On the Choice of Books · Thomas Carlyle
GENTLEMEN,
Three of the wisest men that can be got are met to consider what is the function which transcends all others in importance to build up the young generation, which shall be free from all that perilous stuff that has been weighing us down and clogging every step, and which is the only thing we can hope to go on with if we would leave the world a little better, and not the worse of our having been in it for those who are to follow. The man who is the eldest of the three says to Goethe, "You give by nature to the well-formed children you bring into the world a great many precious gifts, and very frequently these are best of all developed by nature herself, with a very slight assistance where assistance is seen to be wise and profitable, and forbearance very often on the part of the overlooker of the process of education; but there is one thing that no child brings into the world with it, and without which all other things are of no use." Wilhelm, who is there beside him, says, "What is that?" "All who enter the world want it," says the eldest; "perhaps you yourself." Wilhelm says, "Well, tell me what it is." "It is," says the eldest, "reverence--_Ehrfurcht_--Reverence!
Honour done to those who are grander and better than you, without fear; distinct from fear." _Ehrfurcht_--"the soul of all religion that ever has been among men, or ever will be." And he goes into practicality. He practically distinguishes the kinds of religion that are in the world, and he makes out three reverences. The boys are all trained to go through certain gesticulations, to lay their hands on their breast and look up to heaven, and they give their three reverences. The first and simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better in man than that. Then there is reverence for what is around us or about us--reverence for our equals, and to which he attributes an immense power in the culture of man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us--to learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those things, odious as they are to flesh and blood--to learn that there lies in these a priceless blessing. And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian religion--the highest of all religions; a height, as Goethe says--and that is very true, even to the letter, as I consider--a height to which the human species was fated and enabled to attain, and from which, having once attained it, it can never retrograde. It cannot descend down below that permanently, Goethe's idea is.
Often one thinks it was good to have a faith of that kind--that always, even in the most degraded, sunken, and unbelieving times, he calculates there will be found some few souls who will recognise what that meant; and that the world, having once received it, there is no fear of its retrograding. He goes on then to tell us the way in which they seek to teach boys, in the sciences particularly, whatever the boy is fit for. Wilhelm left his own boy there, expecting they would make him a Master of Arts, or something of that kind; and when he came back for him he saw a thundering cloud of dust coming over the plain, of which he could make nothing. It turned out to be a tempest of wild horses, managed by young lads who had a turn for hunting with their grooms. His own son was among them, and he found that the breaking of colts was the thing he was most suited for. (Laughter.) This is what Goethe calls Art, which I should not make clear to you by any definition unless it is clear already. (A laugh.) I would not attempt to define it as music, painting, and poetry, and so on; it is in quite a higher sense than the common one, and in which, I am afraid, most of our painters, poets, and music men would not pass muster. (A laugh.) He considers that the highest pitch to which human culture can go; and he watches with great industry how it is to be brought about with men who have a turn for it.
Very wise and beautiful it is. It gives one an idea that something greatly better is possible for man in the world. I confess it seems to me it is a shadow of what will come, unless the world is to come to a conclusion that is perfectly frightful; some kind of scheme of education like that, presided over by the wisest and most sacred men that can be got in the world, and watching from a distance--a training in practicality at every turn; no speech in it except that speech that is to be followed by action, for that ought to be the rule as nearly as possible among them. For rarely should men speak at all unless it is to say that thing that is to be done; and let him go and do his part in it, and to say no more about it.
I should say there is nothing in the world you can conceive so difficult, _prima facie_, as that of getting a set of men gathered together--rough, rude, and ignorant people--gather them together, promise them a shilling a day, rank them up, give them very severe and sharp drill, and by bullying and drill--for the word "drill" seems as if it meant the treatment that would force them to learn--they learn what it is necessary to learn; and there is the man, a piece of an animated machine, a wonder of wonders to look at. He will go and obey one man, and walk into the cannon's mouth for him, and do anything whatever that is commanded of him by his general officer. And I believe all manner of things in this way could be done if there were anything like the same attention bestowed. Very many things could be regimented and organized into the mute system of education that Goethe evidently adumbrates there. But I believe, when people look into it, it will be found that they will not be very long in trying to make some efforts in that direction; for the saving of human labour, and the avoidance of human misery, would be uncountable if it were set about and begun even in part.
Alas! it is painful to think how very far away it is--any fulfilment of such things; for I need not hide from you, young gentlemen--and that is one of the last things I am going to tell you--that you have got into a very troublous epoch of the world; and I don't think you will find it improve the footing you have, though you have many advantages which we had not. You have careers open to you, by public examinations and so on, which is a thing much to be approved, and which we hope to see perfected more and more. All that was entirely unknown in my time, and you have many things to recognise as advantages. But you will find the ways of the world more anarchical than ever, I think. As far as I have noticed, revolution has come upon us. We have got into the age of revolutions. All kinds of things are coming to be subjected to fire, as it were; hotter and hotter the wind rises around everything.
