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
I remark, for the present, only two things: first, that the Fighting
itself was not, as we rashly suppose it, a Fighting without cause, but
more or less with cause. Man is created to fight; he is perhaps best
of all definable as a born soldier; his life 'a battle and a march,'
under the right General. It is forever indispensable for a man to
fight: now with Necessity, with Barrenness, Scarcity, with Puddles,
Bogs, tangled Forests, unkempt Cotton;--now also with the
hallucinations of his poor fellow Men. Hallucinatory visions rise in
the head of my poor fellow man; make him claim over me rights which
are not his. All Fighting, as we noticed long ago, is the dusty
conflict of strengths, each thinking itself the strongest, or, in
other words, the justest;--of Mights which do in the long-run, and
forever will in this just Universe in the long-run, mean Rights. In
conflict the perishable part of them, beaten sufficiently, flies off
into dust: this process ended, appears the imperishable, the true and
exact.
And now let us remark a second thing: how, in these baleful
operations, a noble devout-hearted Chevalier will comport himself, and
an ignoble godless Bucanier and Chactaw Indian. Victory is the aim of
each. But deep in the heart of the noble man it lies forever legible,
that as an Invisible Just God made him, so will and must God's Justice
and this only, were it never so invisible, ultimately prosper in all
controversies and enterprises and battles whatsoever. What an
Influence; ever-present,--like a Soul in the rudest Caliban of a body;
like a ray of Heaven, and illuminative creative _Fiat-Lux_, in the
wastest terrestrial Chaos! Blessed divine Influence, traceable even in
the horror of Battlefields and garments rolled in blood: how it
ennobles even the Battlefield; and, in place of a Chactaw Massacre,
makes it a Field of Honour! A Battlefield too is great. Considered
well, it is a kind of Quintessence of Labour; Labour distilled into
its utmost concentration; the significance of years of it compressed
into an hour. Here too thou shalt be strong, and not in muscle only,
if thou wouldst prevail. Here too thou shalt be strong of heart, noble
of soul; thou shalt dread no pain or death, thou shalt not love ease
or life; in rage, thou shalt remember mercy, justice;--thou shalt be a
Knight and not a Chactaw, if thou wouldst prevail! It is the rule of
all battles, against hallucinating fellow Men, against unkempt Cotton,
or whatsoever battles they may be, which a man in this world has to
fight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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