The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

THOMAS CARLYLE

On Heroes and Hero-Worship

This is the last of four series of lectures which Carlyle (see Vol. IX, p. 99) delivered in London in successive years, and is the only series which was published. The "Lectures on Heroes" were given in May, 1840, and were published, with emendations and additions, from the reporter's notes in 1841. The preceding series were on "German Literature," 1837; "The Successive Periods of European Culture," 1838; and "The Revolutions of Modern Europe," 1839. Carlyle's profound and impassioned belief in the quasi-divine inspiration of great men, in the authoritative nature of their "message," and in their historical effectiveness, was a reaction against a way of writing history which finds the origin of events in "movements," "currents," and "tendencies" neglecting or minimising the power of personality. For Carlyle, biography was the essential element in history; his view of events was the dramatic view, as opposed to the scientific view. It is idle to inquire which is the better or truer view, where both are necessary. But Carlyle is here specially tilting against a prejudice which has so utterly passed away that it is difficult even to imagine it. This was to the effect that eminent historical figures have been in some sense impostors. This work suffers a good deal from its origin, but, like others of Carlyle's writings, it has had great effect in discrediting a barren and flippant rationalism.

I.—The Hero as Divinity

We have undertaken to discourse on great men, their manner of appearance in our world's business, how they shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, and what work they did. We are to treat of hero-worship and the heroic in human affairs. The topic is as wide as universal history itself, for the history of what man has accomplished in this world is, at bottom, the history of the great men who have worked here.

It is well said that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. I do not mean the Church creed which he professes, but the thing that he does practically believe, the manner in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the unseen world. Was it heathenism, a plurality of gods, a mere sensuous representation of the mystery of life, and for chief recognised element therein physical force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible as the only reality; time ever resting on eternity; pagan empire of force displaced by the nobler supremacy of holiness? Was it scepticism, uncertainty, and inquiry whether there was an unseen world at all, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? The answer to these questions gives us the soul of the history of the man or nation.

Odin, the central figure of Scandinavian paganism, shall be our emblem of the hero as divinity. And in the first place I protest against the theory that this paganism or any other religion has consisted of mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all. Man everywhere is the born enemy of lies, and paganism, to its followers, was at one time earnestly true. Nor can we admit that other theory, which attributed these mythologies to allegory, or to the play of poetic minds. Pagan religion, like every other, is indeed a symbol of what men felt about the universe, but a practical guiding knowledge of this mysterious life of theirs, and not a perfect poetic symbol of it, has been the want of men. The "Pilgrim's Progress" is a just and beautiful allegory, but it could never have preceded the faith which it symbolises. Men never risked their soul's life on allegories; there was a kind of fact at the heart of paganism.