ embodied in brick, in 
 iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, 
 Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and 
 the rest of it! Not a brick was made 
 but some man had to think of the mak- 
 ing of that brick. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 June nth. 
 
 No sadder proof can be given by a 
 man of his own littleness than disbelief 
 in great men. There is no sadder symp- 
 tom of a generation than such general 
 blindness to the spiritual lightning, with 
 
126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 faith only in the heap of barren dead 
 fuel. It is the last consummation of 
 unbelief. In all epochs of the world's 
 history, we shall find the Great Man to 
 have been the indispensable saviour of 
 his epoch ; — the lightnin^:^, without which 
 the fuel never would have burnt. The 
 History of the World, I said already, 
 was the Biography of Great Men. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 June I2th. 
 
 First get your man ; all is got : he can 
 learn to do all things, from making boots, 
 to decreeing judgments, governing com- 
 munities ; and will do them like a man. 
 Catch your no-man — alas, have you not 
 caught the terriblest Tartar in the world ! 
 Perhaps all the terribler, the quieter and 
 
FROM THOMA S CARLYLE 127 
 
 gentler he looks. For the mischief that 
 one blockhead, that every blockhead does, 
 in a world so feracious, teeming with 
 endless results are ours, no ciphering will 
 sum up. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 June i^th. 
 
 How delicate, decent English Biogra- 
 phy, bless its mealy mouth! A Damo- 
 cles' sword of Respectability hangs for- 
 ever over the poor English Life-writer 
 (as it does over poor English Life in 
 general), and reduces him to the verge 
 of paralysis. Thus it has been said, 
 ''There are no English lives worth read- 
 ing except those of Players, who by the 
 nature of the case have bidden Respect- 
 ability good-day." The English biogra- 
 pher has long felt that if in writmg his 
 
128 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Man's Biography, he wrote down any- 
 thing that could by possibihty offend any 
 man, he had written wrong. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 June 14th. 
 The Working Aristocracy must strike 
 into a new path ; must understand that 
 money alone is not the representative 
 either of man's success in the world, or 
 of man's duties to man ; and reform their 
 own selves from top to bottom, if they 
 wish England reformed. 
 
 J^ast and Present. 
 
 June 13th. 
 Faults? The greatest of faults, I 
 should say, is to be conscious of none. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 1 29 
 
 June i6th. 
 When an individual is miserable, what 
 does it most of all behove him to do? 
 To complain of this man or of that, 
 of this thing or of that? To fill the 
 world and street with lamentation, 
 objurgation? Not so at all; the re- 
 verse of so. All moralists advise him 
 not to complain of any person or of any 
 thing, but of himself only. He is to 
 know of a truth that being miserable he 
 has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully 
 followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, 
 ever true to her Laws, would have 
 yielded fruit and increase and felicity to 
 him: but he has followed other than 
 Nature's Laws; and now Nature, her 
 patience with him being ended, leaves 
 him desolate: answers with very em- 
 
I30 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 phatic significance to him : No. Not by 
 this road, my son ; by another road shalt 
 thou attain well-being: this, thou per- 
 ceivest is the road to ill-being ; quit this ! 
 — So do all moralists advise : that the 
 man penitently say to himself first of all, 
 Behold I was not wise enough ; I quitted 
 the laws of Fact, which are also called 
 the Laws of God, and mistook them for 
 the Laws of Sham and Semblance, which 
 are called the Devil's Laws ; therefore 
 am I here ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 June Tph. 
 
 Popularity is as a blaze of illumina- 
 tion, or alas, of conflagration, kindled 
 round a man ; shozving what is in him ; 
 not putting the smallest item more into 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 131 
 
 him ; often abstracting much from him ; 
 conflagrating the poor man himself into 
 ashes and caput mortuum! 
 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 June i8th. 
 
 A man preaching from his earnest soul 
 into the earnest souls of men : is not this 
 virtually the essence of all Churches 
 whatsoever? The nakedest, savagest, 
 reality I say, is preferable to any sem- 
 blance, however dignified. Besides, it 
 will clothe itself with due semblance by 
 and by, if it be real. No fear of that; 
 actually no fear at all. Given the living 
 man, there will be found clothes for him ; 
 he will find himself clothes. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 June igtii. 
 I When was a god found ''agreeable" 
 to everybody? The regular way is to 
 hang, kill, crucify your gods, ?nd execrate 
 and trample them under your stupid 
 hoofs for a century or two; till you dis- 
 cover that they are gods, — and then take 
 to braying over them, still in a very long- 
 eared manner! 
 
 Past and Prtsent. 
 
 June 20th. 
 I say, this is yet the only true morality 
 known. A man is right and invincible, 
 virtuous and on the road towards sure 
 conquest, precisely while he joins him- 
 self to the great deep Law of the World, 
 in spite of all superficial laws, temporary 
 appearances, profit-and-loss calculations ; 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 133 
 
 he is victorious while he cooperates with 
 that great central Law, not victorious 
 otherwise: — and surely his first chance 
 of cooperating with it, or getting into 
 the course of it, is to know with his whole 
 soul that it is; that it is good, and alone 
 good ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 June 2 1 St. 
 But indeed Conviction, were it never 
 so excellent, is worthless till it convert 
 itself into Conduct. Nay properly Con- 
 viction is not possible till then ; inasmuch 
 as all Speculation is by nature endless, 
 formless, a vortex amid vortices : only 
 by a felt indubitable certainty of Ex- 
 perience does it find any centre to revolve 
 round, and so fashion itself into a system. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 June 22d. 
 Double, double, toil and trouble; that 
 is the life of all governors that really 
 govern : not the spoil of victory, only the 
 glorious toil of battle can be theirs. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 June 2jd. 
 Has not a deeper meditation taught 
 certain of every clime and age, that the 
 Where and When, so mysteriously in- 
 separable from all our thoughts, are but 
 superficial terrestrial adhesions to 
 thought; that the Seer may discern them 
 where they mount up out of the celestial 
 Everywhere and Forever: have not all 
 nations conceived their God as Omni- 
 present and Eternal ;- as existing in a 
 universe Here, an everlasting Now? 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 133 
 
 Think well, thou too wilt find that 
 Space is but a mode of our human Sense, 
 so likewise Time; there is no Space and 
 no Time : We are — we know not what ; 
 — light sparkles floating in the aether of 
 Deity! 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 June 24th. 
 
 Is not all work of man in this world a 
 making of Order? The carpenter finds 
 rough trees; shapes them, constrains 
 them into square fitness, into purpose 
 and use. We all are born enemies of 
 Disorder: it is tragical for us all to be 
 concerned in image-breaking and down- 
 pulling : for the Great Man, more a man 
 than we, it is doubly tragical. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 June 2^th. 
 This green flowery rock-built earth, 
 the trees, the mountains, rivers, many- 
 sounding seas; — that great deep sea of 
 azure that swims overhead ; the winds 
 sweeping through it; the black cloud 
 fashioning itself together, now pouring 
 out fire, now hail and rain ; what is it ? 
 Ay, what? A' bottom we do not yet 
 know; we can never know at all. It is 
 not by our superior insight that we 
 escape the difficulty ; it is by our superior 
 levity, our inattention, our ivant of in- 
 sight. It is by not thinking that we cease 
 to wonder at it. Hardened round us, 
 encasing wholly every notion we form, 
 is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, 
 mere words. We call that fire of the 
 black thunder-cloud ^'electricity," and 
 
FROM THOMA S CARLYLE 137 
 
 lecture learnedly about it, and grind the 
 like of it out of glass and silk : but zvhat 
 is it? What made it? Whence comes 
 it ? Whither goes it ? Science has done 
 much for us ; but it is a poor science that 
 would hide from us the great deep sacred 
 infinitude of Nescience, whither we can 
 never penetrate, on which all science 
 swims as a mere superficial film. This 
 world, after all our science and sciences, 
 is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, 
 magical and more, to whosoever will 
 think of it. 
 
 Heroes and Hero V/orshif: 
 
 June 26th. 
 Foolish men imagine that because 
 judgment for an evil thing is delayed^ 
 there is no justice, but an accidental one, 
 
138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 here below. Judgment for an evil thing 
 is many times delayed some day or two, 
 some century or two, but it is sure as 
 life, it is sure as death! In the centre 
 of the world-whirlwind, verily now as 
 in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a 
 God. 
 
 Past and Present, 
 
 June 2jth. 
 Observe, however, that of man's whole 
 terrestrial possessions and attainments, 
 unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, 
 divine or divine-seeming; under which 
 he marches and fights, with victorious 
 assurance, in his life-battle : what we can 
 call his Realized Ideals. Of which real- 
 ized ideals, omitting the rest, consider 
 only these two: his Church, or spiritual 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 139 
 
 Guidance ; his Kingship, or temporal one. 
 The Church : what a word was there ; 
 richer than Golconda and the treasures 
 of the world! In the heart of the re- 
 motest mountains rises the little Kirk; 
 the Dead all slumbering round it, under 
 their white memorial-stones, "in hope of 
 a happy resurrection:" — dull wert thou, 
 O Reader, if never in any hour (say of 
 moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung 
 spectral in the sky, and Being was as if 
 swallowed up of Darkness) it spoke to 
 thee — things unspeakable, that went into 
 thy soul's soul. Strong was he that 
 had a Church, what we can call a 
 Church : he stood thereby, though "in the 
 centre of Immensities, in the conflux of 
 Eternities," yet manlike towards God and 
 man; the vague shoreless Universe had 
 
I40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 become for him a firm city, and dwelling 
 which he knew. Such virtue was in 
 Belief; in these words, well spoken: 1 
 believe. Well might men prize their 
 Credo, and raise stateliest Temples for 
 it, and reverend Hierarchies, and give it 
 the tithe of their substance ; it was worth 
 living for and dying for. 
 
 French Resolution. 
 
 June jSth. 
 
 No man works save under conditions. 
 The sculptor cannot set his own free 
 Thought before us ; but his Thought as 
 he could translate it into the stone that 
 was given with the tools that were 
 given. Disjecta membra are all that we 
 find of any Poet, or of any man. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 141 
 
 June 2gth. 
 Nature, Universe, Destiny, Existence, 
 howsoever v^e name this grand unname- 
 able Fact in the midst of which we Hve 
 and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and 
 conquest to the wise and brave, to them 
 who can discern her behests and do them ; 
 a destroying fiend to them who cannot. 
 Answer her riddle, it is well with thee. 
 Answer it not, pass on regarding it not, 
 it will answer itself; the solution for thee 
 is a thing of teeth and claws. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 June ^oth. 
 But of those decadent ages in which 
 no Ideal either grows or blossoms? 
 When Belief and Loyalty have passed 
 away, and only the cant and false echo of 
 them remains; and all Solemnity has 
 
142 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 become Pageantry; and the Creed of 
 ipersons in authority has become one of 
 two things: an ImbeciHty or a Macchi- 
 avehsm? Alas, of these ages World- 
 (History can take no notice ; they have to 
 become compressed more and more, and 
 finally suppressed in the Annals of Man- 
 kind ; blotted out as spurious, — which 
 indeed they are. Hapless ages : wherein, 
 if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be 
 born. To be born, and to learn only, 
 by every tradition and example, that 
 God's Universe is Belial's and a Lie; and 
 ''the Supreme Quack" the hierarch of 
 men ! In which mournfulest faith, never- 
 theless, do we not see whole generations 
 (two, and sometimes even three success- 
 ively) live, what they call living; and van- 
 ish, — without chance of reappearance ? 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
JULY 
 
July 1st. 
 
 Nay, instead of shrieking more, it 
 were perhaps edifying to remark, on 
 the other side, what a singular thing 
 Customs (in Latin, Mores) are; and 
 how fitly the Virtue, Vir-tus, Manhood 
 or Worth, that is in a man, is called 
 his Morality, or Customariness. Fell 
 Slaughter, one of the most authentic 
 products of the Pit you would say, once 
 give it Customs, becomes War, with 
 Laws of War; and is Customary and 
 Moral enough; and red individuals 
 carry the tools of it girt round their 
 haunches, not without an air of pride, 
 — which do thou nowise blame. While, 
 see! so long as it is but dressed in 
 
146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 hodden and russet; and revolution, less 
 frequent than War, has not yet got its 
 Laws of Revolution, but the hodden 
 or russet individuals are Uncustomary — 
 O shrieking beloved brother block- 
 heads of Mankind, let us close those 
 wide mouths of ours; let us cease 
 shrieking, and begin considering! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 July 2d. 
 
 Again, what meaning lies in Colour! 
 From the soberest drab to the high- 
 flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies 
 unfold themselves in choice of Colour; 
 if the Cut betoken Intellect and Talent, 
 so does the Colour betoken Temper 
 and Heart. In all which, among na- 
 tions as among individuals, there is an 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 147 
 
 incessant, indubitable, though infinitely 
 complex working of Cause and Effect; 
 every snip of the Scissors has been 
 regulated and prescribed by ever-active 
 Influences, which doubtless to Intelli- 
 gence of a superior order are neither 
 invisible nor illegible. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 July ^d. 
 
 Deep, far deeper than Supply-and- 
 demand, are Laws, Obligations sacred 
 as Man's Life itself: these also, if you 
 will continue to do work, you shall 
 now learn and obey. He that will 
 learn them, behold nature is on his 
 side, he shall yet work and prosper 
 with noble rewards. He that will not 
 learn them, Nature is against him; he 
 
148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 shall not be able to work in Nature's 
 empire, — not in hers. Perpetual mu- 
 tiny, contention, hatred, isolation, exe- 
 cration shall wait on his footsteps, till 
 all men discern that the thing which 
 he attains, however golden it look or 
 be, is not success, but the want of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July 4th. 
 
 Borne over the Atlantic, to the clos- 
 ing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of 
 God, what sounds are these: muffled, 
 ominous new in our centuries ? Bos- 
 ton Harbour is black with unexpected 
 Tea: behold a Pennsylvania Congress 
 gather, and ere long, on Bunker Hill. 
 Democracy announcing, in rifle-volleys 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL VLB 149 
 
 death winged, under her Star Banner, 
 to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that 
 she is born, and whirlwind like, will 
 envelope the whole earth ! 
 
 French devolution. 
 
 July 5th. 
 One monster there is in the world: 
 the idle man. What is his " Religion?" 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July 6th. 
 
 No nobler feeling than this of admir- 
 ation for one higher than himself dwells 
 in the breast of man. It is to this 
 hour, and at all hours, the vivifying 
 influence in man's life. Religion I 
 find stand upon it; not Paganism only, 
 but far higher and truer religions, — all 
 religion hitherto known. Hero-wor- 
 
I50 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, 
 submission, burning, boundless, for a 
 noblest godlike Form of Man, — is not 
 that the germ of Christianity itself ? 
 The greatest of all heroes is One — 
 whom we do not name here. Let 
 sacred silence meditate that sacred 
 matter; you will find it the ultimate 
 perfection of a principle extant through- 
 out man's whole history on earth. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 July yth. 
 
 Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, 
 and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Philos- 
 ophies, with the sick ophthalmia and 
 hallucination they had brought on, was 
 the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly 
 present to me; living without God in 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL \ ^LE 1 5 1 
 
 the world, of God's light I was not 
 utterly bereft ; if my as yet sealed eyes, 
 with their unspeakable longing, could 
 nowhere see him, nevertheless in my 
 heart He was present, and His heaven^ 
 written Law still stood legible and 
 sacred there. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 July 8th. 
 
 We have sumptuous garnitures for 
 our Life, but have forgotten to live in 
 the middle of them. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July pfh. 
 
 Feudal Fleur-de-lys had become an 
 insupportably bad marching banner, 
 and needed to be torn and trampled: 
 but Moneybag of Mammon (for that. 
 
152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 In these times, is what the lespectable 
 RepubHc for the Middle Classes will 
 signify) is a still worse, while it lasts 
 Properly, indeed, it is the worst and 
 basest of all banners, and symbols of 
 dominion among- men; and indeed is 
 possible only in a time of general Athe- 
 ism, and Unbelief in any thing save in 
 brute Force and Sensualism; pride of 
 birth, pride of office, any known kind 
 of pride being a degree better than 
 purse-pride. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 July loth. 
 
 Bribery; have we reflected what 
 bribery is ? Bribery means not only 
 length of purse, which is neither qual- 
 ification nor the contrary for legislating 
 well ; but it means dishonesty, and even 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 1 53 
 
 impudent dishonesty; — brazen insensi- 
 bility to lying and to making others 
 lie; total oblivion, and flinging over- 
 board, for the nonce, of any real thing 
 you can call veracity, morality; with 
 dexterous putting on the cast-clothes 
 of that real thing, and strutting about 
 in them! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July nth. 
 The colours and forms of your light 
 will be those of the cut-glass it has to 
 shine through. — Curious to think how, 
 for every man, any the truest fact is 
 modelled by the nature of the man ? 
 I said. The earnest man, speaking to 
 his brother men, must always have 
 stated what seemed to him a fact, a 
 real Appearance of Nature. But the 
 
154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 way in which such Appearance or fact 
 shaped itself, — what sort of fact it be- 
 came for him, — was and is modified 
 by his own laws of thinking; deep, 
 subtle, but universal, ever-operating 
 laws. The world of nature, for every 
 man, is the Fantasy of Himself; this 
 world is the multiplex " Image of his 
 own Dream." 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 July I2th. 
 
 It is written, " Many shall run to 
 and fro, and knowledge shall be in- 
 creased." Surely the plain rule is. Let 
 each considerate person have his way, 
 and see what it will lead to. For not 
 this man and that man, but all men 
 make up mankind, and their united 
 tasks the tasks of mankind. How 
 
FROM THOMA S CARLYLE 155 
 
 often have we seen sonue such adven- 
 turous, and perhaps much-censured 
 wanderer h'ght on some outlying, neg- 
 lected, yet vitally momentous province; 
 the hidden treasures of which he first 
 discovered, and kept proclaiming till 
 the general eye and effort were directed 
 thither, and the conquest was com- 
 pleted; — thereby, in these his seem- 
 ingly so aimless rambles, planting new 
 standards, founding new habitable col- 
 onies, in the immeasurable circumam- 
 bient realm of Nothingness and Night? 
 Wise man was he v/ho counselled that 
 Speculation should have free course, 
 and look fearlessly towards all the 
 thirty-two points of the compass, 
 whithersoever and howsoever it listed. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July isth. 
 
 And so our meetings and our part- 
 ings do now end ! The sorrows we 
 gave each other; the poor joys we 
 faithfully shared, and all our lovings 
 and our sufferings, and confused toil- 
 ings under the earthly Sun, are over. 
 Thou good soul, I shall ne\'er, never 
 through all ages of Time, see thee any 
 more ! — Never ! O, Reader, knowest 
 thou that hard word ? 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 July 14th. 
 To each is given a certain inward 
 Talent, a certain outward Environment 
 of Fortune; to each, by wisest combi- 
 nation of these two, a certain maximum 
 of Capability. But the hardest prob- 
 lem were ever this first: To find by 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 157 
 
 study of yourself, and of the ground 
 you stand on, what your combined in- 
 ward and outward Capability specially 
 is. For, alas, our young soul is all 
 budding with Capabilities, and we see 
 not yet which is the main and true one. 
 Always too the new man is in a new 
 time, under new conditions; his course 
 can be the facsimile of no prior one, 
 but is by its nature original. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 July i^th. 
 All human interests, combmed human 
 endeavours, and social growths in this 
 world, have, at a certain stage of their 
 development, required organising: and 
 Work, the grandest of human interests, 
 does now require it. 
 
 J^ast and Present. 
 
158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July i6fh. 
 Find a man whose words paint you a 
 likeness, you have found a man worth 
 something; mark his manner of doing 
 it, as very characteristic of him. In the 
 first place, he could not have discerned 
 the object at all, or seen the vital type 
 of it, unless he had, what we may call, 
 sympathised with it, — had sympathy in 
 him to bestow on objects. He must have 
 been sincere about it too; sincere and 
 sympathetic : a man without worth can- 
 not give you the likeness of any object; 
 he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy 
 and trivial hearsay, about all objects. 
 And indeed may we not say that intellect 
 altogether expresses itself in this power 
 of discerning what an object is? What- 
 soever of faculty a man's mind may have 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 1 59 
 
 will come out here. Is it even of busi- 
 ness, a matter to be done? The gifted 
 man is he who sees the essential point, 
 and leaves all the rest aside as surplus- 
 age : it is his faculty too, the man of 
 business's faculty, that he can discern 
 the true likeness, not the false superficial 
 one, of the thing he has got to work in. 
 And how much of morality is in the kind 
 of insight we get of anything; "the eye 
 seeing in all things what it brought with 
 it the faculty of seeing!" To the mean 
 eye all things are trivial, as certainly as 
 to the jaundiced they are yellow. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 July lyth. 
 
 How dare any man, especially a man 
 calling himself minister of God, stand 
 
i6o BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 up in any Parliament or place, under any 
 pretext or delusion, and for a day or an 
 hour forbid God's Light to come into the 
 world, and bid the Devil's Darkness con- 
 tinue in it one hour more ! For all light 
 and science, under all shapes, in all de- 
 grees of perfection, is of God; all dark- 
 ness, nescience, is of the Enemy of God. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July i8th. 
 O ye Hypocrisies and Speciosities, 
 Royal mantles, Cardinal plushcloaks, ye 
 Credos, Formulas, Respectabilities, fair- 
 painted Sepulchres full of dead men's 
 bones, — behold, ye appear to us to be 
 altogether a Lie. Yet our Life is not a 
 Lie; yet our Hunger and Misery is not 
 a Lie! Behold we lift up, one and all, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE i6i 
 
 our Twenty-five million right-hands ; and 
 take the Heavens, and the Earth and also 
 the Pit of Tophet to witness, that either 
 ye shall be abolished, or else we shall be 
 abolished ! 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
 July ipth. 
 I confess I have no notion of a truly 
 great man that could not be all sorts of 
 men. The Poet who could merely sit 
 on a chair, and compose stanzas, would 
 never make a stanza worth much. He 
 could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless 
 he himself were at least a Heroic warrior 
 too. I fancy there is in him the Poli- 
 tician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philoso- 
 pher: — in one or the other degree, he 
 could have been, he is all these. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
i62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 20th. 
 "What is Justice?" ask many, to whom 
 cruel Fate alone will be able to prove 
 responsive. It is like jesting Pilate ask- 
 ing, What is Truth ? Jesting Pilate had 
 not the smallest chance to ascertain what 
 was Truth. He could not have known 
 it, had a god shown it to him. Thick 
 serene opacity, thicker than amaurosis, 
 veiled those smiling eyes of his to Truth ; 
 the inner retina of them was gone para- 
 lytic, dead. He looked at Truth ; and 
 discerned her not, there where she stood. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July 2lSt. 
 So true it is, what I then said, that 
 the Fraction of Life can he increased in 
 value not so much by increasing your 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 163 
 
 Numerator as by lessening your Denomi- 
 nator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive 
 me, Unity itself divided by Zero will 
 give Infinity. Make thy claim of wages 
 a zero, then ; thou hast the world under 
 thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our 
 time write : *'It is only with Renunciation 
 (Entsagen) that Life, properly speak- 
 ing, can be said to begin." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 July 2 2d. 
 And yet, again, when a man's Formu- 
 las become dead; as all Formulas, in the 
 progress of living growth, are very sure 
 to do! When the poor man's integu- 
 ments, no longer nourished from within, 
 become dead skin, mere adscititious 
 leather and callosity, wearing thicker 
 
1 64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and thicker, uglier and uglier, till no 
 heart any longer can be felt beating 
 through them, so thick, callous, calcified 
 are they; and all over it has now 
 grown mere calcified oyster-shell, or 
 were it polished mother-of-pearl, in- 
 wards almost to the very heart of the 
 poor man : — yes then, you may say, 
 his usefulness once more is quite ob- 
 structed ; once more, he cannot go abroad 
 and do business in the world ; it is time 
 that he take to bed and prepare for de- 
 parture which cannot now be distant ! 
 IJhl homines sunt modi sunt. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 July 2^d. 
 Men's w^ords are a poor exponent of 
 their thought ; nay their thought itself is 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 165 
 
 a poor exponent of the inward unnamed 
 Mystery, wherefrom both thought and 
 action have their birth. No man can 
 explain himself, can get himself ex- 
 plained; men see not one another but 
 distorted phantasms which they call one 
 another ; which they hate and go to battle 
 with : for all battle is well said to be mis- 
 understanding. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 July 24th. 
 Such I hold to be the genuine use of 
 Gunpowder: that it makes all men alike 
 tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer 
 than I, if thou have more Mind, though 
 all but no Body whatever, then canst 
 thou kill me first, and art the taller. 
 Hereby, at last, is the Goliath powerless, 
 
166 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and the David resistless ; savage Animal- 
 ism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is 
 all. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 July 25th. 
 Life is figured by them as a Tree. 
 Igdrasil, the Ash-Tree of Existence, 
 has its roots deep down in the kingdoms 
 of Hela or Death; its trunk reaches up 
 heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the 
 whole Universe : it is the Tree of Exist- 
 ence. At the foot of it, in the Death- 
 kingdom, sit Three Nomas, Fates, — 
 the Past, Present, Future ; watering its 
 roots from the Sacred Well. Its 
 ''boughs," with their buddings and dis- 
 leafings, — events, things suffered, things 
 done, catastrophes, — stretch through all 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 167 
 
 lands and times. Is not every leai of it 
 a biography, every fibre there an act or 
 word? Its boughs are Histories of 
 Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of 
 Human Existence onwards from of old. 
 It grows there, the breath of Human 
 Passion rustling through it; — or storm- 
 tost, the stormwind howling through it 
 like the voice of all the gods. It is Ig- 
 drasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the 
 past, the present, and the future; what 
 was done, what is doing, what wnll be 
 done; ''the infinite conjugation of the 
 verb To do." Considering how human 
 things circulate, each inextricably in 
 communion with all, — how the word I 
 speak to you to-day is borrowed, not 
 from Ulfila the Moesogoth only, but from 
 ail men since the first man began to 
 
i6S BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 speak, — I find no similitude so true as 
 this of a Tree. Beautiful ; altogether 
 beautiful and great. The "Machine of 
 the Universe," — alas, do but think of 
 that in contrast! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 July 26th. 
 All visible things are Emblems ; what 
 thou seest is not there on its own ac- 
 count ; strictly taken, is not there at all : 
 Matter exists only spiritually, and to 
 represent some Idea, and body it forth. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 July 2/th. 
 
 Enjoying things that are pleasant ; 
 
 that is not the evil ; it is the reducing 
 
 of our moral self to slavery by them that 
 
 is. Let a man assert wilhal that he is 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL VLB 1 69 
 
 king over his habitudes ; that he could 
 and would shake them off, on cause 
 shown : this is an excellent law. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 July 28th. 
 Not in having ''no business" with men, 
 but in having no unjust busfness with 
 them, and in haz'ing all manner of true 
 and just business, can either his or their 
 blessedness be found possible, and this 
 waste world become, for both parties, a 
 home and peopled garden. 
 
 Pas^ and Present. 
 
 July 2Qth. 
 ' The first spiritual want of a barbarous 
 man is Decoration. 
 
 Sartor Res art us. 
 
I70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July jotli. 
 Labour must become a seeing rational 
 giant, with a soul in the body of him, 
 and take his place on the throne of things, 
 — leaving his Mammonism, and several 
 other adjuncts, on the lower steps of 
 said throne. 
 
 Fast atid Present 
 
 July ^ISt. 
 Mystical, more than magical, is that 
 Communion of Soul with Soul, both 
 looking heavenward : here properly Soul 
 first speaks with Soul ; for only in look- 
 ing heavenward, take it in what sense 
 you may, not in looking earthward, does 
 what we can call Union, mutual Love, 
 Society, begin to be possible. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
AUGUST 
 
August 1st. 
 What a man kens he cans. But the 
 beginning of a man's doom is that vision 
 be withdrawn from him; that he sees 
 not the reahty, but a false spectrum of 
 the reahty; and, following that, step 
 darkly, with more or less velocity, down- 
 wards to the utter Dark ; to Ruin, which 
 is the great Sea of Darkness, whither all 
 falsehoods, winding or direct, continu- 
 ally flow. 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
 August 2d. 
 
 O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful 
 
 to consider that we not only carry each a 
 
 future Ghost within him ; but are, in very 
 
 deed. Ghosts! These Limbs, whence 
 
174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 had we them ; this stormy Force ; this 
 hfe-blood with its burning Passion? 
 They are dust and shadow; a shadow- 
 system gathered round our Me ; wherein, 
 through some moments or years the 
 Divine Essence is to be revealed in the 
 Flesh. That warrior on his strong war- 
 horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; force 
 dwells in his arm and heart : but warrior 
 and war-horse are a vision ; a revealed 
 Force, nothing more. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 August ^d. 
 This Universe, ah me — what could the 
 wild man know of it ; what can we yet 
 know? That it is a Force and Thous- 
 andfold Complexity of Forces ; a Force 
 which is not we. That is all; it is not 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 175 
 
 we, it is altogether different from us. 
 Force, Force, everywhere Force ; we our- 
 selves a mysterious Force in the centre 
 of that. "There is not a leaf rotting on 
 the highway but has Force in it : how else 
 could it rot ?" Nay surely, to the Atheis- 
 tic Thinker, if such a one were possible, 
 it must be a miracle too, this huge illimit- 
 able whirlwind of Force, which envelops 
 us here; never-resting whirlwind, high 
 as Immensity, old as Eternity. What is 
 it? God's creation, the religious people 
 answer ; it is the Almighty God's ! Athe- 
 istic science babbles poorly of it, with 
 scientific nomenclatures, experiments and 
 what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, 
 to be bottled-up in Leyden jars and sold 
 over counters: but the natural sense of 
 man, in ?.ll times, if he will earnestly 
 
176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 apply his sense, proclaims it to be a liv- 
 ing thing, — ah, an unspeakable, god-like 
 thing; towards which the best attitude 
 for us, after never so much science, is 
 awe, devout prostration and humility of 
 soul; worship if not in words, then in 
 silence. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 August 4th. 
 
