BY PROF. T. VIRABHADRUDU, M.A.

Thomas Carlyle is a great force in the field of nineteenth-century English literature. His character and personality and his theories and doctrines are unique in the life and literature of Victorian England. His contribution to the literature of the time is many-sided and the service rendered by him to the several departments of prose-writing is remarkable. As a biographer and historian and as a critic of literature, his achievement stands by itself and he shines in English literature as one of its great prose-poets. His style, like his temper and doctrines, is peculiar, and affords a typical example of the truth of the saying ‘Style is the Man’. He is heroical in many ways and what he says about Great Men or Heroes applies very well to him. According to him, the Hero must be original and sincere. His main purpose in life must be to reveal the God-like in man and in nature. He must study life deeply and try his best ‘to pluck out the heart of its mystery’. He must have a lofty ideal and dedicate his life to the fulfillment of that ideal. There is no doubt Carlyle affords a good illustration of such heroism. He is a great thinker and a most zealous preacher. He is never tired of repeating his doctrines or elaborating them, and his books, which are in several volumes, are an example of the same ideas explained in different ways, examined from different standpoints, applied to different conditions or illustrated with reference to different personalities. He is a God-missioned man; the great prophet of modern England who delivered his message to ‘a perverse and gainsaying generation’. By many he is neglected as a mere dreamer; but it is interesting to note that similar points of view regarding human progress and civilization are being championed with great force by some of the most famous and heroic personalities of the world at the present time.

Carlyle was the great apostle of German culture in the nineteenth century. He often said that his main purpose in life was to enable his countrymen to have access to the ideals, thoughts and aspirations of Germany. In his works he often explains how he drew his inspiration from Goethe and the other German Masters and how the touch of German influence transformed him into a new man and put him on the road to the solution of the knotty problem of human existence. Like several thinking men, Carlyle had once his mental troubles; he was for a time in the region of unbelief. "The hot fever of anarchy and misery raging within his breast", he could not be reconciled to life. "Doubt had led him to Denial and he wandered aimlessly in this world with no tidings of a higher one." He could not be at peace with himself, for, loss of faith in God meant loss of everything to him. He could not seek for any solace from the conditions of his time, for, as he puts it, "The more you have, the greater the discontent". Lord Byron had the advantages of birth and wealth but was always dissatisfied with life and was always complaining of something or other. Man is never happy and if you give him more, he will ask for more and hence Carlyle exclaims in words which anticipate Mahatma Gandhi's teaching in the present age:

Therefore, he advises those who wish to be happy not to ask for more and more food but to close their Byron and open their Goethe. It was this great German Philosopher who developed the God-like in him, persuaded him to love God in preference to pleasure and installed belief on the throne of his heart. Thus Carlyle after wading through agony, doubt and skepticism, finally emerged from the Slough of Despond–The Everlasting Nay–and alighted on the land of belief–The Everlasting yea– "wherein all contradiction is solved". Truly, as a great critic has said, if Carlyle was the revealer of Germany to England, "Germany revealed Carlyle to himself!"

