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
But the Life-fountain within you once again set flowing, what
innumerable 'things,' whole sets and classes and continents of
'things,' year after year, and decade after decade, and century after
century, will then be doable and done! Not Emigration, Education,
Corn-Law Abrogation, Sanitary Regulation, Land Property-Tax; not these
alone, nor a thousand times as much as these. Good Heavens, there will
then be light in the inner heart of here and there a man, to discern
what is just, what is commanded by the Most High God, what _must_ be
done, were it never so 'impossible.' Vain jargon in favour of the
palpably unjust will then abridge itself within limits. Vain jargon,
on Hustings, in Parliaments or wherever else, when here and there a
man has vision for the essential God's-Truth of the things jargoned
of, will become very vain indeed. The silence of here and there such a
man, how eloquent in answer to such jargon! Such jargon, frightened at
its own gaunt echo, will unspeakably abate; nay, for a while, may
almost in a manner disappear,--the wise answering it in silence, and
even the simple taking cue from them to hoot it down wherever heard.
It will be a blessed time; and many 'things' will become doable,--and
when the brains are out, an absurdity will die! Not easily again shall
a Corn-Law argue ten years for itself; and still talk and argue, when
impartial persons have to say with a sigh that, for so long back, they
have heard no 'argument' advanced for it but such as might make the
angels and almost the very jackasses weep!--
Wholly a blessed time: when jargon might abate, and here and there
some genuine speech begin. When to the noble opened heart, as to such
heart they alone do, all noble things began to grow visible; and the
difference between just and unjust, between true and false, between
work and sham-work, between speech and jargon, was once more, what to
our happier Fathers it used to be, _infinite_,--as between a Heavenly
thing and an Infernal: the one a thing which you were _not_ to do,
which you were wise not to attempt doing; which it were better for you
to have a millstone tied round your neck, and be cast into the sea,
than concern yourself with doing!--Brothers, it will not be a
Morrison's Pill, or remedial measure, that will bring all this about
for us.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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