Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. — John Shaqi
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
Will not that be a thing worthy of 'doing;' to deliver ourselves from
quacks, sham-heroes; to deliver the whole world more and more from
such? They are the one bane of the world. Once clear the world of
them, it ceases to be a Devil's-world, in all fibres of it wretched,
accursed; and begins to be a God's-world, blessed, and working hourly
towards blessedness. Thou for one wilt not again vote for any quack,
do honour to any edge-gilt vacuity in man's shape: cant shall be known
to thee by the sound of it;--thou wilt fly from cant with a shudder
never felt before; as from the opened litany of Sorcerers' Sabbaths,
the true Devil-worship of this age, more horrible than any other
blasphemy, profanity or genuine blackguardism elsewhere audible among
men. It is alarming to witness,--in its present completed state! And
Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and under
of the selfsame substance; convertible personages: turn up your dupe
into the proper fostering element, and he himself can become a quack;
there is in him the due prurient insincerity, open voracity for
profit, and closed sense for truth, whereof quacks too, in all their
kinds, are made.
Alas, it is not to the hero, it is to the sham-hero, that, of right
and necessity, the valet-world belongs. 'What is to be done?' The
reader sees whether it is like to be the seeking and swallowing of
some 'remedial measure'!
CHAPTER V.
ARISTOCRACY OF TALENT.
When an individual is miserable, what does it most of all behove him
to do? To complain of this man or of that, of this thing or of that?
To fill the world and the street with lamentation, objurgation? Not so
at all; the reverse of so. All moralists advise him not to complain of
any person or of any thing, but of himself only. He is to know of a
truth that being miserable he has been unwise, he. Had he faithfully
followed Nature and her Laws, Nature, ever true to her Laws, would
have yielded fruit and increase and felicity to him: but he has
followed other than Nature's Laws; and now Nature, her patience with
him being ended, leaves him desolate; answers with very emphatic
significance to him: No. Not by this road, my son; by another road
shalt thou attain well-being: this, thou perceivest, is the road to
ill-being; quit this!--So do all moralists advise: that the man
penitently say to himself first of all, Behold I was not wise enough;
I quitted the laws of Fact, which are also called the Laws of God, and
mistook for them the Laws of Sham and Semblance, which are called the
Devil's Laws; therefore am I here!
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