History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21Carlyle, Thomas
History
History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21
Carlyle, Thomas
Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786; Prussia (Germany) -- History -- Frederick II, 1740-1786; Social problems
Nor is the progress of a French or European world, all silently ripening
and rotting towards such issue, a thing one wishes to dwell on. Only
when the Spontaneous Combustion breaks out; and, many-colored, with loud
noises, envelops the whole world in anarchic flame for long hundreds of
years: then has the Event come; there is the thing for all men to
mark, and to study and scrutinize as the strangest thing they ever saw.
Centuries of it yet lying ahead of us; several sad Centuries, sordidly
tumultuous, and good for little! Say Two Centuries yet,--say even Ten of
such a process: before the Old is completely burnt out, and the New in
any state of sightliness? Millennium of Anarchies;--abridge it, spend
your heart's-blood upon abridging it, ye Heroic Wise that are to
come! For it is the consummation of All the Anarchies that are and
were;--which I do trust always means the death (temporary death) of
them! Death of the Anarchies: or a world once more built wholly on Fact
better or worse; and the lying jargoning professor of Sham-Fact, whose
name is Legion, who as yet (oftenest little conscious of himself) goes
tumulting and swarming from shore to shore, become a species extinct,
and well known to be gone down to Tophet!--
There were bits of Anarchies before, little and greater: but till that
of France in 1789, there was none long memorable; all were pygmies in
comparison, and not worth mentioning separately. In 1772 the Anarchy of
Poland, which had been a considerable Anarchy for about three
hundred years, got itself extinguished,--what we may call
extinguished;--decisive surgery being then first exercised upon it: an
Anarchy put in the sure way of extinction. In 1775, again, there began,
over seas, another Anarchy much more considerable,--little dreaming that
IT could be called an Anarchy; on the contrary, calling itself Liberty,
Rights of Man; and singing boundless Io-Paeans to itself, as is common
in such cases; an Anarchy which has been challenging the Universe
to show the like ever since. And which has, at last, flamed up as an
independent Phenomenon, unexampled in the hideously SUICIDAL way;--and
does need much to get burnt out, that matters may begin anew on truer
conditions. But neither the PARTITION OF POLAND nor the AMERICAN WAR OF
INDEPENDENCE have much general importance, or, except as precursors
of 1789, are worth dwelling on in History. From us here, so far as
Friedrich is concerned with them, they may deserve some transient
mention, more or less: but World-History, eager to be at the general
Funeral-pile and ultimate Burning-up of Shams in this poor World, will
have less and less to say of small tragedies and premonitory symptoms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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