 Your cotton-spinning and thrice- 
 miraculous mechanism, what is this too, 
 by itself, but a larger kind of Animalism ? 
 Spiders can spin, Beavers can build, and 
 show contrivance ; the Ant lays up accu- 
 mulation of capital, and has, for aught 
 I know, a Bank of Antland. If there 
 is no soul in man higher than all that, 
 did it reach to sailmg on the cloud-rack 
 
FROJVr THOMAS CARLYLE 177 
 
 and spinning sea-sand ; then I say, man 
 is but an animal, a more cunning kind of 
 brute : he has no soul. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 August ^th. 
 Without hands a man might have feet, 
 and could still walk; but, consider it, 
 without morality, intellect were impossi- 
 ble for him ; he could not know anything 
 at all ! To know a thing, what we can 
 call knowing, a man must hrst love the 
 Ithing, sympathise with it: that is, be 
 virtuously related to it. If he have not 
 the justice to put down his own selfish- 
 ness at every turn, the courage to stand 
 by the dangerous-true at every turn> how 
 shall he know? His virtues, all of them, 
 will lie recorded in his knowledge. Na- 
 
1 73 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ture, with her truth, remains to the bad, 
 to the selfish and pusillanimous forever 
 a sealed book : what such can know of 
 Nature is mean, superficial small ; for the 
 uses of the day merely. But does not 
 the very Fox know somethingof Nature? 
 Exactly so: it knows where the geese 
 lodge ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 August 6th. 
 But on the whole does not TntE en- 
 velop this present National Convention ; 
 as it did those Brennuses, and ancient 
 August Senates in felt breeches? Time 
 surely; and also Eternity. Dim dusk 
 of Time, — or noon which will be dusk ; 
 and then there is night, and silence ; and 
 Time with all its sick noises is swallowed 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 179 
 
 in the still sea. Pity thy brother, O Son 
 of Adam ! The angriest frothy jargon 
 that he utters, is it not properly the 
 whimpering of an infant which cannot 
 speak what ails it, but is in distress 
 clearly, in the inwards of it ; and so must 
 squall and whimper continually, till its 
 Mother take, and it get — to sleep ! 
 
 French devolution. 
 
 'August yth. 
 Among the rainbow colours that 
 glowed on my horizon, lay even in child- 
 hood a dark ring of Care, as yet no 
 thicker than a thread, and often quite 
 overshone ; yet always it reappeared, nay 
 ever waxing broader and broader; till 
 in after-years it almost overshadowed my 
 whole canopy, and threatened to engulf 
 
i8o BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 me in final night. It was the ring of 
 Necessity, whereby we all are begirt; 
 happy he for whom a kind heavenly Sun 
 brightens it into a ring of Duty, and 
 plays round it with beautiful prismatic 
 diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as 
 bourne for our whole being, it is there. 
 
 Sarlor Resartus. 
 
 August StJl. 
 The Bucanier strikes down a man, 
 a hundred or a million men : but what 
 profits it? He has one enemy never to 
 be struck down ; nay two enemies : Man- 
 kind and the Maker of Men. On the 
 great scale or on the small, in fighting 
 of men or fighting of difficulties, I will 
 not embark my venture with How^el 
 Davies : It is not the Bucanier, it is the 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE i8i 
 
 Hero only that can gain victory, that can 
 do more than seem to succeed. These 
 things will deserve meditating; for they 
 apply to all battle and soldiership, all 
 struggle and effort whatsoever in this 
 Fight of Life. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 August pth. 
 That stifled hum of Midnight, when 
 Traffic has lain down to rest; and the 
 chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling 
 here and there through distant streets, 
 are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and 
 lighted to the due pitch for her ; and only 
 Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan 
 like nightbirds, are abroad: that hum, I 
 say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber 
 of sick Life, is heard in Heaven ! 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
1 82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August lOth. 
 To shriek, we say, when certain things 
 are acted, is proper and unavoidable. 
 Nevertheless, articulate speech, not 
 shrieking, is the faculty of man : when 
 speech is not yet possible, let there be, 
 with the shortest delay, at least — silence. 
 
 Frtncli Revolution. 
 
 August nth. 
 For the gowns of learned-sergeants 
 are good : parchment records, fixed 
 forms, and poor terrestrial Justice, with 
 or without horse-hair, what sane man 
 will not reverence these? And yet, be- 
 hold, the man is not sane but insane, 
 who considers these alone as venerable. 
 Oceans of horse-hair, continents of 
 parchment, and learned-sergeant elo- 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 183 
 
 quence, were it continued till the learned 
 tongue wore itself small in the indefati- 
 gable learned mouth, cannot make unjust 
 just. The grand question still remains, 
 Was the judgment just? If unjust, it 
 will not and cannot get harbour for 
 itself, or continue to have footing in this 
 Universe, which was made by other than 
 One Unjust. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 August I2th. 
 In Death too, in the Death of the Just, 
 as the last perfection of a Work of Art, 
 may we not discern symbolic meaning? 
 In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of 
 Victory, resting over the beloved face 
 which now knows thee no more, read 
 (if thou canst for tears) the confluence 
 
1 84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of Time with Eternity, and some t(leam 
 of the latter peering through. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 August ijth. 
 What indeed are faculties? We talk 
 of faculties as if they were distinct, 
 things separable; as if a man had intel- 
 lect, Imagination, fancy, &c., as he has 
 hands, feet and arms. That is a capital 
 error. Then again, we hear of a man's 
 "intellectual nature." and of his "moral 
 nature," as these again were divisible, 
 and existed apart. Necessities of lan- 
 guage do indeed require us so to speak : 
 we must speak. I am aware, in this way, 
 if we are to speak at all. But words 
 ought not to harden into things for us. 
 It seems to me, our apprehension of this 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 185 
 
 matter is, for most part, radically falsi- 
 fied thereby. We ought to know withal, 
 and to keep forever in mind, that these 
 divisions are at bottom but names; that 
 man's spiritual nature, the vital Force 
 which dwells in him, is essentially one 
 and indivisible ; that what we call imagi- 
 nation, fancy, understanding, and so 
 forth, are but different figures of the 
 same Power of Insight, all indissolubly 
 connected with each other, physiognomi- 
 cally related; that if we knew one of 
 them we might know all of them. Moral- 
 ity itself, what we call the moral quality 
 of a man, what is this but another side 
 of the one Vital Force whereby he is and 
 works ? All that a man does is physiog- 
 nomical of him. You may see hozv a 
 man would fight, by the way in which he 
 
i86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 sings; Jus courage, or zcaiit of courage, 
 is visible in the word lie utters, in the 
 opinion he has formed, no less than in 
 the stroke he strikes. He is one; aiid 
 preaches the same Self abroad in all 
 these Zi'ays. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 "August 14th. 
 "Well, also," says he elsewhere, "was 
 it written by Theologians : a King rules 
 by divine right. He carries in him an 
 authority from God, or man will never 
 give it him. Can I choose my own King ? 
 I can choose my own King Popinjay, 
 and play what farce or tragedy I may 
 with him : but he who is to be my Ruler, 
 whose will is to be higher than my will, 
 was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 187 
 
 except in such Obedience to the Heaven- 
 chosen is Freedom so much as conceiv- 
 able." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 August 15th. 
 This business of Louis looks altogether 
 different now, as seen over Seas and at 
 the distance of forty-four years, than it 
 looked then, in France, and struggling, 
 confused all round one ! For indeed it 
 is a most lying thing that same Past 
 Tense always : so beautiful, sad, almost 
 Elysian-sacred, "in the moonlight of 
 Memory," it seems ; and seems only. For 
 observe : always, one most important 
 element is surreptitiously (we not notic- 
 mg it) withdrawn from the Past Time: 
 the haggard element of Fear ! Not there 
 
1 88 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 does Fear dwell, nor Uncertainty, nor 
 Anxiety; but it dwells here; haunting 
 us, tracking us ; running like an accursed 
 ground-discord through all the music- 
 tones of our Existence ; — making the 
 Tense a more Present one ! Just so is it 
 with this of Louis. Why smite the 
 fallen? asks Magnanimity, out of danger 
 now. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 ' August 1 6th. 
 Thus does the Conscience of man pro- 
 ject itself athwart whatsoever of knowl- 
 edge or surmise, of imagination, under- 
 standing, faculty, acquirement, or natural 
 disposition he has in him ; and, hke light 
 through coloured glass, paint strange 
 pictures "on the rim of the horizon" 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 189 
 
 and elsewhere ! Truly this same "sense 
 of the Infinite nature of Duty" is the 
 central part of all with us ; a ray as of 
 Eternity and Immortality, immured in 
 dusky many-coloured Time, and its 
 deaths and births. Your ''coloured glass" 
 varies so much from century to century ; 
 — and, in certain money-making, game- 
 preserving centuries, it gets so terribly 
 opaque ! Not a Heaven with cherubim 
 surrounds you then, but a kind of vacant 
 leaden-coloured Hell. One day it will 
 again cease to be opaque, this ''coloured 
 glass." Nay, may it not become at once 
 translucent and w/icoloured? Painting 
 no Pictures more for us, but only the 
 everlasting Azure itself? That will be 
 a right glorious consummation! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August i/th. 
 
 "Truth," I cried, "though the Heavens 
 crush nie for following her: no False- 
 hood ! though a whole celestial Lubber- 
 land were the price of Apostacy." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 August i8th. 
 
 It is a calumny on men to say that they 
 are aroused to heroic action by ease, hope 
 of pleasure, recompense — sugar-plums 
 of any kind, in this world or the next ! 
 In the meanest mortal there lies some- 
 thing nobler. The poor swearing sol- 
 dier, hired to be shot, has his "honour 
 of a soldier," different from drill-regu- 
 lations and the shilling a day. It is not 
 to taste sweet things, but to do noble and 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 191 
 
 true things, and vindicate himself under 
 God's Heaven as a god-made Man, that 
 the poorest Son of Adam dimly longs. 
 Show him the way of doing that, the 
 dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero. 
 They wrong man greatly who say he is 
 to be seduced by ease. DifiBculty, abne- 
 gation, martyrdom, death are the allure- 
 ments that act on the heart of man. 
 Kindle the inner genial life of him, you 
 have a flame that burns-up all lower con- 
 siderations. Not happiness, but some- 
 thing higher: one sees this even in the 
 frivolous classes, with their "point of 
 honour" and the like. Not by flattering 
 our appetites ; no, by awakening the 
 Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can 
 any Religion gain followers. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship, 
 
192 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August igih. 
 
 "Custom," continues the Professor, 
 "doth make dotards of us all. Consider 
 well, thou wilt find that Custom is the 
 greatest of Weavers ; and weaves air- 
 raiment for all the Spirits of the Uni- 
 verse ; whereby indeed these dwell with 
 us visibly, as ministering servants, in 
 our houses and workshops * but their 
 spiritual nature becomes, to the most, for 
 ever hidden. Philosophy complains that 
 Custom has hoodwinked us, from the 
 first ; that we do every thing by Custom, 
 even Believe by it ; that our very Axioms, 
 let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, 
 are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we 
 have never heard questioned. Nay, what 
 is Philosophy throughout but a continual 
 battle against Custom ; an ever-renewed 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 193 
 
 effort to transcend the sphere of blind 
 Custom, and so become Transcendental ?" 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 August 20th. 
 It has been written, ''An endless sig- 
 nificance lies in Work;" a man perfects 
 himself by working. Foul jungles are 
 cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, 
 and stately cities; and withal the man 
 himself first ceases to be a jungle and 
 foul unwholesome desert thereby. Con- 
 sider how, even in the meanest sort of 
 Labour, the whole soul of a man is com- 
 posed into a kind of real harmony, the 
 instant he sets himself to work! 
 
 Pasi and Present. 
 August 2 1 St. 
 Living! Little knowest thou what 
 alchemy is in an inventive Soul ; how, as 
 
194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 with its little finger, it can create pro- 
 vision enough for the body (of a Phil- 
 osopher) ; and then, as with both hands, 
 create quite other than provision ; namely, 
 spectres to torment itself withal. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 August 2 2d. 
 All substances clothe themselves in 
 forms : but there are suitable true forms, 
 and then there are untrue unsuitable. As 
 the briefest definition, one might say, 
 Forms which groiv round a substance, 
 if we rightly understand that, will cor- 
 respond to the real nature and purport 
 of it, will be true, good ; forms which are 
 consciously put round a substance, bad. 
 I invite you to reflect on this It distin- 
 guishes true from false in Ceremonial 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 195 
 
 Form, earnest solemnity from empty 
 pageant, in all human things. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 August 2^d. 
 Law is our father and mother, whom 
 we will not dishonour ; but Patriotism is 
 our own soul. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 August 24th. 
 Dupes indeed are many: but, of all 
 dupes, there is none so fatally situated 
 as he who lives in an undue terror of 
 being duped. The world does exist ; the 
 world has truth in it, or it would not 
 exist! First recognize what Is true, we 
 shall then discern what is false, and 
 properly never till then. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
196 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August 2jtll, 
 / To whom, then, is this wealth of 
 
 England wealth? Who is it that it 
 blesses; makes happier, wiser, beauti- 
 fuller, in any way better? Who has got 
 hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for 
 him, like a true servant, not like a false 
 mock-servant ; to do him any real ser- 
 vice whatsoever? As yet no one. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 August 26th. 
 There must be a veracity, a natural 
 spontaneity in forms. In the commonest 
 meeting of men, a person making, what 
 we call, ''set speeches," is not he an 
 offense? In the mere drawing-room, 
 whatsoever courtesies you see to be grim- 
 aces, prompted by no spontaneous reality 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 197 
 
 within, are a thing you wish to get away 
 from. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 August 2yth. 
 Produce ! Produce ! Were it but the 
 pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a Pro- 
 duct, produce it in God's name! 'Tis 
 the utmost that thou hast in thee; out 
 with it then. Up, up ! Whatsoever thy 
 hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole 
 might. Work while it is called To-day, 
 for the Night cometh wherein no man 
 can work. 
 
 Pasf and Present. 
 
 August 28th. 
 
 What then is this Thing, called La 
 
 Revolution, which, like an Angel of 
 
 Death, hangs over France, noyading, 
 
198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 fusillating, fighting, gun-boring, tanning 
 human skins ? La Revolution is but so 
 many Alphabetic Letters ; a thing no- 
 where to be laid hands on, to be clapt 
 under lock and key : where is it? what is 
 it? It is the Madness that dwells in the 
 hearts of men. In this man it is, and in 
 that man ; as a rage or as a terror, it is in 
 all men. Invisible, impalpable ; and yet 
 no black Azrael, with wings spread over 
 half a continent, with sword sweeping 
 from sea to sea, could be a truer Reality. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 August 2Qth. 
 