Carlyle was a great reactionary in England in the nineteenth century. The age was famous in its own way, but to a mind like that of Carlyle's, England was looking at life from the wrong end. It was an age which aimed at wealth and one which was suffering from lack of spiritual ideals. The achievements of the age may be summed up in three words: Science, Democracy and Commercialism. In the opinion of Carlyle, great as these achievements were, not a little damage was done to national growth and prosperity. Love of money and, with it, selfishness grew by leaps and bounds, and sympathy for man was at the lowest ebb. Men were satisfied with the life around them and would not bestow any thought on what would happen to man in the next world. The fountains of religion, the fountains of belief, were completely exhausted. Society was supposed to be improving but while the rich became richer, the poor were becoming poorer day by day. In the opinion of Carlyle, the age of scientific inventions and democratic spirit has no doubt caused a tremendous increase in man's comfort but its moral effects are far-reaching. The Utilitarianism, Mammonism, Agnosticism, Positivism, Chartism, and the various other isms that were the offspring of this age were the evils of English society and several of the writers who could rise above the surface condemned it in unmistakable terms and Carlyle was the most vehement of them all. One of them tried his best to open the eyes of his contemporaries to the seamy side of the London poor man's life. Another pleaded very strongly for a revival of the emotional religion of the Middle Ages by pointing out how completely the springs of religion were dried up in his own day. Two others proclaimed most courageously how the social and economic life of the time degraded the poor and demoralized the rich and how economic bankruptcy and spiritual barikruptcy went together. A few others regretted how scientific inquiry and absolute realism would not quench the thirst of the poet's heart and showed how a poet could be happy in the world of the Medieval or Hellenic past. Thus the citadel of science and utilitarianism was being bombarded on all sides. The humanitarianism of Dickens, the transcendentalism of Carlyle and Ruskin, the Catholicism of Newman and the aestheticism of the Pre-Raphaelites were the various aspects of the attack on the Spirit of the nineteenth century by some of its own best men. It was a great scientist who declared that action and reaction are equal and opposite and what is true of the laws of motion is equally true of the laws of society.

Thus Carlyle was a great reactionary and led a crusade against the Mammon-worship of the time. Mammonism was according to him the bane of English civilisation. He could really have no sympathy for an epoch in which "The Upholsterer is a Pontiff and the Drawing-room a Temple". The science of political economy is a dismal science for, "in the midst of plethoric plenty the people perish". There is wealth in the country but it is ‘Midas-eared Mammonism’, since the poor cannot touch it. "The people are all a flock of dumb sheep whom we are all agreed to shear." All acts of the Commonwealth are useless notwithstanding the noise they make. Our laws and regulations which are often advertised as promoting national interests are but ‘the rudder and spigot of taxation’. The poor man, in Carlyle's opinion, is not anxious for our theories and constitutions or philosophy and poetry but is anxious for only one thing: how to keep the wolf from the door. An exactly similar sentiment was expressed by Mahatma Gandhi when he said that even the best poems from Kabir are of no avail with an empty stomach which can be lulled to sleep by only one song –invigorating food. According to Carlyle our politicians often miss the purpose for which they are intended. They are busy with their theories and doctrines.

"They are playing a game of chess (whereof the pawns are men) while two-legged animals without feathers are lying in horizontal positions . . . . ."

He therefore asks:

"When such is the state, is it a wonder that a general over-turn like the one we witnessed in 1789 will be produced? Our King-Do-Nothings and Eat-Alls will in course of time be the parents of Meal-Mobs and Dull-Drudgery and the Monster, Many-headed Fire-breathing Sanscoluttism, will eventually devour up the whole system."

In his opinion this is but the logical sequence of bur great ‘Profit and Loss theory’ and ‘Machine-theory of the Universe’: that is, this is the natural product of an age of utilitarian industrialism and scientific logic. Matters can be set right only when we believe that the world is not a mere lifeless mechanism, but that it has a force behind–the Supreme will of the Creator who is above all science, whose sympathy, is our solace, and whose vision we have to see not with the help of our logic-spectacles such as the ones we have used up-till-now but with the God-given eye of the human heart!

Carlyle's message to his contemporaries, therefore, is that they should remember that life is not a sport but a stern reality. It is an ‘Unfathomable Somewhat’. It is an ‘open secret’, open to all but seen by none. He means that life yields pleasure to us if we understand it aright and are able to solve its problem; otherwise it will make us miserable. In Past and Present he says:

"Such a spinx is our life –very attractive with the claws of a lioness."

The human being must think about life and pursue a lofty ideal. Carlyle feels that Ben Jonson is right when he says:

"A certain degree of soul is indispensable to keep the very body from destruction of the frightfullest sort; to save us the expense of salt; otherwise even salt will not save us."

and what Ben Jonson says about individuals applies very well to nations. Carlyle's opinion is that we are liable to temptations of several kinds and unless we have a goal before us which we have it as our ambition to reach, we are likely to be lost in the mire of our ordinary lives. The most important thing in life is belief, and absence of belief is irreligion: a state of mind which is ugly and unnatural. The word Church speaks volumes to him. It is a symbol of belief and hence a mighty force. He reveals his enthusiasm when he exclaims:

"The church: what a word was there; richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world!" –French Revolution.

