Translations from the German · Thomas Carlyle
INSTEAD OF PREFACE.
Merchants, Authors, young Ladies and Quakers, call all persons, with whom they have any business, Friends; and my readers accordingly are my table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with his copy--in return for a trifling consideration and _don gratuit_ to printers, pressmen and other such persons. But as I could not, like the French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a complimentary word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page: on these we are now printing. My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from various public and private documents. With this Biography, dear Friends, it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure, as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have offered his prize-medals not for the invention of new pleasures, but for a good methodology and directory to use the old ones.
Of ways for becoming happier (not happy) I could never inquire out more than three. The first, rather an elevated road, is this: To soar away so far above the clouds of life, that you see the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses and thunder-rods, lying far down beneath you, shrunk into a little child's garden. The second is: Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third, finally, which I look upon as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating between the other two. This I shall now satisfactorily expound to men at large. The Hero, the Reformer, your Brutus, your Howard, your Republican, he whom civic storm, or genius, poetic storm, impels; in short, every mortal with a great Purpose, or even a perennial Passion (were it but that of writing the largest folios), all these men fence themselves in by their internal world against the frosts and heats of the external, as the madman in a worse sense does: every _fixed_ idea, such as rules every genius, every enthusiast, at least periodically, separates and elevates a man above the bed and board of this Earth, above its Dog's-grottoes, buckthorns and Devil's-walls; like the Bird of Paradise, he slumbers flying; and on his outspread pinions, oversleeps unconsciously the earthquakes and conflagrations of Life, in his long fair dream of his ideal Motherland,--Alas! to few is this dream granted; and these few are so often awakened by Flying Dogs![30]
My _second_ merely; and that is as follows: To take a compound microscope, and with it to discover, and convince themselves, that their drop of Burgundy is properly a Red Sea, that butterfly-dust is peacock-feathers, mouldiness a flowery-field, and sand a heap of jewels. These microscopic recreations are more lasting than all costly watering-place recreations.--But I must explain these metaphors by new ones. The purpose, for which I have sent _Fixleins Life_ into the Messrs. Luebeks' Warehouse, is simply that in this same _Life_,--therefore in this Preface it is less needful,--I may show to the whole Earth that we ought to value little joys more than great ones, the nightgown more than the dresscoat; that Plutus' heaps are worth less than his handfuls, the plum than the penny for a rainy day; and that not great, but little good-haps can make us happy.--Can I accomplish this, I shall, through means of my Book, bring up for Posterity, a race of men finding refreshment in all things; in the warmth of their rooms and of their nightcaps; in their pillows; in the three High Festivals; in mere Apostles' days; in the Evening Moral Tales of their wives, when these gentle persons have been forth as ambassadresses visiting some Dowager Residence, whither the husband could not be persuaded; in the bloodletting-day of these their news-bringers; in the day of slaughtering, salting, potting against the rigour of grim winter; and in all such days. You perceive, my drift is that man must become a little Tailor-bird, which, not amid the crashing boughs of the storm-tost, roaring, immeasurable tree of Life, but on one of its leaves, sews itself a nest together, and there lies snug. The most essential sermon one could preach to our century, were a sermon on the duty of staying at home.
The _third_ skyward road is the alternation between the other two. The foregoing _second_ way is not good enough for man, who here on Earth should take into his hand not the Sickle only, but also the Plough. The _first_ is too good for him. He has not always the force, like Rugendas, in the midst of the Battle to compose Battle-pieces; and, like Backhuysen in the Shipwreck, to clutch at no board but the drawing-board to paint it on. And then his _pains_ are not less lasting than his _fatigues_. Still oftener is Strength denied its Arena: it is but the smallest portion of life that, to a working soul, offers Alps, Revolutions, Rhine-falls, Worms Diets, and Wars with Xerxes; and for the whole it is better so: the longer portion of life is a field beaten flat as a threshing-floor, without lofty Gothard Mountains; often it is a tedious ice-field, without a single glacier tinged with dawn. But even by walking, a man rests and recovers himself for climbing; by little joys and duties, for great. The victorious Dictator must contrive to plough down his battle Mars-field into a flax and carrot field; to transform his theatre of war into a parlour theatre, on which his children may enact some good pieces from the _Children's Friend_. Can he accomplish this, can he turn so softly from the path of poetical happiness into that of household happiness,--then is he little different from myself, who even now, though modesty might forbid me to disclose it--who even now, I say, amid the creation of this Letter, have been enabled to reflect, that when it is done, so also will the Roses and Elder-berries of pastry be done, which a sure hand is seething in butter for the Author of this Work.
As I purpose appending to this Letter a Postscript (at the end of the Book), I reserve somewhat which I had to say about the Third[31] half-satirical half-philosophical part of the Work, till that opportunity. Here, out of respect for the rights of a Letter, the Author drops his half anonymity,[32] and for the first time subscribes himself with his _whole_ true name, _Hof in Voigtland, 29th June 1795._ [31] _Fixlein_ stands in the middle of the volume; preceded by _Einer Mustheil fuer Madchen_ (A Jelly-course for Young Ladies); and followed by _Some_ JUS DE TABLETTE _for Men_. A small portion of the Preface relating to the first I have already omitted. Neither of the two has the smallest relation to _Fixlein_.--ED. [32] _J. P. H., Jean Paul_ HASUS, _Jean Paul_, &c. have in succession been Richter's signatures. At present even, his German designation, either in writing or speech, is never _Richter_, but _Jean Paul_.--ED.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.