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
If I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was to continue
henceforth the one serious principle of our existence, I should reckon
it idle to solicit remedial measures from any Government, the disease
being insusceptible of remedy. Government can do much, but it can in
no wise do all. Government, as the most conspicuous object in Society,
is called upon to give signal of what shall be done; and, in many
ways, to preside over, further, and command the doing of it. But the
Government cannot do, by all its signaling and commanding, what the
Society is radically indisposed to do. In the long-run every
Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and
unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.--The main
substance of this immense Problem of Organising Labour, and first of
all of Managing the Working Classes, will, it is very clear, have to
be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it; by those
who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be enacted
by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie
potentially extant in those two Classes, who are to obey such
enactment. A Human Chaos _in_ which there is no light, you vainly
attempt to irradiate by light shed _on_ it: order never can arise
there.
But it is my firm conviction that the 'Hell of England' will _cease_
to be that of 'not making money;' that we shall get a nobler Hell and
a nobler Heaven! I anticipate light _in_ the Human Chaos, glimmering,
shining more and more; under manifold true signals from without That
light shall shine. Our deity no longer being Mammon,--O Heavens, each
man will then say to himself: "Why such deadly haste to make money? I
shall not go to Hell, even if I do not make money! There is another
Hell, I am told!" Competition, at railway-speed, in all branches of
commerce and work will then abate:--good felt-hats for the head, in
every sense, instead of seven-feet lath-and-plaster hats on wheels,
will then be discoverable! Bubble-periods, with their panics and
commercial crises, will again become infrequent; steady modest
industry will take the place of gambling speculation. To be a noble
Master, among noble Workers, will again be the first ambition with
some few; to be a rich Master only the second. How the Inventive
Genius of England, with the whirr of its bobbins and billy-rollers
shoved somewhat into the backgrounds of the brain, will contrive and
devise, not cheaper produce exclusively, but fairer distribution of
the produce at its present cheapness! By degrees, we shall again have
a Society with something of Heroism in it, something of Heaven's
Blessing on it; we shall again have, as my German friend asserts,
'instead of Mammon-Feudalism with unsold cotton-shirts and
Preservation of the Game, noble just Industrialism and Government by
the Wisest!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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