These symbols, which the modern rationalist treats with contempt, are a reality. They are the Finite shape which the Infinite assumes for the benefit of mankind. But science by bringing in a spirit of inquiry has destroyed wonder (the basis of all worship) and in its stead substituted measuration and numeration. In this connection Carlyle mentions "there is one thing remarkable in Indian character–the Hindoo Passivity". Carlyle appreciates those who consider all matter as a manifestation of the spirit and treat every object as sacred. He sincerely thinks that man is a miracle of miracles and one must study man or nature with veneration. Thought without reverence does not stay long and,

"The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he the greatest scientist of the modern time, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye. Let those who have eyes look through them and they may be useful."

Carlyle's sympathy for the poor and down-trodden is unbounded and is the offspring of his belief in the oneness of things. He has a contempt for those who despise people in the humbler walks of life. To him the spinner and the weaver, the carpenter and the road-maker, are objects of study and imitation. He indignantly asks,

"That manly man in the Ragged coat, Did you Reverence him? Did you know he was a manly man till his coat grew better?"

He finds poetry in "the poorest Ox-Goad and the dirtiest Gipsy-Blanket", for, he believes "there is only one temple in the Universe and that is the body of man". He says:

"What is it we cannot love since all is created by God?"

The man that is untaught, uncomforted and unfed has a claim to recognition; he is not a separate individual standing by himself but a part of the spirit that flows through the whole Universe, and his attitude is best expressed in the following passage from Sartor Resartus:

"That little fire where the sooty smith bends over his anvil,–and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool, that smithy fire was (primarily) kindled at the sun; is fed by air that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dog Star; . . . . Detached, separated! I say there is no such separation; . . . Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself."

Carlyle thinks that Nature with its manifold productions and destructions is but the reflex of our own inward Force, ‘the phantasy of our Dream,’ and the view of Goethe that the Universe is the living visible garment of God is full of meaning. He is very fond of quoting the remark of the Earth-Spirit,

"I weave for God the Garment thou seest him by."

The highest state of a man's mind according to one system of Hindu philosophy is when the, human being can realise that the Universe is not separate from him, but that it is only an image of himself, or when he is conscious that he is the Universe and the God we are all seeking for is within himself. In other words, in this, as in many other points, Carlyle comes nearest the Eastern mind, for, in his famous expression ‘Me the only reality’, we find an echo of the Hindu sentiment Aham Brahma (The Creator is in me)."

Another great contribution that Carlyle has made to nineteenth-century thought is what he calls ‘the Gospel of Work’. To him work is sacred however humble it may be. Work is religion and even road-making or drawing out water from the puddles is noble. All work is worship. Our doubts and troubles–the Everlasting No's–will all disappear, when we are on the path of duty. Doubts can never be removed except by action and so he exhorts mankind thus:

"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer . . . . Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! It is the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might, Work while it is called Today: for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work." (Sartor Resartus.)

He believes that even cotton-spinning is a holy task! He emphatically says:

"There are only two men who deserve honour: one who works for daily bread, the physically indispensable, another who toils for food and also gives us light–the spiritually indispensable. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could any such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself."

Is it not lucky for us that after a long lapse of about twenty centuries, the world has been able to discover in India a worthy companion to the Carpenter of Nazareth in the Weaver of Sabarmati?