 The inventive genius of great England 
 
 will not forever sit patient with mere 
 
 wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps and 
 
 billy-rollers whirring in the head of it 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 199 
 
 The inventive genius of England is not 
 a Beaver's, or a Spinner's, or Spider's 
 genius : it is a Man's genius I hope, with 
 a God over him! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 / August ^oth. 
 
 And yet, I say, there is an irrepressi- 
 ble tendency in every man to develop 
 himself according to the magnitude 
 which Nature has made him of ; to speak 
 out, to act out, what Nature has laid in 
 him. This is proper, fit, inevitable ; nay, 
 it is a duty, and even the summary of 
 duties for a man. The meaning of life 
 here on earth might be defined as con- 
 sisting in this: To unfold your self, to 
 work what thing you have the faculty 
 for. It is a necessity for the human 
 being, the first law of our existence. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
20O BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August ^ist. 
 Who can hinder it ; who is there that 
 can clutch into the wheel-spokes of Des- 
 tiny, and say to the Spirit of Time : Turn 
 back, I command thee? — Wiser were it 
 that we yielded to the Inevitable and 
 Inexorable, and accounted even this the 
 best. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
September isf. 
 That the French Nation has believed, 
 for several years now, in the possibility, 
 nay certainty and near advent, of a uni- 
 versal Millenium, or reign of Freedom, 
 Equality, Fraternity, wherein man should 
 be the brother of man, and sorrow and 
 sin flee away? Not bread to eat, nor 
 soap to wash with ; and the reign of per- 
 fect Felicity ready to arrive, due always 
 since the Bastile fell! How did our 
 hearts burn within us, at the Feast of 
 Pikes, when brother flung himself on 
 brother's bosom; and in sunny jubilee, 
 Twenty- five millions burst forth into 
 sound and cannon-smoke! Bright was 
 our Hope then, as sunlight; red-angry 
 is our Flope grown now, as consuming 
 
204 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 fire. But, O Heavens, what enchant- 
 ment is it, or devehsh legerdemain, of 
 such effect, that Perfect FeHcity, always 
 within arm's length could never be laid 
 hold of, but only in her stead Contro- 
 versy and Scarcity ? This set of traitors 
 after that set I Tremble, ye traitors; 
 dread a People which calls itself patient, 
 long-suffering; but which cannot always 
 submit to have its pocket picked, in this 
 way, — of a Millenium ! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 September 2d. 
 How a man, of some wide thing that 
 he has witnessed, will construct a narra- 
 tive, what kind of picture and delineation 
 he will give of it, — is the best measure 
 you could get of what intellect is in the 
 man. Which circumstance is vital and 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 205 
 
 shall stand prominent; which unessen- 
 tial, fit to be suppressed; where is the 
 true beginning, the true sequence and 
 ending? To find out this you task the 
 whole force of insight that is in the man. 
 He must understand the thing; accord- 
 ing to the depth of his understanding, 
 will the fitness of his answer be. You 
 will try him so. Does like join itself to 
 like ; the spirit of method stir in that con- 
 fusion, so that its embroilment becomes 
 order? Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let 
 there be light ; and out of chaos make a 
 world? Precisely as there is light in 
 himself, will he accomplish this. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 September ^d. 
 Our Wilderness is the Wide World 
 in an Atheistic Century ; our Forty Days 
 
2o6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 are long years of suffering and fasting: 
 nevertheless, to these also comes an end. 
 Yes, to me also was given, if not the Vic 
 tory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and 
 the resolve to persevere therein while 
 life or faculty is left. To me. also, en- 
 tangled in the enchanted forests, demon- 
 peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, 
 it was given, after weariest wanderings, 
 to work out my way into the higher sun- 
 lit slopes — of that Mountain which has 
 no summit, or whose summit is in 
 Heaven only ! 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September 4th. 
 
 Hast thou looked on the Potter's 
 wheel, — one of the venerablest objects; 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 207 
 
 old as the Prophet Ezechiel and far older? 
 Rude lumps of clay,how they spin them- 
 selves up, by mere quick whirling, into 
 beautiful circular dishes. And fancy 
 the most assiduous Potter, but without 
 his wheel ; reduced to making dishes, or 
 rather amorphous botches, by mere 
 kneading and baking! Even such a 
 Potter were Destiny, with a human soul 
 that would rest and lie at ease, that would 
 not work and spin! Of an idle unre- 
 volving man the kindest Destiny, like the 
 most assiduous Potter without wheel, 
 can bake and knead nothing other than 
 a botch; let her spend on him what ex- 
 pensive colouring, what gilding and 
 enamelling she will, he is but a botch. 
 Not a dish; not a bulging, kneaded, 
 crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, 
 
2o8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 amorphous botch, — a mere enamelled 
 vessel of dishonour ! Let the idle think 
 of this. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 September ^th. 
 Alas then, is man's civilization only a 
 wrappage, through which the savage 
 nature of him can still burst, infernal as 
 ever ? Nature still makes him ; and has 
 an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 September 6th. 
 But that an Infinite of Practical Im- 
 portance, speaking with strict arithmeti- 
 cal exactness, an Infinite, has vanished 
 or can vanish from the Life of any Man: 
 this thou shalt not believe! O brother, 
 the Infinite of Terror, of Hope, of Pity, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 209 
 
 did it not at any moment disclose itself 
 to thee, indubitable, unnameable ? Came 
 it never, like the gleam of pretermitural 
 eternal Oceans, like the voice of old 
 Eternities, farsounding through thy heart 
 of hearts? Never? Alas, it was not 
 thy Liberalism then ; it was thy Animal- 
 ism ! The Infinite is most sure than any 
 other fact. 
 
 Pasf and Present. 
 
 September yth. 
 It is not because of his toils that I 
 lament for the poor: we must all toil, 
 or steal (howsoever we name our steal- 
 ing), which is worse; no faithful work- 
 man finds his task a pastime. The poor 
 is hungry and athirst; but for him also 
 there is food and drink : he is heavy-laden 
 and weary ; but for him also the Heavens 
 
2IO BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 send Sleep, and of the deepest ; in his 
 smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest 
 envelops him. and fitful glitterings of 
 cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do 
 mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul 
 should go out ; that no ray of heavenly, 
 or even of earthly knowledge, should 
 visit him ; but, only in the haggard dark- 
 ness, like two spectres, Fear and Indig- 
 nation. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September 8th. 
 These old St. Edmundsbury walls, I 
 say, were not peopled with fantasms ; but 
 with men of flesh and blood, made alto- 
 gether as we are. Had thou and I then 
 been, who knows but we ourselves had 
 taken refuge from an evil Time, and fled 
 to dwell here, and meditate on an Eter- 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 211 
 
 nity, in such fashion as we could ? Alas, 
 how like an old osseous fragment, a 
 broken blackened shin-bone of the old 
 dead Ages, this black ruin looks out, not 
 yet covered by the soil ; still indicating 
 what a once gigantic Life lies buried 
 there ! It is dead now, and dumb ; but 
 was alive once, and spake. For twenty 
 generations, here was the earthly arena 
 where painful living men worked out 
 their life-wrestle, — looked at by Earth, 
 by Heaven and Hell. Bells tolled to 
 prayers; and men, of many humours, 
 various thoughts, chanted vespers, ma- 
 tins ; — and round the little islet of their 
 life rolled forever (as round ours still 
 rolls, though we are blind and deaf) the 
 illimitable Ocean, tinting all things with 
 its eternal hues and reflexes; making 
 
212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 strange prophetic music! How silent 
 now ; all departed, clean gone. The 
 World-Dramaturgist has written: Ex- 
 eunt. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 September gtJi. 
 So many centuries, say only from 
 Hugh Capet downwards, had been add- 
 ing together, century transmitting it with 
 increase to century, the sum of Wicked- 
 ness, of Falsehood, Oppression of man 
 by man. Kings were sinners, and Priests 
 were, and People. Open-Scoundrels 
 rode triumphant, bediademed, becoro- 
 netted, bemitred ; or the still fataller 
 species of Secret-Scoundrels, in their 
 fair-sounding formulas, speciosities, re- 
 spectabilities, hollow within : the race of 
 Quacks was grown many as the sands of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 213 
 
 the sea. Till at length such a sum of 
 Quackery had accumulated itself as, in 
 brief, the Earth and the Heavens were 
 weary of Slow seemed the Day of 
 Settlement : coming on, all imperceptible, 
 across the bluster and fanfaronade of 
 Courtierisms, Conquering - Heroisms, 
 Most-Christian Grand Monarque-isms, 
 Well-beloved Pompadourisms : yet be- 
 hold it was always coming; behold it 
 has come, suddenly, unlooked for by any 
 man ! The harvest of long centuries was 
 ripening and whitening so rapidly of 
 late; and now it is grown white, and is 
 reaped rapidly, as it were, in one day. 
 Reaped in this Reign of Terror; and 
 carried home, to Hades and the Pit! — 
 Unhappy Sons of Adam : it is ever so ; 
 and never do they know it, nor will they 
 
214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 know it. With clieerfully smoothed 
 countenances, day after day, and genera- 
 tion after generation, they, calHng cheer- 
 fully to one another, *'Well-speed-ye," 
 are at work, soianng the wind. And yet, 
 as God Hves, they shall reap the zvhirl- 
 wind: no other thing, we say, is possible, 
 — since God is Truth and His World is 
 a Truth. 
 
 French devolution. 
 
 September loth. 
 Happily no bygone German, or man, 
 rises again ; thus the Present is not need- 
 lessly trammelled with the Past ; and only 
 grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots 
 are not intertangled with its branches, 
 but lie peaceably under ground. Nay, 
 it is very mournful, yet not useless, to 
 see and know, how the Greatest and 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 215 
 
 Dearest, in a short while, would find his 
 place quite filled up here, and no room 
 for him: the very Napoleon, the very 
 Byron, in some seven years, has become 
 obsolete, and were now a foreigner to 
 his Europe. Thus is the Law of Prog- 
 ress secured; and in Clothes, as in all 
 other external things whatsoever, no 
 fashion will continue. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September nth. 
 The craftsman there, the smith with 
 that metal of his, with these tools, with 
 these cunning methods, — how little of 
 all he does is properly his work! All 
 past inventive men work with him: — as 
 indeed with all of us, in all things. 
 Dante is the spokesman of the Middle 
 Ages ; the Thought they lived by stands 
 
2i6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 here, in everlasting music. These sub- 
 lime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, 
 are the fruit of the Christian Meditation 
 of all the good men who had gone 
 before him. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 September 12th. 
 Sublimer in this world know I nothing 
 than a Peasant Saint, could such now 
 any where be met with. Such a one will 
 take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou 
 wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring 
 forth from the humblest depths of Earth, 
 like a light shining in great darkness. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September i^th. 
 
 A man m no case has liberty to tell lies 
 It had been, in the long run, better for 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 217 
 
 Napoleon too if he had not told any. In 
 fact, if a man have any purpose reaching 
 beyond the hour and day, meant to be 
 found extant next day, what good can it 
 ever be to promulgate lies ? The lies are 
 found out ; ruinous penalty is exacted for 
 them. No man will believe the liar next 
 time even when he speaks truth, when 
 it is of the last importance that he be 
 believed. The old cry of wolf!— A lie 
 is wo-thing ; you cannot of nothing make 
 something; you make nothing at last 
 and lose your labour into the bargain. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 September 14th. 
 
 But how is it then with that Vengeur 
 Ship, she neither strikes nor makes off? 
 
218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 She is lamed, she cannot make off ; strike 
 she will not. Fire rakes her fore and 
 aft, from victorious enemies ; the Ven- 
 geur is sinking. Strong are ye, Tyrants 
 of the Sea ; yet we also, are we weak ? 
 Lo ! all flags, steamers, jacks, every rag 
 of tricolor that will yet run on rope, fly 
 rustling aloft : the whole crew crowds to 
 the upper deck ; and, with universal soul- 
 maddening yell, shouts Vive la R^pub- 
 lique, — sinking, sinking. She staggers, 
 she lurches, her last drunk whirl ; Ocean 
 yawms abysmal : down rushes the Veii- 
 guer, carrying Vive la Rcpiiblique along 
 with her, unconquerable into Eternity! 
 Let foreign Despots think of that. There 
 is an Unconquerable in man, when he 
 stands on his Rights of Man : let Despots 
 and Slaves and all people know this, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 219 
 
 and only them that stand on the Wrongs 
 of Man tremble to know it. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 September 15th 
 To shape the whole future is not our 
 problem ; but only to shape faithfully a 
 small part of it, according to rules al- 
 ready known. It is perhaps possible for 
 each of us, who will with due earnestness 
 inquire, to ascertain clearly what he, for 
 his own part, ought to do: this let him, 
 with true heart, do, and continue doing. 
 The general issue will, as it has always 
 done, rest well with a Higher Intelli- 
 gence than ours. 
 
 Pasi and Present. 
 
 September 16th. 
 Hast thou ever meditated on that word 
 Tradition : how we inherit not Life only. 
 
220 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 but all the garniture and form of Life; 
 and work, and speak, and even think and 
 feel, as our Fathers, and primeval grand- 
 fathers, from the beginning have given 
 it us? 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September lyth. 
 They were Poets too, that devised all 
 those graceful courtesies which make 
 life noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood 
 or grimace ; it need not be such. And 
 Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are 
 still possible; nay still inevitable. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 September i8th. 
 Hast thou not Greek enough to imder- 
 stand thus much : The end of Man is in 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 221 
 
 Action, and not a Thought, though it 
 were the noblest? 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September i^th. 
 But our work, — behold that is not 
 abolished, that has not vanished: our 
 work, behold, it remains, or the want of 
 it remains ; — for endless Times and Eter- 
 nities, remains ; and that is now the sole 
 question with us forevermore ! Brief 
 brawling Day, with its noisy phantasms, 
 its poor paper-crowns tinsel-gilt, is gone ; 
 and divine everlasting Night, with her 
 star-diadems, with her silences and her 
 veracities, is come! What hast thou 
 done, and how? Happiness, Unhappi- 
 ness: all that was but the wages thou 
 hadst ; thou hast spent all that, in sustain- 
 
222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ing thyself hitherward ; not a coin of it 
 remains with thee, it is all spent, eaten : 
 and now thy work, where is thy work? 
 Swift, out with it, let us see thy work! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 September 20th. 
 
