Thomas Carlyle
ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY
CONTENTS.
I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.
II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM.
III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE.
IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.
V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.
VI. THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM.
LECTURES ON HEROES.
[May 5, 1840.]
LECTURE I.
THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.
We have undertaken to discourse here for a little on Great Men, their
manner of appearance in our world's business, how they have shaped
themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work
they did;--on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and performance; what
I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is
a large topic; deserving quite other treatment than we can expect to give
it at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as
Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Universal History, the
history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the
History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of
men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense
creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to
attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are
properly the outer material result, the practical realization and
embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world:
the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were
the history of these. Too clearly it is a topic we shall do no justice to
in this place!
One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable
company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without
gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is
good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has
enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only,
but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing
light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic
nobleness;--in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. On
any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such neighborhood
for a while. These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely distant
countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing altogether,
ought, if we look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us.
Could we see them well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of
the world's history. How happy, could I but, in any measure, in such times
as these, make manifest to you the meanings of Heroism; the divine relation
(for I may well call it such) which in all times unites a Great Man to
other men; and thus, as it were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as
break ground on it! At all events, I must make the attempt.
It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact
with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's. By religion I do not
mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which
he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many
cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain
to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them.
This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion; which is
often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from
the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. But the
thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough _withoutasserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does
practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital
relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that
is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all
the rest. That is his _religion_; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and
_no-religion_: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be
spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell
me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what
the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation we inquire,
therefore, first of all, What religion they had? Was it
Heathenism,--plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of this
Mystery of Life, and for chief recognized element therein Physical Force?
Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the
only reality; Time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on
Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of
Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there was an
Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad one;--doubt as to all this,
or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? Answering of this question is giving
us the soul of the history of the man or nation. The thoughts they had
were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of
their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined
the outward and actual;--their religion, as I say, was the great fact about
them. In these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct
our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known
well, all is known. We have chosen as the first Hero in our series Odin
the central figure of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a most
extensive province of things. Let us look for a little at the Hero as
Divinity, the oldest primary form of Heroism.
Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Paganism; almost
inconceivable to us in these days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of
delusions, confusions, falsehoods, and absurdities, covering the whole
field of Life! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were
possible, with incredulity,--for truly it is not easy to understand that
sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, believe and live by such
a set of doctrines. That men should have worshipped their poor fellow-man
as a God, and not him only, but stocks and stones, and all manner of
animate and inanimate objects; and fashioned for themselves such a
distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe: all
this looks like an incredible fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact that
they did it. Such hideous inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs,
men, made as we are, did actually hold by, and live at home in. This is
strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and silence over the depths of
darkness that are in man; if we rejoice in the heights of purer vision he
has attained to. Such things were and are in man; in all men; in us too.
Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the Pagan religion:
mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did
believe it,--merely contrived to persuade other men, not worthy of the name
of sane, to believe it! It will be often our duty to protest against this
sort of hypothesis about men's doings and history; and I here, on the very
threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other
_isms_ by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this
world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them
up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more
advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but
quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the
health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of
their being about to die! Let us never forget this. It seems to me a most
mournful hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth to any faith even in
savage men. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things.
We shall not see into the true heart of anything, if we look merely at the
quackeries of it; if we do not reject the quackeries altogether; as mere
diseases, corruptions, with which our and all men's sole duty is to have
done with them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice.
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