Part 8 (1/2)
Well, that old etymology--what a lesson it is against certain gloomy, austere, ascetic people, that have gone about as if this world were all a dismal-prison house! It has, indeed, got all the ugly things in it that I have been alluding to; but there is an eternal sky over it, and the blessed suns.h.i.+ne, verdure of spring, and rich autumn, and all that in it, too. Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given. Neither do you find it to have been so with old Knox. If you look into him you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, as well as the grimmest and sternest truth when necessary, and a great deal of laughter. We find really some of the sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I have seen in any man; for instance, in his ”History of the Reformation,” which is a book I hope every one of you will read--a glorious book.
On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it--not in sorrows or contradiction to yield, but pus.h.i.+ng on towards the goal. And don't suppose that people are hostile to you in the world. You will rarely find anybody designedly doing you ill. You may feel often as if the whole world is obstructing you, more or less; but you will find that to be because the world is travelling in a different way from you, and rus.h.i.+ng on in its own path. Each man has only an extremely good-will to himself--which he has a right to have--and is moving on towards his object. Keep out of literature as a general rule, I should say also. (Laughter.) If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel--as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature--you will also find there are n.o.ble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price. You will get good and evil as you go on, and have the success that has been appointed to you.
I will wind up with a small bit of verse that is from Goethe also, and has often gone through my mind. To me it has the tone of a modern psalm in it in some measure. It is sweet and clear. The clearest of sceptical men had not anything like so clear a mind as that man had--freer from cant and misdirected notion of any kind than any man in these ages has been This is what the poet says:--
The Future hides in it Gladness and sorrow: We press still thorow; Nought that abides in it Daunting us--Onward!
And solemn before us, Veiled, the dark Portal, Goal of all mortal.
Stars silent rest o'er us-- Graves under us, silent.
While earnest thou gazest Comes boding of terror, Come phantasm and error; Perplexes the bravest With doubt and misgiving.
But heard are the voices, Heard are the Sages, The Worlds and the Ages: ”Choose well: your choice is Brief, and yet endless.”
Here eyes do regard you In Eternity's stillness; Here is all fulness, Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not.[A]
[Footnote A: Originally published in Carlyle's ”Past and Present,”
(Lond. 1843,) p. 318, and introduced there by the following words:--
”My candid readers, we will march out of this Third Book with a rhythmic word of Goethe's on our tongue; a word which perhaps has already sung itself, in dark hours and in bright, through many a heart. To me, finding it devout yet wholly credible and veritable, full of piety yet free of cant; to me joyfully finding much in it, and joyfully missing so much in it, this little s.n.a.t.c.h of music, by the greatest German man, sounds like a stanza in the grand _Road Song_ and _Marching Song_ of our great Teutonic kindred,--wending, wending, valiant and victorious, through the undiscovered Deeps of Time!”]
One last word. _Wir heissen euch hoffen_--we bid you be of hope. Adieu for this time.
THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY CHAIR IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY.
The following is a letter addressed by Mr. Carlyle to Dr. Hutchison Stirling, late one of the candidates for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh:--
”Chelsea, 16th June, 1868.
”DEAR STIRLING,--
”You well know how reluctant I have been to interfere at all in the election now close on us, and that in stating, as bound, what my own clear knowledge of your qualities was, I have strictly held by that, and abstained from more. But the news I now have from Edinburgh is of such a complexion, so dubious, and so surprising to me; and I now find I shall privately have so much regret in a certain event--which seems to be reckoned possible, and to depend on one gentleman of the seven--that, to secure my own conscience in the matter, a few plainer words seem needful. To whatever I have said of you already, therefore, I now volunteer to add, that I think you not only the one man in Britain capable of bringing Metaphysical Philosophy, in the ultimate, German or European, and highest actual form of it, distinctly home to the understanding of British men who wish to understand it, but that I notice in you farther, on the moral side, a sound strength of intellectual discernment, a n.o.ble valour and reverence of mind, which seems to me to mark you out as the man capable of doing us the highest service in Ethical science too: that of restoring, or decisively beginning to restore, the doctrine of morals to what I must ever reckon its one true and everlasting basis (namely, the divine or supra-sensual one), and thus of victoriously reconciling and rendering identical the latest dictates of modern science with the earliest dawnings of wisdom among the race of men.
”This is truly my opinion, and how important to me, not for the sake of Edinburgh University alone, but of the whole world for ages to come, I need not say to you! I have not the honour of any personal acquaintance with Mr. Adam Black, late member for Edinburgh, but for fifty years back have known him, in the distance, and by current and credible report, as a man of solid sense, independence, probity, and public spirit; and if, in your better knowledge of the circ.u.mstances, you judge it suitable to read this note to him--to him, or indeed to any other person--you are perfectly at liberty to do so.
”Yours sincerely always,