ization of human society, if the mass of men have, as seems to be assumed by Carlyle, only an equine nature. What is good for the horse and his owner, is good for men and their rulers, if these rulers be indeed what heroworship pre-supposes, in relation to those whom they govern. But no such inequality as this can be admitted, while we hold to the unity of the human race, while we recognize freedom, immortality, and the power of self-government in all. It also strikes us oddly, that Carlyle, while holding this theory, should exhort every one to remain where he is. The grand complaint which he makes is, that the great men, who monopolize all the divinity there is in the world, are left so often in obscurity, and not brought forward to be enthroned and worshipped. The "permanence" which he desires is not to begin, therefore, till after this enthronement. When the few "heroes" are clothed with irresponsible power over the rest of mankind, who willingly accept the position of slaves under them, then his millennium will begin. He laments the feudal age of English history, thinking it far happier than the present age of personal liberty. "Gurth's brass collar did not gall him; Cedric deserved to be his master. The pigs were Cedric's, but Gurth would get the parings of them. Gurth had the inexpressible satisfaction of feeling himself related indissolubly, though in a rude brass-collar way, to his fellow-mortals on this earth. He had superiors, inferiors, equals. Gurth is now 'emancipated;' has what we call liberty. Liberty, I am told, is a divine thing. Liberty, when it becomes liberty to die of starvation, is not so divine." It must be confessed. that our author faces

1

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 212.

this alternative of lordship or serfhood with much show of personal courage. He resigns himself to the decree of fate, in language at least, whether that decree shall assign him to the place of the master or of the slave. "If thou art in very deed my wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead and impel thee to conquer me, to command me. If thou do know better than I what is right, I conjure thee, in the name of God, force me to do it, were it by never such brass collars, whips and handcuffs." 1

The result of

anarchy.

And here we come to the point where Carlyle's doctrine breaks down utterly. It is the point of practical trial; the direct contest, between man and the theory is man, which is to decide who shall govern and who submit. The waxen wings by which humanity is to fly clear of all evils melt as soon as the flight is undertaken. The godhead, which is the sum of all reality, dwells in a few great men, who, by virtue of this indwelling divinity, ought to rule over us and ours; but how to place them in position, how to secure them this leadership, so as to inaugurate the golden reign of heroes, is a question before which even Carlyle seems to see that his argument labors. Yet he does not quail. He refuses to accept no logical result of his theory. Never did a reorganizer of human society face a difficulty more boldly, or state it more frankly. "Who is slave, and eternally appointed to be governed; who free, and eternally appointed to govern? It would much avail us to settle this question," says he.2 "To increase the reverence for human intellect, or God's light, what method is there? Pray that Heaven would please to vouchsafe us each a

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 213.

2 New Essays, p. 316.

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little of it, one by one! As perhaps Heaven, in infinite mercy by stern methods, gradually will. Perhaps Heaven has mercy too, in these sore plagues that are oppressing us; and means to teach us reverence for heroism and human intellect, by such baleful experience of what issue imbecility and parliamentary eloquence lead to." "What are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings, from Peterloo to the Place-de-Grève itself? To the ear of wisdom they are inarticulate prayers: 'guide me, govern me! I am mad and miserable, and cannot guide myself." Surely of all rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be gently or forcibly held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. Nature herself ordains it from the first; society struggles towards perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more. If freedom has any meaning, it means enjoyment of this right, wherein all other rights are enjoyed. It is a sacred right and duty on both sides; and the summary of all social duties between the two. Why does one toil with his hands, if the other be not to toil, still more unweariedly, with heart and head? The brawny craftsman finds it no child's play to mould the unpliant, rugged masses; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism: what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may see." 2

Thus does the problem present itself to Carlyle's mind; and he is shut up to a single method of solving it. The strongest man must hold the sceptre, the weaker must wear the yoke. Let us not start back from this solution, for he offers no other. "Divine right," he says, "take it on the

1 New Essays, p. 145.

2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 343.

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great scale, is divine might withal." He finds this might in Cromwell, more than in Napoleon; hence he deems the Protector worthy of more homage than the Emperor. This might within him, what Carlyle calls "latent valor and thought, content to lie latent, then burst out as in a blaze of heaven's lightning," was the basis of his right to revolutionize the English government. But we think that Cromwell himself would have given quite another account of his right in that matter. He asked neither worship nor homage for his own person; nor did he esteem himself strong, save in the devotion of his people with him to a common end, which he sought to secure by just laws representing the national will. "The just thing, in the long run," says Carlyle, "is the strong thing." "Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, are one and the same.”2 "The painfullest feeling is that of your own feebleness: to be weak is the true misery." According to Carlyle the Apostle was mistaken when he declared sin to be the great calamity, and when he gloried in his weakness as the occasion of power. His glorying as he did was not a Christian virtue, but a foolish habit of his, since feebleness is "the true misery." And why is man's consciousness of weakness his greatest calamity? Because "mights, I say, are a dreadful business to articulate correctly. Yet articulated they have to be; the time comes for it, the need comes for it, and with enormous difficulty and experimenting it is got done. Call it not succession of rebel

1 Hero-worship, p. 212.

2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 11.

3 Sartor Resartus, p. 128.

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lions; call it rather succession of expansions, of enlightenments, gift of articulate utterance descending lower and lower." Thus does the "ultimate political evangel," which was to free the world from hereditary despotisms, from governments by written constitutions, and from elective democracies, and which was to usher in the golden reign of heroes, end in a carnival of riot and red-handed rebellion. A revolutionary spirit, acting itself out to the utmost, is the only way of lifting up to supreme power the few who deserve to rule, and of forcing all others down. into proper subjection. It is with men as with oxen, where a trial of sheer strength decides which one shall be the leader of the herd. "I say sometimes," is Carlyle's language, "that all goes by wager of battle in this world; that strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a right thing." "I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in the world, with any sword, or tongue, or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself; and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. In this great duel nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest rooted in nature, which we call truest, that thing will be found growing at last." "The fighting was indispensable, for ascertaining who had the right over whom. By much hard fighting, as we once said, 'the unrealities, beaten into dust, flew off;' and left the 2 Hero-worship, p. 128.

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 360.

3 Ibid., p. 55.

,2