Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.Carlyle, Thomas
Philosophy
Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.
Carlyle, Thomas
Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems
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 one man can depart from the truth
without damage to himself; no one million of men; no Twenty-seven
Millions of men. Show me a Nation fallen everywhere into this course,
so that each expects 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 silent Valour, will this Nation arrive; but at
precipices, devouring gulfs, if it pause not. Nature has appointed
happy fields, victorious laurel-crowns; but only to the brave and
true: _Un_nature, what we call Chaos, holds nothing in it but
vacuities, devouring gulfs. What are Twenty-seven Millions, and their
unanimity? Believe them not: the Worlds and the Ages, God and Nature
and All Men say otherwise.
'Rhetoric all this?' No, my brother, very singular to say, it is Fact
all this. Cocker's Arithmetic is not truer. Forgotten in these days,
it is old as the foundations of the Universe, and will endure till the
Universe cease. It is forgotten now; and the first mention of it
puckers thy sweet countenance into a sneer: but it will be brought to
mind again,--unless indeed the Law of Gravitation chance to cease, and
men find that they _can_ walk on vacancy. Unanimity of the
Twenty-seven Millions will do nothing; walk not thou with them; fly
from them as for thy life. Twenty-seven Millions travelling on such
courses, with gold jingling in every pocket, with vivats heaven-high,
are incessantly advancing, let me again remind thee, towards the
_firm-land's end_,--towards the end and extinction of what
Faithfulness, Veracity, real Worth, was in their way of life. Their
noble ancestors have fashioned for them a 'life-road;'--in how many
thousand senses, this! There is not an old wise Proverb on their
tongue, an honest Principle articulated in their hearts into
utterance, a wise true method of doing and despatching any work or
commerce of men, but helps yet to carry them forward. Life is still
possible to them, because all is not yet Puffery, Falsity,
Mammon-worship and Unnature; because somewhat is yet Faithfulness,
Veracity and Valour. With a certain very considerable finite quantity
of Unveracity and Phantasm, social life is still possible; not with an
infinite quantity! Exceed your certain quantity, the seven-feet Hat,
and all things upwards to the very Champion cased in tin, begin to
reel and flounder,--in Manchester Insurrections, Chartisms,
Sliding-scales; the Law of Gravitation not forgetting to act. You
advance incessantly towards the land's end; you are, literally enough,
'consuming the way.' Step after step, Twenty-seven Million unconscious
men;--till you are _at_ the land's end; till there is not Faithfulness
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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