Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
'The word Hell,' says Sauerteig, 'is still frequently in use
among the English People: but I could not without difficulty
ascertain what they meant by it. 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. With Christians it is the infinite terror of
being found guilty before the just Judge. With old Romans, I
conjecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom probably
they cared little, but of doing unworthily, doing unvirtuously,
which was their word for un_man_fully. And now what is it, if
you pierce through his Cants, his oft-repeated Hearsays, 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 pronounce it to be: The terror
of "Not succeeding;" of not making money, fame, or some other
figure in the world,--chiefly of not making money! Is not that a
somewhat singular Hell?
Yes, O Sauerteig, it is very singular. If we do not 'succeed,'
where is the use of us? We had better never have been born.
"Tremble intensely," as our friend the Emperor of China says:
_there_ is the black Bottomless of Terror; what Sauerteig calls
the 'Hell of the English!'--But indeed this Hell belongs
naturally to the Gospel of Mammonism, which also has its
corresponding Heaven. For there is one Reality among so many
Phantasms; about one thing we are entirely in earnest: The
making of money. Working Mammonism does divide the world with
idle game-preserving Dilettantism:--thank Heaven that there is
even a Mammonism, anything we are in earnest about! Idleness is
worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at
anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things.
There is endless hope in work, were it even work at making money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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