Carlyle's theory of Great Men is his most famous contribution to English thought in the Victorian Era. He has implicit faith in great men and in his opinion biography is the most instructive branch of human knowledge. His doctrine of great men seems to have its origin in his distrust of Democracy. Though he shows great sympathy for the poor and oppressed, Democracy, in his opinion, is Mobocracy and one of his disciples, Ruskin, went so far as to say "No King means no government". He believes that there are a few wise men in each age who should be chosen and placed at the head of the State to guide its affairs. It is the duty of the nation to choose members from this great Aristocracy of Talent and follow them through thick and thin. To select these men is by no means an easy task and to imitate them is very difficult. But the nation can reach its destination only when it acts according to the advice of these wise men who are therefore the makers of the history of that nation in that particular epoch. This view seems an extreme view to many of us, especially to those to whom society is a matter of scientific progress and the so-called great men are only ripples on the surface. Many of us may find it impossible to say whether the great man is absolutely the creator or creature of his age, but one thing is clear. At certain stages in the history of a nation, it often happens that an individual is born who towers aloft, who sees the wrongs from which his country suffers in social life, religion or politics, who realises fully well the limitations of his nation and who dedicates his life to its uplift. He sees the vision of his country's future and tries his utmost to show his countrymen a far-off goal which they have to reach by dint of honest and courageous effort. His duty is to place them on the path leading to the goal and from time to time pour enthusiasm into them lest any Fainthearts should falter on the way. He has to exhibit all his strength and courage and push on uncorrupted by bribes or undaunted by threats. He is a Hero and his history is practically the history of the nation in that particular epoch. Carlyle believes that ‘the Sovereign is the wise man’ and that these heroes rule the world as priests, warriors, kings or poets. He has no sympathy for those who inquire scientifically into the conditions of the age and begin ‘to account for these great men’. He admits that every great man is a creature of the age in a way but is careful to add that there are some periods in the world's history when the maker of history is born–‘the Indispensable saviour of the epoch’–whose position, ‘that of the hero in a drama,’ should not be lost sight of by the historian. Odin the God, Mahommed the prophet, Cromwell the Politician, Shakespeare the Poet, and Johnson the man of letters, everyone of them is a Hero and creator of history. Moreover such great men are the epitomes of their several epochs, for, the spirit of the age is embodied in them and its various struggles are summed up in the struggles of the individual. In Carlyle's opinion, these great men have not only a reason to be admired, but have also a right to govern mankind; and it is the privilege of mortals to admire them. He says:

"Moreover it is the joy of man's heart to admire another and worship him . . . . Does not every man feel he is made higher by reverencing one who is great? It is the most vivifying influence in man's life, heart-felt prostrate admiration, submission of oneself to another, burning zeal for a God-like form of man." (This form of worship still exists in India e.g. Namaskar=bowing down):

In one age it is the prophet, in another it is the warrior; in a third it is the poet, in a fourth it is the statesman, but there is hero-worship in some form or other in all epochs of human civilisation. In fine, society is based on hero-worship and, hero-worship endures for ever while man endures.

Carlyle's Heroes or Makers of History have qualities peculiar to themselves and common to all of them–a social reformer, a religious preacher, a Puritan politician, a dramatic poet and an original critic. All of these are inspired. Sincerity is the soul of their moral being. Above all every one of them is silent. Carlyle's doctrine of silence is peculiar–as peculiar as are other doctrines preached by him. A man who could keep silent for a day finds himself happier and more elevated the next day. The Empire of silence is vast and these Heroes are the monarchs of that region. He admits speech is silvern but undoubtedly silence is golden. The history of the Oak tree is in his opinion a mighty truth. When the seed was sown, how it grew nobody knows. In its life-time the tree did silent service for a thousand years and when it was felled it produced a thunder and everybody marked its fall. The great dramatist of Elizabethan England performed miracles during his time and is still a potent force with many of us; still his birth was silent and his career was silent. Great men do not proclaim themselves from house-tops, but they do steady silent work, till at last they are able to capture the whole world. Also they do more of thinking and acting than of speaking. Their religion is silence, for,

