On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in HistoryCarlyle, Thomas
Philosophy
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
Carlyle, Thomas
Hero worship; Heroes
have truth to speak, it is not the "subject's" footing that will fail
him here.--
We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of
us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there
is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate
the unessential; 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 resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do not "tolerate"
Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to
them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish
Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will not quarrel
so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In
this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.
A man sent to row in French Galleys, and such like, for teaching the
Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humor! I am not
prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he had
what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind
honest affections dwelt in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling
man. That he _could_ rebuke Queens, and had such weight among those
proud turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could
maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that
wild realm, he who was only "a subject born within the same:" this of
itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean
acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone
can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals,
and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting demagogue: precisely the
reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest
of it, if we examine! Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he
wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult
was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was
forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of
Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth Falsehood is not
Order; it is the general sum-total of Disorder. Order is _Truth_,--each
thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood
cannot subsist together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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