 For a man, once committed headlong 
 to republican or any other Transcenden- 
 talism, and fighting and fanaticising 
 amid a Nation of his like, becomes as it 
 were enveloped in an ambient atmosphere 
 of Transcendentalism and Delirium: his 
 individual self is lost in something that 
 is not himself, but foreign though in- 
 separable from him. Strange to think 
 of, the man's cloak still seems to hold the 
 same man : and yet the man is not there. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 223 
 
 his volition is not there ; nor the source 
 of what he will do and devise ; instead of 
 the man and his volition there is a piece 
 of Fanaticism and Fatalism incarnated 
 in the shape of him. He, the hapless 
 incarnated Fanaticism, goes his road ; no 
 man can help him, he himself least of all. 
 It is a wonderful tragical predicament; 
 — such as human language, unused to 
 deal with these things, being contrived 
 for the uses of common life, struggles 
 to shadow out in figures. The ambient 
 element of material fire is not wilder 
 than this of Fanaticism ; nor, though 
 visible to the eye, is it more real. Voli- 
 tion bursts forth involuntarily — volun- 
 tary; rapt along; the movement of free 
 human minds becomes a raging tornado 
 of fatalism, blind as the winds; and 
 
224 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Mountain and Gironde, when they re- 
 cover themselves, are ahke astounded to 
 see where it has flung and dropped them. 
 To such height of miracle can men work 
 on men ; the Conscious and the Uncon- 
 scious blended inscrutably in this our 
 inscrutable Life ; endless Necessity en- 
 vironing Freewill ! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 September 21st. 
 Wheresoever Disorder may stand or 
 lie, let It have a care ; here is the man 
 that has declared war with it, that never 
 will make peace with it. Man is the 
 Missionary of Order; he is the servant 
 not of the Devil and Chaos, but of God 
 and the Universe! Let all sluggards 
 and cowards, remiss, false-spoken, un- 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 225 
 
 just, and otherwise diabolic persons have 
 a care : this is a dangerous man for them. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 September 22d. 
 Beautiful it is to understand and know 
 that a Thought did never yet die ; that as 
 thou, the originator thereof, has gathered 
 it and created it from the whole Past, 
 so thou wilt transmit it to the whole 
 Future. It is thus that the heroic Heart, 
 the seeing Eye of the first times, still 
 feels and sees in us of the latest; that 
 the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, 
 and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of 
 witnesses and brothers ; and there is a 
 living, literal Coinmunion of Saints, wide 
 as the World itself, and as the History 
 of the World. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
226 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September 2jd. 
 
 The Reformation might bring what 
 results it liked when it came, but the 
 Reformation simply could not help com- 
 ing. To all Popes and Popes' advocates, 
 expostulating, lamenting and accusing, 
 the answer of the world is : Once for all, 
 your Popehood has become untrue. No 
 matter how good it was, how good you 
 say it is, we cannot believe it ; the light 
 of our whole mind, given us to walk by 
 from Heaven above, finds it henceforth 
 a thing unbelievable. We will not be- 
 lieve it, we will not try to believe it, — we 
 dare not ! The thing is untrue; we were 
 traitors against the Giver of all Truth, 
 "if we durst pretend to think it true. 
 Away with it; let whatsoever likes come 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 227 
 
 in the place of it : with it we can have no 
 farther trade ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 September 24th. 
 Man is a Tool-using Animal (Han- 
 thierendes Thier). Weak in himself, and 
 of small stature, he stands on a basis, at 
 most for the flattest-soled, of some half- 
 square foot, insecurely enough; has to 
 straddle out his legs, lest the very wind 
 supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds ! Three 
 quintals are a crushing load for him; 
 the Steer of the meadows tosses him 
 aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he 
 can use Tools, can devise Tools: with 
 these the granite mountain melts into 
 light dust before him ; he kneads glowing 
 iron, as if it were soft paste ; seas are his 
 smooth highway, winds and fire his un- 
 
22S BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 wearying steeds. Nowhere do you find 
 him without Tools ; without Tools he is 
 nothing, with Tools he is all. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September 2^th. 
 Yes, Reader, here is the miracle. Out 
 of that putrescent rubbish of Scepticism, 
 Sensualism, Sentimentalism, hollow 
 Machiavelism, such a Faith has verily 
 risen ; flaming in the heart of a People. 
 A whole People, awakening as it were 
 to consciousness in deep misery, believes 
 that it is within reach of a Fraternal 
 Heaven-on-Earth. With longing arms, 
 it struggles to embrace the Unspeakable ; 
 cannot embrace it, owing to certain 
 causes. — Seldom do we find that a whole 
 People can be said to have any Faith at 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 229 
 
 all; except in things which it can eat 
 and handle. Whensoever it gets any 
 Faith, its history becomes spirit-stirring, 
 note-worthy. But since the time when 
 steel Europe shook itself simultaneously, 
 at the word of Hermit Peter, and rushed 
 toward the Sepulchre where God had 
 lain, there was no universal impulse of 
 Faith that one could note. Since Protest- 
 antism went silent, no Luther's voice, 
 no Zisca's drum any longer proclaiming 
 that God's Truth was not the Devil's 
 Lie; and the last of the Cameronians 
 (Renwick was the name of him; honour 
 to the name of the brave!) sank, shot, 
 on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, there 
 was no partial impulse of Faith among 
 Nations. 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September 26th. 
 Great men are the inspired (speaking 
 and acting) Texts of that divine Book 
 OF Revelations, whereof a Chapter is 
 completed from epoch to epoch, and by 
 some named History ; to which inspired 
 Texts your numerous talented men, and 
 your innumerable untalented men, are 
 the better or worse exegetic Comment- 
 aries, and wagon-load of too-stupid, 
 heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. 
 For my study, the inspired Texts them- 
 selves ! 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September 2/th. 
 
 On the whole, who knows how to 
 
 reverence the Body of a Man? It is the 
 
 most reverend phenomenon under this 
 
 Sun. For the Highest God dwells visible 
 
FROM THOMA S CARL YLE 231 
 
 in that mystic unfathomable Visibility, 
 which calls itself "I" on the Earth. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 September 28th. 
 Paganism we recognized as a veracious 
 expression of the earnest awe-struck 
 feeling of man towards the Universe; 
 veracious, true once, and still not with- 
 out worth for us. But mark here the 
 difference of Paganism and Christian- 
 ism; one great difference. Paganism 
 emblemed chiefly the Operations of 
 Nature; the destinies, efforts, combina- 
 tions, vicissitudes of things and men in 
 this world; Christianism emblemed the 
 Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law of 
 Man. One was for the sensuous nature ; 
 a rude helpless utterance of the first 
 Thought of men, — the chief recognised 
 
232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. 
 The other was not for the sensuous 
 nature, but for the moral. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 September 2pth. 
 Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief 
 in yourself. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 September joth. 
 Of hearts made by the Almighty God 
 I will not believe such a thing. Deep- 
 hidden under wretchedest god-forget- 
 ting Cants, Epicurisms, Dead-Sea Ap- 
 isms ; forgotten as under foulest fat 
 Lethe mud and weeds, there is yet, in 
 all hearts born into this God's-World, 
 a spark of the Godlike slumbering. 
 Awake, O nightmare sleepers; awake, 
 arise, or be forever fallen ! 
 
 J'ast and Present. 
 
OCTOBER 
 
October isf. 
 
 All that is without us will change 
 while we think not of it ; much even that 
 is within us. The truth that was yester- 
 day a restless Problem, has to-day grown 
 a Belief burning to be uttered: on the 
 morrow, contradiction has exasperated 
 it into mad Fanaticism; obstruction has 
 dulled it into sick Inertness ; it is sinking 
 towards silence, of satisfaction or of 
 resignation. To-day is not Yesterday, 
 for man or for thing. Yesterday there 
 was the oath of Love ; to-day has come 
 the curse of Hate. Not willingly: ah, 
 no; but it could not help coming. The 
 golden radiance of youth, would it will- 
 ingly have tarnished itself into the dim- 
 
236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ness of old age? — Fearful : how we stand 
 enveloped, deep-sunk, in that Mystery of 
 Time; and are Sons of Time; fashioned 
 and woven out of Time ; and on us, and 
 on all that we have, or see, or do, is 
 written : Rest not, Continue not, For- 
 ward to thy doom ! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 October 2d. 
 There must be something wrong. A 
 full formed Horse will, in any market, 
 bring from twenty to as high as two 
 hundred Friederichs d'or : such is his 
 worth to the world. A full formed Man 
 is not only worth nothing to the world, 
 but the world could afford him a round 
 sum would he simply engage to go and 
 hang himself. Nevertheless, which of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 237 
 
 the two was the more cunningly-devised 
 article, even as an Engine? 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October ^d. 
 You have heard of St. Chrysostom's 
 celebrated saying in reference to the 
 Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible 
 Revelation of God, among the Hebrews : 
 "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it 
 is even so: this is no vain phrase; it is 
 veritably so. The essence of our being, 
 the mystery in us that calls itself "I," — 
 ah, what words have we for such things ? 
 — is a breath of Heaven; the Highest 
 Being reveals himself in man. This 
 body, these faculties, this life of ours, is 
 it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed ? 
 'There is but one temple in the Uni- 
 
238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 verse," says the devout Novalis, "and 
 that is the Body of Man. Nothing is 
 hoHer than that high form. Bending 
 before men is a reverence done to this 
 Revelation in the Flesh. We touch 
 Heaven when we lay our hand on a hu- 
 man body !" This sounds much like a 
 mere flourish of rhetoric ; but it is not so. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 October 4th. 
 Brother, this Planet, I find, is but an 
 inconsiderable sandgrain in the conti- 
 nents of Being: this Planet's poor tem- 
 porary interests, thy interests and my m- 
 terests there, when I look fixedly into 
 that eternal Light-Sea and Flame-Sea 
 with its eternal interests, dwindle literally 
 into nothing; my speech of it is — silence 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 239 
 
 for the while. I will as soon think of 
 making Galaxies and Star-Systems to 
 guide little herring-vessels by, as of 
 preaching Religion that the Constable 
 may continue possible. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October ^th. 
 
 Ach Gott, when I gazed into these 
 Stars, have they not looked down on me 
 as if with pity, from their serene spaces ; 
 like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears 
 over the little lot of man! Thousands 
 of human generations, all as noisy as our 
 own, have been swallowed up of Time, 
 and there remains no wreck of them any 
 more; and Arcturus and Orion and 
 Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining 
 
240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 in their courses, clear and young, as 
 when the Shepherd first noted them in 
 the plain of Shinar. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October 6th. 
 What an umpire Nature is; what a 
 greatness, composure of depth and 
 tolerance there is in her. You take 
 wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom : 
 your wheat may be mixed with chafif, 
 chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and 
 all imaginable rubbish ; no matter : you 
 cast it into the kind just Earth; she 
 grows the wheat, — the whole rubbish she 
 silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says 
 nothing of the rubbish. The yellow 
 wheat is growing there ; the good Earth 
 is silent about all the rest, — has silently 
 turned all the rest to some benefit too, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 241 
 
 and makes no complaint about it! So 
 everywhere in Nature ! She is true and 
 not a He; and yet so great, and just, and 
 motherly in her truth. She requires of 
 a thing only that it he genuine of heart ; 
 she will protect it if so; will not, if not 
 so. There is a soul of truth in all the 
 things she ever gave harbour to. Alas, 
 is not this the history of all highest 
 Truth that comes or ever came into the 
 world? The hody of them all is im- 
 perfection, an element of light in dark- 
 ness : to us they have to come embodied 
 in mere Logic, in some merely scientific 
 Theorem of the Universe; which cannot 
 be complete; which cannot but be found 
 one day incomplete, erroneous^ and so 
 die and disappear. The body of all 
 Truth dies ; and yet in all, I say, there is 
 
242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 a soul which never dies ; which in new 
 and ever-nobler embodiment lives im- 
 mortal as man himself! It is the way 
 with Nature. The genuine essence of 
 Truth never dies. That it be genuine, a 
 voice from the great Deep of Nature, 
 there is the point at Nature's judgment- 
 seat. What zve call pure or impure, is 
 not with her the final question. Not 
 how much chaff is in you : but whether 
 you have any wheat. Pure ! I might say 
 to many a man : Yes, you arc pure ; pure 
 enough; but you are chaff, — insincere 
 hypothesis, hearsay, formality ; you never 
 were in contact with the great heart of 
 the Universe at all ; you are properly 
 neither pure or impure; you are 
 nothing. Nature has no business with 
 you. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 243 
 
 October yth. 
 Very frightful it is when a Nation, 
 rendering asunder its Constitutions and 
 Regulations which were grown dead 
 cerements for it, becomes fmw^cendental ; 
 and must now seek its wild way through 
 the New, Chaotic, — where Force is not 
 yet distinguished into Bidden and For- 
 bidden, but Crime and Virtue welter un- 
 separated, — in that domain of what is 
 called the Passions ; of v/hat we call the 
 Miracles and the Portents ! It is thus 
 that, for some three years to come, we 
 are to contemplate France, in this final 
 Third Volume of our History. Sans- 
 cullotism reigning in all its grandeur 
 and in all its hideousness: the Gospel 
 (God's -Message) of Man's Rights, 
 Man's mights or strengths, once more 
 
244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 preached irrefragably abroad ; along with 
 this, and still louder for the time, the 
 fearfullest Devil's-Message of Man's 
 weaknesses and sins ; — and all on such a 
 scale and under such aspect : cloudy 
 ''death-birth of a world ;" huge smoke- 
 cloud, streaked with rays as of heaven 
 on one side; girt on the other as with 
 hell-fire ! History tells us many things : 
 but for the last thousand years and more, 
 what thing has she told us of a sort like 
 this? 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 October 8th. 
 For there is a perennial nobleness, 
 and even sacredness, in Work. Were 
 he never so benighted, forgetful of his 
 high calling, there is always hope in a 
 man that actually and earnestly works: 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 245 
 
 in Idleness alone is there perpetual des- 
 pair. Work, never so Mammonish, 
 mean, is in communication with Nature ; 
 the real desire to get Work done will 
 itself lead one more and more to truth, 
 to Nature's appointments and regula- 
 tions, which are truth. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October pth. 
 
