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
'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, _any_thing 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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