Curious to say, now in Oxford and other places that used to seem to live at anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes, they are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and all sorts of new ideas are getting afloat. It is evident that whatever is not made of asbestos will have to be burnt in this world. It will not stand the heat it is getting exposed to. And in saying that, it is but saying in other words that we are in an epoch of anarchy--anarchy _plus_ the constable. (Laughter.) There is nobody that picks one's pocket without some policeman being ready to take him up. (Renewed laughter.) But in every other thing he is the son, not of Kosmos, but of Chaos. He is a disobedient, and reckless, and altogether a waste kind of object--commonplace man in these epochs; and the wiser kind of man--the select, of whom I hope you will be part--has more and more a set time to it to look forward, and will require to move with double wisdom; and will find, in short, that the crooked things that he has to pull straight in his own life, or round about, wherever he may be, are manifold, and will task all his strength wherever he may go.
But why should I complain of that either?--for that is a thing a man is born to in all epochs. He is born to expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for--to stand it out to the last breath of life, and do his best. We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get--which we are perfectly sure of if we have merited it--is that we have got the work done, or, at least, that we have tried to do the work; for that is a great blessing in itself; and I should say there is not very much more reward than that going in this world. If the man gets meat and clothes, what matters it whether he have £10,000, or £10,000,000, or £70 a-year. He can get meat and clothes for that; and he will find very little difference intrinsically, if he is a wise man. I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men--"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)
Finally, gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which is practically of very great importance, though a very humble one. I have no doubt you will have among you people ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of high; and you are to consider throughout, much more than is done at present, that health is a thing to be attended to continually--that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things for you. (Applause.) There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What are nuggets and millions? The French financier said, "Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?" Sleep was not in the market at any quotation. (Laughter and applause.) It is a curious thing that I remarked long ago, and have often turned in my head, that the old word for "holy" in the German language--_heilig_--also means "healthy." And so _Heil-bronn_ means "holy-well," or "healthy-well." We have in the Scotch "hale;" and, I suppose our English word "whole"--with a "w"--all of one piece, without any hole in it--is the same word. I find that you could not get any better definition of what "holy" really is than "healthy--completely healthy." _Mens sana in corpore sano_. (Applause.)
A man with his intellect a clear, plain, geometric mirror, brilliantly sensitive of all objects and impressions around it, and imagining all things in their correct proportions--not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless groping and manipulation--healthy, clear, and free, and all round about him. We never can attain that at all. In fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it. You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual operation--if you are going to write a book--at least, I never could--without getting decidedly made ill by it, and really you must if it is your business--and you must follow out what you are at--and it sometimes is at the expense of health. Only remember at all times to get back as fast as possible out of it into health, and regard the real equilibrium as the centre of things. You should always look at the _heilig_, which means holy, and holy means healthy.
Well, that old etymology--what a lesson it is against certain gloomy, austere, ascetic people, that have gone about as if this world were all a dismal-prison house! It has, indeed, got all the ugly things in it that I have been alluding to; but there is an eternal sky over it, and the blessed sunshine, verdure of spring, and rich autumn, and all that in it, too. Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given. Neither do you find it to have been so with old Knox. If you look into him you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, as well as the grimmest and sternest truth when necessary, and a great deal of laughter. We find really some of the sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I have seen in any man; for instance, in his "History of the Reformation," which is a book I hope every one of you will read--a glorious book.
The Future hides in it Gladness and sorrow: We press still thorow; Nought that abides in it Daunting us--Onward! And solemn before us, Veiled, the dark Portal, Goal of all mortal. Stars silent rest o'er us-- Graves under us, silent. While earnest thou gazest Comes boding of terror, Come phantasm and error; Perplexes the bravest With doubt and misgiving. But heard are the voices, Heard are the Sages, The Worlds and the Ages: "Choose well: your choice is Brief, and yet endless." Here eyes do regard you In Eternity's stillness; Here is all fulness, Ye brave, to reward you. Work, and despair not.[A] [Footnote A: Originally published in Carlyle's "Past and Present," (Lond. 1843,) p. 318, and introduced there by the following words:-- "My candid readers, we will march out of this Third Book with a rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; a word which perhaps has already sung itself, in dark hours and in bright, through many a heart. To me, finding it devout yet wholly credible and veritable, full of piety yet free of cant; to me joyfully finding much in it, and joyfully missing so much in it, this little snatch of music, by the greatest German man, sounds like a stanza in the grand _Road Song_ and _Marching Song_ of our great Teutonic kindred,--wending, wending, valiant and victorious, through the undiscovered Deeps of Time!"] One last word. _Wir heissen euch hoffen_--we bid you be of hope. Adieu for this time. The following is a letter addressed by Mr. Carlyle to Dr. Hutchison Stirling, late one of the candidates for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh:-- "Chelsea, 16th June, 1868.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.