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
Rituals, Liturgies, Creeds, Hierarchies: all this is not religion; all
this, were it dead as Odinism, as Fetishism, does not kill religion at
all! It is Stupidity alone, with never so many rituals, that kills
religion. Is not this still a World? Spinning Cotton under Arkwright
and Adam Smith; founding Cities by the Fountain of Juturna, on the
Janiculum Mount; tilling Canaan under Prophet Samuel and Psalmist
David, man is ever man; the missionary of Unseen Powers; and great and
victorious, while he continues true to his mission; mean, miserable,
foiled, and at last annihilated and trodden out of sight and memory,
when he proves untrue. Brother, thou art a Man, I think; thou art not
a mere building Beaver, or two-legged Cotton-Spider; thou hast verily
a Soul in thee, asphyxied or otherwise! Sooty Manchester,--it too is
built on the infinite Abysses; overspanned by the skyey Firmaments;
and there is birth in it, and death in it;--and it is every whit as
wonderful, as fearful, unimaginable, as the oldest Salem or Prophetic
City. Go or stand, in what time, in what place we will, are there not
Immensities, Eternities over us, around us, in us:
'Solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal:--
Stars silent rest o'er us,
Graves under us silent!'
Between _these_ two great Silences, the hum of all our spinning
cylinders, Trades-Unions, Anti-Corn-Law Leagues and Carlton Clubs
goes on. Stupidity itself ought to pause a little and consider that. I
tell thee, through all thy Ledgers, Supply-and-demand Philosophies,
and daily most modern melancholy Business and Cant, there does shine
the presence of a Primeval Unspeakable; and thou wert wise to
recognise, not with lips only, that same!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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