 How beautiful to die of broken- heart, 
 on Paper ! Quite another thing in Prac- 
 tice ; every window of your Feelmg, even 
 of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed 
 and mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray 
 can enter ; a whole Drug-shop in your 
 inwards : the foredone soul drowning 
 slowly in quagmires of Disgust ! 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
246 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October loth. 
 How true, for example, is that other 
 old Fable of the Sphinx, who sat by the 
 wayside, propounding her riddle to the 
 passengers, which if they could not 
 answer she destroyed them ! Such a 
 Sphinx is this Life of ours, to all men 
 and societies of men. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October nth. 
 To me nothing seems more natural 
 than that the Son of Man, when such 
 God-given mandate first prophetically 
 stirs within him, and the Clay must now 
 be vanquished or vanquish, — should be 
 carried of the spirit into grim Solitudes, 
 and there fronting the Tempter do 
 grimmest battle with him ; defiantly 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 247 
 
 settting him at nought, till he yield and 
 fly. Name it as we choose : with or with- 
 out visible Devil, whether in the natural 
 Desert of rocks and sands, or in the 
 populous moral Desert of selfishness and 
 baseness,— to such Temptation are we 
 all called. Unhappy if we are not ! 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October 12th. 
 I admire a Nation which fancies it 
 will die if it do not undersell all other 
 Nations, to the end of the world. 
 Brothers, we will cease to unders&W 
 them; we will be content to equal-s^W 
 them ; to be happy selling equally with 
 them! I do not see the use of under- 
 selling them. Cotton-cloth is already 
 two-pence a yard or lower ; and yet bare 
 
248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 backs were nevermore numerous among 
 us. Let inventive men cease to spend 
 their existence incessantly contriving 
 how cotton can be made cheaper ; and try 
 to invent, a little, how cotton at its 
 present cheapness could be somewhat 
 justlier divided among us ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October 13th. 
 For it is false altogether what the last 
 Sceptical Century taught us, that this 
 world is a steam-engine. There is a^ 
 God in this world ; and a God-sanction, 
 or else the violation of such, does look 
 out from all ruling and obedience, from 
 all moral acts of men. There is no act 
 more moral between men than that of 
 rule and obedience. Woe to him that 
 claims obedience when it is not due ; woe 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL VLB i a 9 
 
 to him that refuses it when it is ! God's 
 laws is in that, I say, however the Parch- 
 ment-laws may run: there is a Divine 
 Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the 
 heart of every claim that one man makes 
 upon another. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship 
 
 October 14th. 
 Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest 
 Runner to escape "from his own 
 Shadow." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October 15th. 
 Let inventive men consider, Whether 
 the Secret of this Universe, and of Man's 
 Life there, does, after all, as we rashly 
 fancy it, consist in making money? 
 There is one God, just, supreme, al- 
 
250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 mighty : but is Mammon the name of 
 him? — With a Hell which means "Fail- 
 ing to make money," I do not think there 
 is any Heaven possible that would suit 
 one well ; nor so much as an Earth that 
 can be habitable long ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October i6th. 
 So has it been from the beginning, so 
 will it be to the end. Generation after 
 generation takes to itself the Form of a 
 Body ; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian 
 Night, on Heaven's mission appears. 
 What Force and Fire is in each he ex- 
 pends : one grinding in the mill of Indus- 
 try ; one hunter-like climbing the giddy 
 Alpine heights of Science; one madly 
 dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, 
 in war with his fellow: — and then the 
 
FROM THOMA S CARLYLE 251 
 
 Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly Ves- 
 ture falls away, and vSoon even to Sense 
 becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like 
 some wild-flaming, wild-thundering* train 
 of Heaven's Artillery, does this mys- 
 terious Mankind thunder and flame, in 
 long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, 
 through the unknown Deep. Thus, like 
 a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, 
 we emerge from the Inane ; haste storm- 
 fully across the astonished Earth; then 
 plunge again into the Inane. Earth's 
 mountains are levelled, and her seas filled 
 up, in our passage : can the Earth, which 
 is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits 
 which have reality and are alive? On 
 the hardest adamant some foot-print of 
 us is stamped in ; the last Rear of the host 
 will read traces of the earliest Van. But 
 
252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 whence? — O Heaven, whither? Sense 
 knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it 
 is through Mystery to Mystery, from 
 God and to God. 
 
 Sartor Resartus 
 
 October lyth. 
 For example, you Bobus Higgins, 
 Sausage-maker on the great scale, who 
 are raising such a clamour for this Aris- 
 tocracy of Talent, what is it that you do, 
 in that big heart of yours, chiefly in very 
 fact pay reverence to? Is it to talent, 
 intrinsic manly worth of any kind you 
 unfortunate Bobus? The manliest man 
 that you saw going in a ragged coat, did 
 you ever reverence him ? did you so much 
 as know that he was a manly man at all, 
 till his coat grew better? Talent! 1 
 understand you to be able to worship the 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 253 
 
 fame of talent, the power, cash, celebrity 
 or other success of talent ; but the talent 
 itself is a thing you never saw with eyes. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October i8th. 
 Great men are not ambitious in that 
 sense ; he is a small poor man that is 
 ambitious so. Examine the man who lives 
 in misery because he does not shine above 
 other men ; who goes about producing 
 himself, pruriently anxious about his 
 gifts and claims ; struggling to force 
 everybody, as it were begging everybody 
 for God's sake, to acknowledge him a 
 great man, and set him over the heads of 
 men! Such a creature is among the 
 wretchedest sights seen under this sun. 
 A great man ! A poor morbid prurient 
 
254 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 empty man ; fitter for the ward of a hos- 
 pital, than for a throne among men. I 
 advise you to keep-out of his way. He 
 cannot walk on quiet paths ; unless you 
 will look at him, wonder at him, write 
 paragraphs about him, he cannot live. 
 It is the emptiness of the man, not his 
 greatness. Because there is a nothing 
 in himself, he hungers and thirsts that 
 you would find something m him. In 
 good truth, I believe no great man, not 
 so much as a genuine man who had 
 health and real substance in him of what- 
 ever magnitude, who was ever much tor- 
 mented in this way. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 October igth. 
 The ''wages" of every noble Work do 
 yet lie in Heaven or else Nowhere. Not 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 255 
 
 in Bank-of-England bills, in Owen's 
 Labour-Bank, or any the most improved 
 establishment of banking and money- 
 changing, needest thou, heroic soul, pre- 
 sent thy account of earnings. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October 20th. 
 
 Most true is it, as a wise man teaches 
 us, that ''Doubt of any sort cannot be re- 
 moved except by Action." On which 
 ground too let him who gropes painfully 
 in darkness or uncertain light, and prays 
 vehemently that the dawn may ripen into 
 day, lay this other precept well to heart, 
 which to me was of invaluable service: 
 ''Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,'' 
 which thou knowest to be a Duty. 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 
 
256 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 21st. 
 
 Venerable Justice herself began by 
 Wild-Justice; all Law is as a tamed 
 furrow-field, slowly worked out. and 
 rendered arable, from the waste jungle 
 of Club-Law. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October 22d. 
 How was it, then, that here, when 
 trembling to the core of his heart, he did 
 not sink into swoons, but rose into 
 strength, into fearlessness and clearness? 
 It was his guiding Genius {Damon) that 
 inspired him ; he must go forth and meet 
 his Destiny. Shew thyself now, whis- 
 pered it, or be for ever hid. Thus some- 
 times it is even when your anxiety be- 
 comes transcendental, that the soul first 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 257 
 
 feels herself able to transcend it ; that she 
 rises above it, in fiery victory ; and, borne 
 on new-found wings of victory, moves 
 so calmly, even because so rapidly, so 
 irresistibly. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October 2^d. 
 Very singular to look into it: how a 
 kind of order rises up in all conditions 
 of human existence; and wherever two 
 or three are gathered together, there are 
 found modes of existing together, habi- 
 tudes, observances, nay gracefulnesses, 
 joys ! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 October 24th. 
 It Is the Night of the World, and still 
 long till it be Day : we wander amid the 
 
258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun 
 and the Stars of Heaven are as blotted 
 out for a season ; and two immeasurable 
 Fantoms, Hypocrisy and Atheism, with 
 the Gowle, Sensuality, stalk abroad 
 over the Earth, and call it theirs : well at 
 ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence 
 is a shallow Dream. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October z^th. 
 
 How have we to regret not only that 
 men have no ''religion/' but that they 
 have next to no reflection ; and go about 
 with heads full of mere extraneous 
 noises, with eyes wide-open but vision- 
 less, — for most part, in the somnambulist 
 state ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 2 59 
 
 October 26th. 
 Such transitions are ever full of pain : 
 thus the Eagle when he moults is sickly ; 
 and, to attain his new beak, must harshly 
 dash off the old one upon rocks. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 October 2yth. 
 Or apart from all Transcendentalism, 
 is not a plain truth of sense, which the 
 duller mind can even consider as a 
 truism, that human things wholly are in 
 continual movement, and action and re- 
 action; working continually forward, 
 phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, 
 toward prescribed issues? How often 
 must we say, and yet not rightly lay to 
 heart: The seed that is sown^, it will 
 spring! Given the summer's blossom- 
 
26o BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ing, then there is also given the autumnal 
 withering : so is it ordered not with seed- 
 fields only, but with transactions, 
 arrangements, philosophies, societies, 
 French Revolutions, whatsoever man 
 works with in this lower world. The 
 Beginning holds in it the End, and all 
 that leads thereto ; as the acorn does the 
 oak and its fortunes. Solemn enough, 
 did we think of it, — which unhappily and 
 also happily we do not very much ! Thou 
 there canst begin ; the Beginning is for 
 thee, and there : but where, and of what 
 sort, and for whom will the end be? All 
 grows, and seeks and endures its des- 
 tinies : consider likewise how much 
 grows, as the trees do, whether we think 
 of it or not. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE i6i 
 
 October 28th. 
 Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, In- 
 dignation, Despair itself, all these like 
 helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the 
 poor dayworker, as of every man : but he 
 bends himself with free valour against 
 his task, and all these are stilled, all these 
 shrink murmuring far off into their 
 caves. The man is now a man. The 
 blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not 
 as purifying fire, wherein all poison is 
 burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there 
 is made bright blessed flame? 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 October 2pth. 
 
 Small men, most active, useful, are to 
 
 be seen everywhere, whose whole activity 
 
 depends on some conviction which to you 
 
 is palpably a limited one, imperfect, what 
 
262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 we call an error. But would it be a 
 kindness always, is it a duty always or 
 often, to disturb them in that? Many a 
 man, doing loud work in the world, 
 stands only on some thin traditionality, 
 conventionality ; to him indubitable, to 
 you incredible : break that beneath him, 
 he sinks to endless depths! ''I might 
 hav^e my hand full of truth," said Fon- 
 tenelle, "and yet open only my little 
 finger." 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 October joth. 
 How true that there is nothing dead 
 in this Universe ; that what we call dead 
 is only changed, its forces working in 
 inverse order ! *'The leaf that lies 
 rotting in moist winds," says one, "has 
 still force; else how could it rotf" Our 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 263 
 
 whole Universe is but an infinite Com- 
 plex of Forces ; thousandfold, from 
 Gravitation up to Thought and Will; 
 man's Freedom environed with Necessity 
 of Nature: in all which nothing at any 
 moment slumbers, but all is for ever 
 awake and busy. The thing that lies 
 isolated, inactive thou shalt nowhere 
 discover; seek every where from the 
 granite mountain, slow-mouldering since 
 Creation, to the passing cloud-vapour, 
 to the living man; to the action, to 
 the spoken word of man. The word 
 that is spoken, as we know, flies-irrevo- 
 cable : not less, but more, the action that 
 is done. "The gods themselves," sings 
 Pindar, "cannot annihilate the action that 
 is done." No: this once done, is done 
 always; cast forth into endless Time; 
 
264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and, long conspicuous, or soon hidden, 
 must verily work and grow for ever 
 there, an indestructible new element in 
 the Infinite of Things. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 October ^ist. 
 
 Creation, says one, lies before us, like 
 a glorious Rainbow ; but the Sun that 
 made it lies behind us, hidden from us. 
 Then, in that strange Dream, how we 
 clutch at shadows as if they were sub- 
 stances ; and sleep deepest while fancy- 
 ing ourselves most awake ! Which of 
 your Philosophical Systems is other than 
 a dream-theorem ; a net quotient, confi- 
 dently given out, where divisor and divi- 
 dend are both unknown? 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
November ist. 
 Sansculottism verily was alive, a New- 
 Birth of Time; nay it still lives, and is 
 not dead, but changed. The soul of it 
 still lives; still works far and wide, 
 through one bodily shape into another 
 less amorphous, as is the way of cunning 
 Time with his New-Births : — till, in some 
 perfected shape, it embrace the whole 
 circuit of the world ! For the wise man 
 may now everywhere discern that he 
 must found on his manhood, not on the 
 garnitures of his manhood. He who, 
 in these Epochs of our Europe, founds 
 on garnitures, formulas, culottisms of 
 what sort soever, is founding on an old 
 cloth and sheep-skin, and cannot endure. 
 But as for the body of Sansculottism, 
 
268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that is dead and buried, — and, one hopes, 
 need not reappear, in primary amorphous 
 shape, for another thousand years ! 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
 Novetnher 2d. 
 The manner of men's Hero-worship, 
 verily it is the innermost fact of their 
 existence, and determines all the rest, — 
 at public hustings, in private drawing- 
 rooms, in church, in market, and wher- 
 ever else. Have true reverence, and 
 what indeed is inseparable therefrom, 
 leverence the right man, all is well ; have 
 sham-reverence, and what also follows, 
 greet with it the wrong man, then all 
 is ill, and there is nothing well. Alas, 
 if Hero-worship become Dilettantism, 
 and all except !Mammonism be a vain 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 269 
 
 grimace, how much, in this most earnest 
 Earth, has ever and is evermore going 
 to fatal destruction, and lies wasting in 
 quiet lazy ruin, no man regarding it ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 'November jd. 
 
 The man who cannot wonder, who 
 does not habitually wonder (and wor- 
 ship), were he President of innumerable 
 Royal Societies, and carried the whole 
 M^canique Gleste and Hegeles Philos- 
 ophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories 
 and Observatories with their results, in 
 his single head,— is but a Pair of Spec- 
 tacles behind which there is no Eye. Let 
 those who have Eyes look through him, 
 then he may be useful. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
2 70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November 4th. 
 
 Looking round on the noisy inanity 
 of the world, words with Httle meaning, 
 actions with Httle worth, one loves to 
 reflect on the great Empire of Silence. 
 The noble silent men, scattered here and 
 there, each in his department ; silently 
 thinking, silently working ; whom no 
 Morning Newspaper makes mention of! 
 They are the salt of the Earth. A 
 country that has none or few of these is 
 in a bad way. Like a forest which has 
 no roots; which had all turned into leaves 
 and boughs ; — which must soon wither 
 and be no forest. Woe for us if we had 
 nothing but what we can shoiv, or speak. 
 Silence, the great Empire of Silence: 
 higher than the stars ; deeper than the 
 Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great; 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 271 
 
 all else is small.- — I hope we English will 
 long maintain our grand talent pour le 
 silence. Let others that cannot do with- 
 out standing on barrel-heads, to spout, 
 and be seen of all the market-place, culti- 
 vate speech exclusively, — become a most 
 green forest without roots? 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 'November ^th. 
 
 Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, 
 in those eyes where plays the lambent 
 fire of Kindness, or in those where rages 
 the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel 
 how thy own so quiet Soul is straight- 
 way involuntarily kindled with the like, 
 and ye blaze and reverberate on each 
 other, till it is all one limitless confluent 
 
272 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 flame (of embracing Love, or of deadly- 
 grappling Hate) ; and then say what 
 miraculous virtue goes out of man into 
 man. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 November 6th. 
 Or, indeed, what is this Infinite of 
 Things itself, which men name Universe, 
 but an action, a sum-total of Actions and 
 Activities ? The living ready-made sum- 
 total of these three, — which Calculation 
 cannot add, cannot bring on its tablets ; 
 yet the sum, we say, is written visible: 
 All that has been done, All that is doing, 
 All that will be done! Understand it 
 well, the Thing thou beholdest, that 
 Thing is an Action, the product and ex- 
 pression of exerted Force: the All of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 273 
 
 Things is an infinite conjugation of the 
 verb To do. Shoreless Fountain-Ocean 
 of Force, of power to do; wherein Force 
 rolls and circles, billowing, many- 
 streamed, harmonious; wide as Immen- 
 sity, deep as Eternity; beautiful and 
 terrible, not to be comprehended : this is 
 what man names Existence and Uni- 
 verse ; this thousand-tinted Flame-image, 
 at once veil and revelation, reflex such as 
 he, in his poor brain and heart, can paint, 
 of One Unnameable dwelling in inaccess- 
 ible light! From beyond the Star-gal- 
 axies, from before the Beginning of 
 Days, it billows and rolls, — round thee, 
 nay thyself art of it, in this point of 
 Space where thou now standest, in this 
 moment which thy clock measures. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
274 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November yth. 
 Subdue mutiny, discord, widespread 
 despair, by manfulness, justice, mercy 
 and wisdom. Chaos is dark, deep as 
 Hell ; let light be, and there is instead a 
 green flowery World. O, it is great, and 
 there is no other greatness. To make 
 some nook of God's Creation a little 
 fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God ; 
 to make some human hearts a little 
 wiser, manfuller, happier, — more blessed, 
 less accursed ! It is work fo^ a God. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 November 8th. 
 
 A just man will generally have better 
 
 cause than money in what shape soever, 
 
 before deciding to revolt against his 
 
 Government. He will say : "Take my 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 275 
 
 money, since you can, and it is so desir- 
 able to you ; take it — and take yourself 
 away with it ; and leave me alone to my 
 work here. / am still here; can still 
 work, after all the money you have 
 taken from me !" But if they come to 
 him and say, "Acknovv^ledge a Lie ; pre- 
 tend to say you are worshipping God, 
 when you are not doing it: believe not 
 the thing that you find true, but the thing 
 that I find, or pretend to find true !" He 
 will answer: ''No; by God's help, no! 
 You may take my purse; but I cannot 
 have my moral self annihilated. The 
 purse is any Highwayman's who might 
 meet me with a loaded pistol: but the 
 Self is mine and God my Maker's ; it is 
 not yours ; and I will resist you to the 
 death, and revolt against you, and, on the 
 
276 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 whole, front all manner of extremities, 
 accusations and confusions, in defense 
 of that !" 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 November ptJi. 
 
 Neither say that thou hast now no 
 Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's 
 Universe a Symbol of the Godlike; is 
 not Immensity a Temple, is not Man's 
 History, and Men's History, a perpetual 
 Evangel? Listen, and for organ-music 
 thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morn- 
 ing Stars sing together. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 November loth. 
 Wherefore let all men know what of 
 depth and of height is still revealed in 
 man; and, with fear and wonder, with 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 277 
 
 just sympathy and just antipathy, with 
 clear eye and open heart, contemplate 
 it and appropriate it ; and draw innumer- 
 able inferences from it. This inference 
 for example, among the first: "That if 
 the gods of this lower world will sit on 
 their glittering thrones, indolent as Epi- 
 curus' gods, with the living Chaos of 
 Ignorance and Hunger weltering uncared 
 for at their feet, and smooth Parasites 
 preaching, Peace, peace, when there is 
 no peace, " then the dark Chaos, it would 
 seem, will rise ; has risen, and O Heavens ! 
 has it not tanned their skins into breeches 
 for itself? That there be no second 
 Sansculottism in our Earth for a thous- 
 and years, let us understand well what 
 the first was ; and let Rich and Poor of 
 us go and do otherwise. 
 
 French Revolution, 
 
278 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November iiih. 
 
 How can there be any remedy in 
 insurrection? It is a mere announce- 
 ment of the disease, — visible now even to 
 Sons of Night. Insurrection usually 
 "gains" little ; usually wastes how much ! 
 One of its worst kinds of waste, to say 
 nothing of the rest, is that of irritating 
 and exasperating men against each other, 
 by violence done ; which is always sure 
 to be injustice done, for violence does 
 even justice unjustly. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 November 12th. 
 
 With respect to Duels, indeed I have 
 
 my own ideas. Few things, in this so 
 
 surprising world, strike me with more 
 
 surprise. Two little visual Spectra of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 279 
 
 men, hovering with insecure enough co- 
 hesion in the midst of the Unfathom- 
 able^ and to dissolve therein, at any rate, 
 very soon, — make pause at the distance 
 of twelve paces asunder ; whirl round ; 
 and simultaneously by the cunningest 
 mechanism, explode one another into 
 Dissolution ; and off-hand become Air, 
 and Non-extant ! Deuce on it {yer- 
 dammt), the little spitfires! — Nay, I 
 think with old Hugo von Trimberg: 
 "God must needs laugh outright, could 
 such a thing be, to see his wondrous 
 Manikins here below." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 November i^th. 
 For the faith in an Invisible, Unname- 
 able, Godlike, present everywhere in all 
 
28o BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that we see and work and suffer, is the 
 essence of all faith whatsoever ; and that 
 once denied, or still worse, asserted with 
 lips only, and out of bound prayerbooks 
 only, what other things remain believ- 
 able? 
 
 Past aud Present. 
 
 November 14th. 
 
 Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the Im- 
 pediment too is in thyself: 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 that, so the 
 Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? 
 O thou that pinest in the imprisonment 
 of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the 
 gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 281 
 
 create, know this of a truth: the thing 
 thou seekest is already with thee, "here 
 or nowhere," couldst thou only see! 
 
 Sartor Resartus 
 
 November 13th. 
 
 All misery is faculty misdirected, 
 strength that has not yet found its way. 
 The black whirlwind is mother of the 
 lightning. No smoke, in any sense, but 
 can become flame and radiance ! 
 
 Pasi and Present. 
 
 November 16th. 
 
 A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts 
 of all men; no man is made altogether 
 of Poetry. We are all poets when we 
 read a poem well. The ''imagination that 
 
282 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not 
 that the same faculty, weaker in degree, 
 as Dante's own? 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 Noz'eniber i/th. 
 
 Fight on, thou brave true heart, and 
 falter not, through dark fortune and 
 throligh bright. The cause thou lightest 
 for, so far as it is true, no farther, yet 
 precisely so far, is very sure of victory. 
 The falsehood alone of it will be con- 
 quered, will be abolished, as it ought to 
 be : but the truth of it is part of Nature's 
 own Laws, co-operates with the World's 
 eternal Tendencies, and cannot be con- 
 quered. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 283 
 
 November i8th. 
 
 Musical : how much Hes in that ; A 
 musical thought is one spoken by a mind 
 that has penetrated into the inmost 
 heart of the thing; detected the inmost 
 mystery of it, namely the melody that 
 lies hidden in it ; the inward harmony of 
 coherence which is its soul, whereby it 
 exists, and has a right to be, here in this 
 world. All inmost things, we may say, 
 are melodious ; naturally utter themselves 
 in Song. The meaning of Song goes 
 deep. Who is there that, in logical 
 words, can express the effect music has 
 on us ? A kind of inarticulate unfathom- 
 able speech, which leads us to the edge 
 of the Infinite, and lets us for moments 
 gaze into that! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
284 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November i^th. 
 
 Properly speaking, the Land belongs 
 to these two : To the Almighty God and 
 to all His Children of Alen that have 
 ever worked well on it, or that shall ever 
 work well on it. No generation of men 
 can or could, with never such solemnity 
 and effort, sell Land on any other prin- 
 ciple: it is not the property of any gen- 
 eration, wc say, but that of all the past 
 generations that have worked on it, and 
 of all the future ones that shall work on it. 
 
 Fasi and Present. 
 
 November 20th. 
 
 "In these distracted times," writes he, 
 
 "when the Religious Principle, driven 
 
 out of most Churches, either lies unseen 
 
 in the hearts of good men, looking and 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 285 
 
 longing and silently working there to- 
 wards some new Revelation; or else 
 wanders homeless over the world, like a 
 disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial 
 organisation, — into how many strange 
 shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, 
 does it not tentatively and errantly cast 
 itself ! The higher Enthusiasm of man's 
 nature is for the while without Ex- 
 ponent; yet must it continue indestruc- 
 tible, unweariedly active, and work 
 blindly in the great chaotic deep; thus 
 Sect after Sect, and Church after Church, 
 bodies itself forth, and melts again into 
 new metamorphosis." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 November 21st. 
 The first man who, looking with 
 opened soul on this august Heaven and 
 
286 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Earth, this Beautiful and Awful, which 
 we name Nature, Universe and such like, 
 the essence of which remains forever 
 Unnameable ; he who first, gazing into 
 this, fell on his knees, awestruck, in 
 silence as is likeliest, — he. driven by inner 
 necessity, the "audacious original" that 
 he was, had done a thing, too, which all 
 thoughtful hearts saw straightway to be 
 an expressive, altogether adoptable thing! 
 To bow the knee was ever since the atti- 
 tude of supplication. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 November zzd. 
 
 "If in youth." writes he once, "the 
 
 Universe is majestically unveiling, and 
 
 everywhere Heaven revealing itself on 
 
 Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 287 
 
 this Heaven on Earth so immediately 
 reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. 
 Strangely enough, in this strange life of 
 ours, it has been so appointed. On the 
 whole, as I have often said, a Person 
 (Personlichkeit) is ever holy to us; a 
 certain orthodox Anthropomorphism 
 connects my Me with all Thees in bonds 
 of Love: but it is in this approximation 
 of the Like and Unlike, that such 
 heavenly attraction, as between Negative 
 and Positive, first burns out into a flame. 
 Is the pitifulest mortal Person, think you, 
 indifferent to us? Is it not rather our 
 heartfelt wish to be made one with him ; 
 to unite him to us, by gratitude, by ad- 
 miration, even by fear; or failing all 
 these, unite ourselves to him? But how 
 much more in this case of the Like-Un- 
 
288 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 like ! Here is conceded us the higher 
 mystic possibility of such a union, the 
 highest in our Earth ; thus in the con- 
 ducing medium of Fantasy, flames forth 
 that /?r^-development of the universal 
 Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded 
 between man and woman, we first em- 
 phatically denominate Love. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 November 2jd. 
 Fire is the best of servants ; but what 
 a master ! 
 
 Fast mnd Present. 
 
 November 24th. 
 Curious, I say, and not sufficiently con- 
 sidered : how everything does co-operate 
 with all; not a leaf rotting on the high- 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 289 
 
 way but is indissoluble portion of solar 
 and stellar systems ; no thought, word 
 or act of man but has sprung withal out 
 of all men and works sooner or later 
 recognisably or irrecognisably, on all 
 men! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 November 25th. 
 
 Hell generally signifies the Infinite 
 Terror, the thing a man is infinitely 
 afraid of, and shudders and shrinks from, 
 struggling with his whole soul to escape 
 from it. There is a Hell therefore, if 
 you will consider, which accompanies 
 man, in all stages of his history, and 
 religious or other development; but the 
 Hells of men and Peoples differ notably. 
 
290 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 With Christians it is the infinite terror 
 of being found guilty before the Just 
 Judge. 
 
 Past and Presettt. 
 
 November 26th. 
 
 No Chaos can continue chaotic with a 
 soul in it. Besouled with earnest human 
 Nobleness, did not slaughter, violence 
 and fire-eyed fury, grow into a chivalry; 
 into a blessed Loyalty of Governor and 
 Governed ? 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 November 2yth. 
 
 Man's philosophies are usually the 
 supplement of his practice; some orna- 
 mental Logic-varnish, some outer skin 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 291 
 
 of Articulate Intelligence, with which he 
 strives to render his dumb Instinctive 
 Doings presentable when they are done. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 November 28th. 
 
 Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a 
 man do his work; the fruit of it is the 
 care of another than he. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 November 2Qth. 
 
 Seek through this Universe; if with 
 other than owl's eyes, thou wilt find 
 nothing nourished there, nothing kept in 
 life, but what has right to nourishment 
 and life. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
292 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November ^olJi. 
 
 "Bending before men," if it is not to 
 be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed 
 with than practised, is Hero-worship, — a 
 recognition that there does dwell in that 
 presence of our brother somethmg 
 divine ; that every created man, as Nova- 
 lis said, is a ''revelation in the Flesh." 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
DECEMBER 
 
December ist. 
 Meanwhile, we will hate Anarchy as 
 Death, which it is ; and the things worse 
 than Anarchy shall be .hated more! 
 Surely Peace alone is fruitful. Anarchy 
 is destruction: a burning up, say, of 
 Shams and Insupportabilities ; but which 
 leaves Vacancy behind. Know this also, 
 that out of a world of Unwise nothing 
 but an Unwisdom can be made. Arrange 
 it, -Constitution-build it, sift it through 
 Ballot-Boxes as thou wilt, it is and re- 
 mains an Unwisdom,— the new prey of 
 new quacks and unclean things, the latter 
 end of it is slightly better than the be- 
 ginning. Who can bring a wise thing 
 out of men unwise? Not one. 
 
 French Revolution. 
 
296 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 2d. 
 
 Nature's Laws, I must repeat, are 
 eternal : her small still voice, speaking 
 from the inmost heart of us, shall not, 
 under terrible penalties, be disregarded. 
 No man can depart from the truth with- 
 out damage to himself; no one million 
 of men ; no Twenty-seven Millions of 
 men. Show me a Nation fallen every- 
 where into this course, so that each ex- 
 pects it, permits it to others and himself, 
 I will show you a Nation travelling with 
 one assent on the broad way. The broad 
 way, however many Banks of England, 
 Cotton-Mills and Duke's Palaces, it may 
 have! Not at happy Elysian fields, and 
 everlasting crowns of victory, earned by 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 297 
 
 silent Valour, will this Nation arrive; 
 but at precipices, devouring gulfs, if it 
 pause not. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December ^d. 
 
