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
Hero, Prophet, Poet,--many different names, in different times, and
places, do we give to Great Men; according to varieties we note in them,
according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves! We
might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark again,
however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different
_sphere_ constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero
can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the
kind of world he finds himself born into. 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
Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher;--in one or the other
degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I cannot understand
how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was
in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written
verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his
course of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental
character is that of Great Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has
words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's
Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal; the things Turenne says
are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The
great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever,
in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and
Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily
believe it; they had done things a little harder than these! Burns,
a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau.
Shakspeare,--one knows not what _he_ could not have made, in the supreme
degree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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