Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History | Page 5

the past are no longer living for them,
no longer what they need for the embodiment of their spiritual life.
Two mistakes are now possible, and these are, indeed, commonly made
together. On the one hand, men may try to ignore the growth of
knowledge and the expansion of thought, and to cling to the outgrown
symbols as things having in themselves some mysterious sanctity and
power. On the other hand, they may recklessly endeavour to cast aside
the reality symbolised along with the discredited symbol itself. Given
such a condition of things, and we shall find religion degenerating into
formalism and the worship of the dead letter, and, side by side with this,
the impatient rejection of all religion, and the spread of a crude and
debasing materialism. Religious symbols, then, must be renewed. But
their renewal can come only from within. Form, to have any real value,
must grow out of life and be fed by it.
The revolutionary quality in the philosophy of "Sartor Resartus" cannot,
of course, be overlooked. Everything that man has woven for himself
must in time become merely "old clothes"; the work of his thought, like
that of his hands, is perishable; his very highest symbols have no
permanence or finality. Carlyle cuts down to the essential reality
beneath all shows and forms and emblems: witness his amazing vision
of a naked House of Lords. Under his penetrating gaze the "earthly
hulls and garnitures" of existence melt away. Men's habit is to rest in
symbols. But to rest in symbols is fatal, since they are at best but the
"adventitious wrappages" of life. Clothes "have made men of us"--true;
but now, so great has their influence become that "they are threatening
to make clothes-screens of us." Hence "the beginning of all wisdom is

to look fixedly on clothes ... till they become transparent." The logical
tendency of such teaching may seem to be towards utter nihilism. But
that tendency is checked and qualified by the strong conservative
element which is everywhere prominent in Carlyle's thought. Upon the
absolute need of "clothes" the stress is again and again thrown. They
"have made men of us." By symbols alone man lives and works. By
symbols alone can he make life and work effective. Thus even the
world's "old clothes"--its discarded forms and creeds--should be treated
with the reverence due to whatever has once played a part in human
development. Thus, moreover, we must be on our guard against the
impetuosity of the revolutionary spirit and all rash rupture with the past.
To cast old clothes aside before new clothes are ready--this does not
mean progress, but sansculottism, or a lapse into nakedness and
anarchy.
* * * * *
The lectures "On Heroes and Hero-Worship," here printed with "Sartor
Resartus," contain little more than an amplification, through a series of
brilliant character-studies, of those fundamental ideas of history which
had already figured among Teufelsdröckh's social speculations. Simple
in statement and clear in doctrine, this second work needs no formal
introduction. It may, however, be of service just to indicate one or two
points at which, apart from its set theses, it expresses or implies certain
underlying principles of all Carlyle's thought.
In the first place, his philosophy of history rests entirely on "the great
man theory." "Universal History, the history of what man has
accomplished in the world," is for him "at bottom the History of the
Great Men who have worked here." This conception, of course, brings
him into sharp conflict with that scientific view of history which was
already gaining ground when "Heroes and Hero-Worship" was written,
and which since then has become even more popular under the
powerful influence of the modern doctrine of evolution. A scientific
historian, like Buckle or Taine, seeks to explain all changes in thought,
all movements in politics and society, in terms of general laws; his
habit is, therefore, to subordinate, if not quite to eliminate, the

individual; the greatest man is treated as in a large measure the product
and expression of the "spirit of the time." For Carlyle, individuality is
everything. While, as he is bound to admit, "no one works save under
conditions," external circumstances and influences count little. The
Great Man is supreme. He is not the creature of his age, but its creator;
not its servant, but its master. "The History of the World is but the
Biography of Great Men."
Anti-scientific in his reading of history, Carlyle is also anti-democratic
in the practical lessons he deduces from it. He teaches that our right
relations with the Hero are discipular relations; that we should honestly
acknowledge his superiority, look up to him, reverence him. Thus on
the personal side he challenges that tendency to "level down" which he
believed to be one alarming result