Another quality characteristic of these great men is that they are versatile. "A Hero is a Hero at all points." Understanding or the faculty of thinking is not a mere tool but is a hand which can handle any tool and whatever may be the department of human activity to which it is applied, it certainly produces wonders. But the most important feature of these Heroes is they are all unconscious. The greatest dramatist of England is so great, is able to exercise such eminent influence on the world, because he is unconscious. Carlyle believes that a great man never "engraves truth on his watch-seal". He is able to do such mighty things in life because he is inspired: When we happen to have a great soul (e.g. M. K Gandhi) amidst us, whose work is mighty or miraculous, our admiration for him is so great that we style him a Saint, a Prophet, an Angel, or an Incarnation; but if we approached him–were he the greatest man of the world–with such opinions, he would certainly surprise us by saying, "I am a mortal such as you are. If you prick me, shall I not bleed?" In Carlyle's opinion "the unconscious is alone the complete," and it is also true to a great extent. Very often in life we find that the imperfect

often pretend to be perfect while the perfect still feel they are imperfect. Carlyle's enthusiasm for these Heroes is so strong that he considers them–prophets, statesmen or poets–messengers of God coming down from Heaven to uplift humanity. He says:

"They are Inspired Texts in the Divine Book of Revelation whereof a chapter is completed from Epoch to Epoch and named History."

They are the shapes which God assumes in the Various periods of world's history, in order to redeem mankind from their wrongs. This is certainly a very sublime and spiritual conception of great men and their task. It reminds a Hindu of what Lord Sri Krishna said in the Gita:

"For the protection of the righteous, for the destruction of the unrighteous, for the establishment of Dharma. (Right) in the world, I appear in the world from time to time."

Carlye's enthusiasm for great men is so characteristic of him that he thinks there is no science in the world which is not based on the doctrine of Hero-worship. History, which is to us the story of the rise and fall of a large collection of individuals, is to him ‘the essence of innumerable biographies’ and the history of the world is no more than the history of its great men. Goethe is right when he says that we know nothing of the past except a few details of some of the great men of past times. The most surprising statement of all is when Carlyle–himself a historian–emphatically declares,

"In history we do not find what is done but what is misdone; and hence those people are lucky whose annals are vacant."

At a time when people were devoting their lives to the study of documents and collection of facts, Carlyle had the boldness, we might call it audacity, to proclaim,

"Foolish History ever more or less, is the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour."

This does not mean that Carlyle does not believe in the usefulness of history. History, in his opinion, is the most ancient of all branches of knowledge. To write history is a sacred task. "It is a prophetic manuscript in which several letters have not been deciphered so far." It is a mighty task to which most of us are unequal. The historian must not confine his attention to battles and wars, charters and constitutions but must present to us life beyond these limits: the thoughts and ideals of the people and the problems which puzzled their minds and must detail to us the efforts of those who by toiling hard days and nights have contributed in no small way to the comfort and success of mankind. The historian must reveal the spirit of the age. He must at the same time select the heroes of the epoch–the makers of history–present to us their ideals, their joys and sorrows and elevate us by giving us the clue to the solution of some problem relating to his time or to human kind in general. This means Carlyle wants history must not only be scientific but must also be biographical, philosophical and dramatic. Really Carlyle was not the proper man to write history or criticise it; he was a preacher and transcendentalist whose sole aim in life was to teach men to realise the one among the many, to pass from the finite to the infinite.

