Past and Present

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Title: Past and Present
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Release Date: September 27, 2004 [EBook #13534]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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PRESENT ***
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PAST AND PRESENT
By Thomas Carlyle
Appreciation by Ralph Waldo Emerson
First published 1843
THOMAS CARLYLE, born in 1795 at Ecclefechan, the son of a

stonemason. Educated at Edinburgh University. Schoolmaster for a
short time, but decided on a literary career, visiting Paris and London.
Retired in 1828 to Dumfriesshire to write. In 1834 moved to Cheyne
Row, Chelsea, and died there in 1881.
INTRODUCTION
Being an appreciation from "The Dial" (July
1843)
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here is Carlyle's new poem, his Iliad of English woes, to follow his
poem on France, entitled the _History of the French Revolution._ In its
first aspect it is a political tract, and since Burke, since Milton, we have
had nothing to compare with it. It grapples honestly with the facts lying
before all men, groups and disposes them with a master's mind, and,
with a heart full of manly tenderness, offers his best counsel to his

brothers. Obviously it is the book of a powerful and
accomplished
thinker, who has looked with naked eyes at the dreadful political signs
in England for the last few years, has conversed much on these topics
with such wisemen of all ranks and parties as are drawn to a scholar's
house, until, such daily and nightly meditation has grown into a great
connection, if not a system of thoughts; and the topic of English
politics becomes the best vehicle for the expression of his recent
thinking, recommended to him by the desire to give some timely
counsels, and to strip the worst mischiefs of their plausibility. It is a
brave and just book, and not a semblance. "No new truth," say the
critics on all sides. Is it so? Truth is very old, but the merit of seers is
not to invent but to dispose objects in their right places, and he is the
commander who is always in the mount, whose eye not only sees
details, but throws crowds of details into their right arrangement and a
larger and juster totality than any other. The book makes great
approaches to true
contemporary history, a very rare success, and
firmly holds up to daylight the absurdities still tolerated in the English
and European system. It is such an appeal to the conscience and honour
of England as cannot be forgotten, or be feigned to be forgotten. It has
the merit which belongs to every honest book, that it was
self-examining before it was eloquent, and so hits all other men, and, as
the country people say of good preaching, "comes bounce down into
every pew." Every reader shall carry away something. The scholar shall
read and write, the farmer and mechanic shall toil, with new resolution,
nor forget the book when they resume their labour.
Though no theocrat, and more than most philosophers, a believer in
political systems, Mr. Carlyle very fairly finds the calamity of the times,
not in bad bills of Parliament, nor the remedy in good bills, but the vice
in false and superficial aims of the people, and the remedy in honesty
and insight. Like every work of genius, its great value is in telling such

simple truths. As we recall the topics, we are struck with force given to
the plain truths; the picture of the English nation all sitting enchanted,
the poor, enchanted so that they cannot work, the rich, enchanted so
that they cannot enjoy, and are rich in vain; the exposure of the
progress of fraud into all arts and social activities; the proposition that
the labourer must have a greater share in his earnings; that the principle
of permanence shall be admitted into all contracts of mutual service;
that the state shall provide at least schoolmaster's education for all the
citizens; the exhortation to the workman that he shall respect the work
and not the wages; to the scholar that he shall be there for light; to the
idle, that no man shall sit idle; the picture of Abbot Samson, the true
governor, who "is not there to expect reason and nobleness of others, he
is there to give them of his own reason and nobleness;" the assumption
throughout the book, that a new chivalry and nobility, namely the
dynasty of labour, is replacing the old nobilities. These things strike us
with a force