 For the Scepticism, as I said, is not 
 intellectual only; it is moral also; a 
 chronic atrophy and disease of the whole 
 soul. A man lives by believing some- 
 thing; not by debating and arguing 
 about many things. A sad case for him 
 when all that he can manage to believe is 
 something he can button in his pocket, 
 and with one or the other organ eat and 
 digest ! Lower than that he will not get. 
 We call those ages in which he gets so 
 low, the mournfulest, sickest and mean- 
 est of all ages. The world's heart is 
 
298 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 palsied, sick : how can any limb of it be 
 whole? Genuine Acting ceases in all 
 departments of the world's work'; dex- 
 terous Similitude of Acting begins. The 
 world's wages are pocketed, the world's 
 work is not done. Heroes have gone 
 out : Quacks have come in. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December 4th. 
 It is not to die, or even to die of 
 hunger, that makes a man wretched ; 
 many men have died ; all men must die, — 
 the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot 
 of Pain. But it is to live miserable we 
 know not why ; to work sore and yet gain 
 nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet 
 isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold 
 universal Laissez-faire : it is to die slowly 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE agg 
 
 all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, 
 dead. Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed 
 iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 5th. 
 Bookkeeping by double entry is ad- 
 mirable, and records several things in 
 an exact manner. But the Mother 
 Destinies also keep their Tablets; in 
 Heaven's Chancery also there goes on a 
 recording; and things as my Moslem 
 friends say, are "written on the iron 
 leaf." 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 6th. 
 The Great Man's sincerity is of the 
 kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious 
 of; nay, I suppose he is conscious rather 
 
300 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 of ^sincerity ; for what man can walk 
 accurately by the law of truth for one 
 day ? No, the Great Man does not boast 
 himself sincere, far from that; perhaps 
 does not ask himself if he is so: I would 
 say rather, his sincerity does not depend 
 on himself ; he cannot help being sincere ! 
 The great Fact of Existence is great to 
 him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out 
 of the awful presence of this Reality. 
 His mind is so made ; he is great by that, 
 first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real 
 as Life, real as Death, is this Universe 
 to him. Though all men should forget 
 its truth, and walk in a vain show, he 
 cannot. At all moments the Flame- 
 image glares-in upon him; undeniable, 
 there, there! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 301 
 
 December yth. 
 A Soul is not like wind {spiritiis, or 
 breath) contained within a capsule; the 
 Almighty Maker is not like a Clock- 
 maker that once, in old immemorial ages, 
 having made his Horologe of a Universe, 
 sits ever since and sees it go ! Not at 
 all. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 8th. 
 Nay all speech, even the commonest 
 speech, has something of song in it : not 
 a parish in the world but has its parish- 
 accent; — the rhythm or /^//z^ to which 
 the people there sing what, they have 
 to say ! Accent is a kind of chanting ; 
 all men have accent of their own, — 
 though they only notice that of others. 
 
302 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Observe too how all passionate language 
 does of itself become musical, — with a 
 finer music than the mere accent ; the 
 speech of a man even in zealous anger 
 becomes a chant, a song. All deep things 
 are Song. It seems somehow the very 
 central essence of us. Song; as if all the 
 rest were but wrappages and hulls ! The 
 primal clement of us; of us, and of all 
 things. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December gth. 
 Man is created to fight ; he is perhaps 
 best of all definable as a born soldier ; his 
 life "a battle and a march," under the 
 right General. It is forever indispen- 
 sable for a man to fight: now with 
 Necessity, with Barrenness, Scarcity, 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 303 
 
 with Puddles, Bogs, tangled Forests, un- 
 kempt Cotton ; — now also with the hallu- 
 cinations of his poor fellow Men. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December loth. 
 
 If thou ask to what height man has 
 carried it in this manner, look on our 
 divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and his Life, and his Biography, and 
 what followed therefrom. Higher has 
 the human Thought not yet reached: 
 this is Christianity and Christendom; a 
 Symbol of quite perennial infinite char- 
 acter; whose significance will ever de- 
 mand to be anew inquired into, and anew 
 made manifest. 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 
 
304 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December lUh. 
 All great Peoples are conservative; 
 slow to believe novelties ; patient of niiich 
 error in actualities; deeply and forever 
 certain of the greatness that is in Law, 
 in Custom once solemnly-established, 
 and now long recognised as just and 
 final. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 12th. 
 How true is that of Novalis: "It is 
 certain, my Belief gains quite infinitely 
 the moment I can conceive another mind 
 thereof!" 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 December i^th. 
 Deeds are greater than Words. Deeds 
 have such a life, mute but undeniable 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 305 
 
 and grow as living trees and fruit-trees 
 do ; they people the vacuity of Time, and 
 make it green and worthy. Why should 
 the oak prove logically that it ought to 
 grow, and will grow ? Plant it, try it ; 
 what gifts of diligent judicious assimila- 
 tion and secretion it has, of progress and 
 resistance, of force to grow, will then de- 
 clare themselves. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 14th. 
 Great souls are always loyally sub- 
 missive, reverent to what is over them ; 
 only small mean souls are otherwise. I 
 could not find a better proof of what I 
 said the other day, That the sincere man 
 was by nature the obedient man ; that 
 only in a world of Heroes was there loyal 
 
3o6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Obedience to the Heroic. The essence 
 of originaHty is not that it may be new ; 
 Johnson beHeved altogether in the old ; 
 he found the old opinions credible for 
 him, fit for him ; and in a right heroic 
 manner lived under them. He is well 
 worth study in regard to that. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December i^th. 
 And now what is it, if you pierce 
 through his Cants, his oftrepeated Hear- 
 says, what he calls his Worships and so 
 forth, — what is it that the modern English 
 soul does, in very truth, dread infinitely, 
 and contemplate with entire despair? 
 What is his Hell ; after all these reputable 
 oft-repeated Hearsays, what is it? With 
 hesitation, with astonishment, I pro- 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 307 
 
 nounce it to be : The terror of "Not suc- 
 ceeding;" of not making money, fame, 
 or some other figure in the world, — 
 chiefly of not making money ! Is not 
 that a somewhat singular Hell? 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December i6th. 
 What of the world and its victories? 
 Men speak too much about the world. 
 Each one of us here, let the world go 
 how it will, and be victorious, or not vic- 
 torious, has he not a Life of his own to 
 lead? One Life; a little gleam of Time 
 between two Eternities ; no second chance 
 to us forevermore ! It wxre well for us 
 o live not as fools and simulacra, but as 
 wise and realities. The world's being 
 saved will not save us; nor the world's 
 
3o8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 being lost destroy us. We should look 
 to ourselves : there is great merit here in 
 the ''duty of staying at home '" And on 
 the whole, to say truth, I never heard of 
 ''worlds" being "saved" in any other 
 way. For the saving of the world I will 
 trust confidently to the Maker of the 
 world ; and look a little to my own sav- 
 ing, which I am more competent to ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December i/fh. 
 All Fighting, as we noticed long ago, 
 is the dusty conflict of strengths each 
 thinking itself the strongest, or, in other 
 words, the justest; — of Mights which do 
 in the long-run, and forever will in this 
 just Universe in the long-run, mean 
 Rights. In conflict the perishable part 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 309 
 
 of them, beaten sufficiently flies off into 
 dust: this process ended, appears the 
 imperishable, the true and exact. 
 
 Past atid Present. 
 
 December i8th. 
 The highest Voice ever heard on this 
 earth said withal, "Consider the lilies 
 of the field, they toil not neither do they 
 spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was 
 not arrayed like one of these." A glance, 
 that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. 
 ''The lilies of the field," — dressed finer 
 than earthly princes, springing-up there 
 in the humblefurrow-field ; a beautiful 
 eye looking out on you, from the great 
 inner Sea of Beauty ! How could the 
 rude Earth make these, if her Essence, 
 rugged as she looks and is, were not 
 inwardly Beauty? 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
3IO BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December iptJi. 
 O thank thy Destiny for these ; thank- 
 fully bear what yet remain ; thou hadst 
 need of them ; the Self in thee needed to 
 be annihilated. By benignant fever- 
 paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep- 
 seated chronic Disease, and triumphs 
 over Death. On the roaring billows of 
 Time, thou art not engulphed, but borne 
 aloft into the azures of Eternity. Love 
 not Pleasure; love God. This is the 
 Everlasting Yea, wherein all contra- 
 diction is solved ; wherein whoso walks 
 and works, it is well with him. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 December 20th. 
 The only happiness a brave man ever 
 troubled himself with asking much about 
 was, happiness enough to get his work 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 3 1 1 
 
 done. Not "I can't eat!'' but ''I can't 
 work!" that was the burden of all wise 
 complaining among men. It is, after all, 
 the one unhappiness of a man. That he 
 cannot work; that he cannot get his 
 destiny as a man fulfilled. Behold, the 
 day is passing swiftly over, cur life is 
 passing swiftly over ; and the night Com- 
 eth, wherein no man can work. The 
 night once come, our happiness, our un- 
 happiness, — it is all abolished. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 21st. 
 Belief I define to be the healthy act of 
 a man's mind. It is a mysterious in- 
 describable process, that of getting to 
 believe; — indescribable, as all vital acts 
 are. We have our mind given us, not 
 
312 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that it may cavil and argue, but that it 
 may see into something, give us clear 
 belief and understanding about some- 
 thing, whereon we are then to proceed to 
 act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. 
 Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up 
 the first thing we find, and straightway 
 believe that ! All manner of doubt, in- 
 quiry, cTKei/zts as it is named, about all 
 manner of objects, dwells in every reason- 
 able mind. It is the mystic working of 
 the mind, on the object it is getting to 
 know and believe. Belief comes out of 
 all this, above ground, like the tree from 
 its hidden roots. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December 22d. 
 The great unique heart : how like a 
 child's in its simplicity, like a man's in 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 313 
 
 its earnest solemnity and depth ! Heaven 
 lies over him wheresoever he goes or 
 stands on Earth ; making all the Earth a 
 mystic Temple to him, the Earth's busi- 
 ness all a kind of worship. Glimpses of 
 bright creatures flash in the common 
 sunlight ; angels yet hover doing God's 
 messages among men : that rainbow was 
 set in the clouds by the hand of God ! 
 Wonder, miracle encompass the man ; he 
 lives in an element of miracle ; Heaven's 
 splendour over his head, Hell's darkness 
 under his feet. A great Law of Duty, 
 high as these two Infinities, dwarfing all 
 else, annihilating all else. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 2^d. 
 "Society," says he, "is not dead; that 
 Carcass, which you call dead Society, 
 
314 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 is but her mortal coil which she has 
 shuffled off, to assume a nobler ; she her- 
 self, through perpetual metamorphoses, 
 in fairer and fairer development, has to 
 live till Time also merge m Eternity. 
 Wheresoever two or three Living Men 
 are gathered together, there is Society; 
 or there it will be, with its cunning 
 mechanisms and stupendous structures, 
 overspreading this little Globe, and reach- 
 ing upwards to Heaven and downwards 
 to Gehenna: for always, under one or 
 the other figure, it has two authentic 
 Revelations, of a God and of a Devil; 
 the Pulpit, namely and the Gallows." 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 December 24th. 
 The spoken Word, the written Poem, 
 is said to be an epitome of the man ; how 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 315 
 
 much more the done Work. Whatso- 
 ever of morahty and of intelhgence; 
 what of patience, perseverance, faithful- 
 ness, of method, insight, ingenuity, 
 energy; in a word, whatsoever of 
 Strength the man had in him will lie 
 written in the Work he does. To Work : 
 why, it is to try himself against Nature, 
 and her everlasting unerring Laws : these 
 will tell a true verdict as to the man. 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 25th. 
 A cause, the noblest of causes kindles 
 itself, like a beacon set on high ; high as 
 Heaven, yet attainable from Earth;— 
 whereby the meanest man becomes not 
 a Citizen only, but a member of Christ's 
 visible Church ; a veritable Hero, if he 
 prove a true man. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
3i6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 26th. 
 For strangely in this so solid-seeming 
 World, which nevertheless is in continual 
 restless flux, it is appointed that Sound, 
 to appearance the most fleeting, should 
 be the most continuing of all things. 
 The Word is well said to be omnipotent 
 in this world : man, thereby divine, can 
 create as by a Fiat. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 
 Decemher 2ph. 
 But this I do say, and would wish all 
 men to know and lay to heart, that he who 
 discerns nothing but Mechanism in the 
 Universe has in the fatalest way missed 
 the secret of the Universe altogether. 
 That all Godhood should vanish out of 
 men's conception of this Universe seems 
 
FROM THOMA S CA RL YLE 3 1 7 
 
 to me precisely the most brutal error, — 
 I will not disparage Heathenism by call- 
 ing it a Heathen error, — that men could 
 fall into. It is not true ; it is false at the 
 very heart of it. A man who thinks so 
 will think zvrong about all things in the 
 world ; this original sin will vitiate all 
 other conclusions he can form. One 
 might call it the most lamentable of De- 
 lusions, — not forgetting Witchcraft it- 
 self! Witchcraft worshipped at least a 
 living Devil : but this worships a dead 
 iron Devil ; no God, not even a Devil ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December 28th. 
 For if a noble soul is rendered tenfold 
 beauti fuller by victory and prosperity, 
 springing now radiant as into his own 
 
3i8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 due element and sun-throne ; an ignoble 
 one is rendered tenfold and hundredfold 
 uglier, pitifuller. Whatsoever vices, 
 w^hatsoever weaknesses were in the man, 
 the parvenu will show us them enlarged, 
 as in the solar microscope, into frightful 
 distortion. Nay, how many mere semi- 
 nal principles of vice, hitherto all whole- 
 somely kept latent, may we now see un- 
 folded, as in the solar hot-house, into 
 growth, into huge universally-conspicu- 
 ous luxuriance and development ! 
 
 Past and Present. 
 
 December 2^th. 
 In the garden at Wittenberg one even- 
 ing at sunset, a little bird has perched for 
 the night : That little bird, says Luther, 
 above it are stars and deep Heaven of 
 
FROM THOMAS CARLYLE 319 
 
 worlds ; yet it has folded its little wings ; 
 gone trustfully to rest there as in its 
 home : the Maker of it has given it too 
 a home ! 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship. 
 
 December ^oth. 
 Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, 
 there is thy eternal enemy; attack him 
 swiftly, subdue him ; make Order of him, 
 the subject not of Chaos, but of Intelli- 
 gence, Divinity and Thee ! 
 
 Pas^ and Present. 
 
 December ^ist. 
 
 And so here, O Reader, has the time 
 come for us two to part. Toilsome was 
 our journeying together; not without 
 offense ; but it is done. To me thou wert 
 
320 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 as a beloved shade, the disembodied or 
 not yet embodied spirit of a Brother. To 
 thee I was but as a \'oice. Yet was our 
 relation a kind of sacred one ; doubt not 
 that ! Whatsoever once sacred things 
 become hollow jargons, yet while the 
 V^oice of Man speaks with Man, hast thou 
 not there the living fountain out of which 
 all sacredness sprang, and will yet 
 spring? Man. by the nature of him, is 
 definable as "an incarnated Word." Ill 
 stands it with me if I have spoken 
 falsely: thine also it was to hear truly. 
 Farewell. 
 
 P> ench Revolution. 
 
Beautiful Thoughts: 
 
 Selections for Every Day from 
 the writings of the Best Authors 
 
 Handsomely bound in colored 
 cloths, gold stamp and photo- 
 gravure of author inlaid on cover. 
 75 cents per volume. 
 
 WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE se- 
 lections arranged by Elizabeth Cure- 
 ton. 
 
 HENRY DRUMMOND selections 
 arranged by Elizabeth Cure ton. 
 GEORGE MacDONALD sdtc'^^^' 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY selections 
 arranged by P. W. Wilson. 
 BULWER-LYTTON selections 
 arranged by P. W. Wilson. 
 ROBERT and ELIZABETH 
 BROWNING selections arranged 
 by Margaret Shipp. 
 THOMAS CARLYLE selections 
 arranged by P. W. Wilson. 
 
 JAMES POTT & CO. 
 
 I19-121 West 23d St., New Tori 
 
bLr 1 190Q