When we turn from Carlyle's treatment of history to his criticism of literature, we find the same attitude, that of the transcendental preacher. He was not a professional critic or a mere man of letters. He was a philosopher and prophet whose doctrines and outlook on life colour his views on everything (poetry included) and hence it is no wonder that his views on individual works and authors are unique. When he examines a poet, the first thing he looks for is sincerity. In his opinion poetry without love (i.e., genuine feeling) is an impossibility. Dante the great poet of Italy is so great because he is deeply sincere. "His poetry has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. He is world-great not because he is world- wide but because he is world-deep." It is Dante's inmost feelings that have taken the shape of the Divine Comedy. Carlyle often speaks enthusiastically of one of the most remarkable books of the East, the sacred book of Islam, for, in his opinion, "if anything come from the heart of man, it wil1 contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that freedom from cant." The Al Quran is sacred because its author had a sincerity–‘an unconscious sincerity'–and was ‘deep-hearted’. Another quality that Carlyle seeks for in poetry is that the poet must not restrict himself to the real. The poet must tell us of the ideal and must take us through the finite to the edge of the infinite. Moreover poetry is not a quality which can be separated from or super-added to the human system in any way we like. It is an index of general harmony in the human mind, the music of the language being a result of the music of the heart. Another thing about poetry is that "a poet in word is a poet in act" and to write a heroic poem, the poet must make his life itself a heroic poem, Life is a great battle with pleasure and temptation, evil and doubt, and unless the poet comes out victorious in this fight, i.e. unless he has strength of heart and is finally reconciled to life, his works will riot elevate us at all. Therefore the author of every great poem is a warrior or a hero and similarly the heroic struggles and achievements of any individual, recorded in however plain and simple a language, form a heroic poem. Thus Boswell's Life of Johnson is the most valuable heroic poem of the age. It is the Johnsoniad (unrhymed, however) of the eighteenth century. Also Carlyle says it is impossible for any poetry to make an appeal unless the poet first passed through all those emotional stages which he associates with his characters. He asks: "How could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, and so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered?"

These are the reasons why poetry is sacred and the poet a benefactor of the human race. His enthusiasm for poets can be excellently illustrated from the following tribute to Shakespeare:

"He is the grandest thing we have yet done. Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire, or your Shakespeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never had had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language; but, we for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakespeare. Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts for ever with us; we cannot give up our Shakespeare!"

In conclusion, it may be said that Carlyle's great message to his countrymen was that they should not be contented with the world around them but must think of the Great Beyond, and that Mammon-worship must yield place to God-worship. All skepticism will disappear when men take to their work, and work is the solution to evils individual or national. But to fulfill this ideal the human being must lean on the example of some great man, i.e. he must be a hero-worshipper. Thus the message of spirituality, the gospel of work and the doctrine of hero-worship–these words sum up Carlyle's contribution to nineteenth-century thought and the same message is delivered in some shape or other whatever the name of the book may be. In his love of spirituality, in his mysticism, in his belief in the oneness of things and in his enthusiasm for heroes of the past, Carlyle is in the company of the thinkers of the East. Like all transcendentalists he looks at life from on high. He thinks that all branches of knowledge aim at the same thing. To the average man Philosophy, History, Biography and Poetry are separate departments or water-tight compartments. The philosopher gives abstract generalisations on life and dry discussions of moral truths. The historian deals with facts relating to the progress of a nation in politics. The biographer records in prose the thoughts and sayings, and the successes and failures of some one distinguished individual. The poet resorts to fiction and makes the natural supernatural and the supernatural natural. Carlyle feels that all these branches perform one and the same function and have to adopt one and the same method. "History is the essence of innumerable biographies." Also, "History is Philosophy teaching by experience", thus in history the general and the particular are combined, so that history is the same as literature. Again he says poetry is at best a biography, for there is no great poem in any language which is not at bottom a biography and at the same time there is no biography of a great man which is not a good epic poem. Thus history is philosophy, poetry is philosophy and both these are to be treated biographically. To the man who walks in the street one man is different from another and one house is distinct from another; but for one who is seated on a rock, it is not easy to distinguish between man and man or house and house. The average individual feels that science is one thing and religion is another and their ideals necessarily clash. But to the great scientist of the modern time, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, both science and religion teach only one thing: that there is unity amidst diversity. Therefore in Carlyle's opinion, all sciences deliver the same message: that amidst these Specialties, we should not forget the great Generality. This can be achieved only when we study the life of a great hero whose life gives us the key to the solution of one or other of the problems of man. Thus the great prophet of Victorian England toiled hard for a whole life-time to preach a message which reminds us how we can make our lives sublime" and leave "footprints on the sands of time".