On the Choice of Books

You will remark that if at any time the genealogy of a peerage fails—if the man that actually holds the peerage is a fool in these earnest striking times, the man gets into mischief and gets into treason—he gets himself extinguished altogether, in fact. (Laughter.)

From these documents of old Collins it seems that a peer conducts himself in a solemn, good, pious, manly kind of way when he takes leave of life, and when he has hospitable habits, and is valiant in his procedure throughout; and that in general a King, with a noble approximation to what was right, had nominated this man, saying "Come you to me, sir; come out of the common level of the people, where you are liable to be trampled upon; come here and take a district of country and make it into your own image more or less; be a king under me, and understand that that is your function." I say this is the most divine thing that a human being can do to other human beings, and no kind of being whatever has so much of the character of God Almighty's Divine Government as that thing we see that went all over England, and that is the grand soul of England's history.

It is historically true that down to the time of Charles I., it was not understood that any man was made a peer without having a merit in him to constitute him a proper subject for a peerage. In Charles I.'s time it grew to be known or said that if a man was by birth a gentleman, and was worth £10,000 a-year, and bestowed his gifts up and down among courtiers, he could be made a peer. Under Charles II. it went on with still more rapidity, and has been going on with ever increasing velocity until we see the perfect break-neck pace at which they are now going. (A laugh.) And now a peerage is a paltry kind of thing to what it was in these old times, I could go into a great many more details about things of that sort, but I must turn to another branch of the subject.

One remark more about your reading. I do not know whether it has been sufficiently brought home to you that there are two kinds of books. When a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most departments of books—in all books, if you take it in a wide sense—you will find that there is a division of good books and bad books—there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all. I entirely call that in question. I even venture to deny it. (Laughter and cheers.) It would be much safer and better would he have no concern with books at all than with some of them. You know these are my views. There are a number, an increasing number, of books that are decidedly to him not useful. (Hear.) But he will learn also that a certain number of books were written by a supreme, noble kind of people—not a very great number—but a great number adhere more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men's souls—divided into sheep and goats. (Laughter and applause.) Some of them are calculated to be of very great advantage in teaching—in forwarding the teaching of all generations. Others are going down, down, doing more and more, wilder and wilder mischief.

And for the rest, in regard to all your studies here, and whatever you may learn, you are to remember that the object is not particular knowledge—that you are going to get higher in technical perfections, and all that sort of thing. There is a higher aim lies at the rear of all that, especially among those who are intended for literary, for speaking pursuits—the sacred profession. You are ever to bear in mind that there lies behind that the acquisition of what may be called wisdom—namely, sound appreciation and just decision as to all the objects that come round about you, and the habit of behaving with justice and wisdom. In short, great is wisdom—great is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated. The highest achievement of man—"Blessed is he that getteth understanding." And that, I believe, occasionally may be missed very easily; but never more easily than now, I think. If that is a failure, all is a failure. However, I will not touch further upon that matter.

In this University I learn from many sides that there is a great and considerable stir about endowments. Oh, I should have said in regard to book reading, if it be so very important, how very useful would an excellent library be in every University. I hope that will not be neglected by those gentlemen who have charge of you—and, indeed, I am happy to hear that your library is very much improved since the time I knew it; and I hope it will go on improving more and more. You require money to do that, and you require also judgment in the selectors of the books—pious insight into what is really for the advantage of human souls, and the exclusion of all kinds of clap-trap books which merely excite the astonishment of foolish people. (Laughter.) Wise books—as much as possible good books.

As I was saying, there appears to be a great demand for endowments—an assiduous and praiseworthy industry for getting new funds collected for encouraging the ingenious youth of Universities, especially in this the chief University of the country. (Hear, hear.) Well, I entirely participate in everybody's approval of the movement. It is very desirable. It should be responded to, and one expects most assuredly will. At least, if it is not, it will be shameful to the country of Scotland, which never was so rich in money as at the present moment, and never stood so much in need of getting noble Universities to counteract many influences that are springing up alongside of money. It should not be backward in coming forward in the way of endowments (a laugh)—at least, in rivalry to our rude old barbarous ancestors, as we have been pleased to call them. Such munificence as theirs is beyond all praise, to whom I am sorry to say we are not yet by any manner of means equal or approaching equality. (Laughter.) There is an overabundance of money, and sometimes I cannot help thinking that, probably, never has there been at any other time in Scotland the hundredth part of the money that now is, or even the thousandth part, for wherever I go there is that gold-nuggeting (a laugh)—that prosperity.

Many men are counting their balances by millions. Money was never so abundant, and nothing that is good to be done with it. ("Hear, hear," and a laugh.) No man knows—or very few men know—what benefit to get out of his money. In fact, it too often is secretly a curse to him. Much better for him never to have had any. But I do not expect that generally to be believed. (Laughter.) Nevertheless, I should think it a beautiful relief to any man that has an honest purpose struggling in him to bequeath a handsome house of refuge, so to speak, for some meritorious man who may hereafter be born into the world, to enable him a little to get on his way. To do, in fact, as those old Norman kings whom I have described to you—to raise a man out of the dirt and mud where he is getting trampled, unworthily on his part, into some kind of position where he may acquire the power to do some good in his generation. I hope that as much as possible will be done in that way; that efforts will not be relaxed till the thing is in a satisfactory state. At the same time, in regard to the classical department of things, it is to be desired that it were properly supported—that we could allow people to go and devote more leisure possibly to the cultivation of particular departments.

We might have more of this from Scotch Universities than we have. I am bound, however, to say that it does not appear as if of late times endowment was the real soul of the matter. The English, for example, are the richest people for endowments on the face of the earth in their Universities; and it is a remarkable fact that since the time of Bentley you cannot name anybody that has gained a great name in scholarship among them, or constituted a point of revolution in the pursuits of men in that way. The man that did that is a man worthy of being remembered among men, although he may be a poor man, and not endowed with worldly wealth. One man that actually did constitute a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in Saxony, who edited his "Tibullus" in Dresden in the room of a poor comrade, and who, while he was editing his "Tibullus," had to gather his pease-cod shells on the streets and boil them for his dinner. That was his endowment. But he was recognised soon to have done a great thing. His name was Heyne.

I can remember it was quite a revolution in my mind when I got hold of that man's book on Virgil. I found that for the first time I had understood him—that he had introduced me for the first time into an insight of Roman life, and pointed out the circumstances in which these were written, and here was interpretation; and it has gone on in all manner of development, and has spread out into other countries.

Upon the whole, there is one reason why endowments are not given now as they were in old days, when they founded abbeys, colleges, and all kinds of things of that description, with such success as we know. All that has changed now. Why that has decayed away may in part be that people have become doubtful that colleges are now the real sources of that which I call wisdom, whether they are anything more—anything much more—than a cultivating of man in the specific arts. In fact, there has been a suspicion of that kind in the world for a long time. (A laugh.) That is an old saying, an old proverb, "An ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy." (Laughter.) There is a suspicion that a man is perhaps not nearly so wise as he looks, or because he has poured out speech so copiously. (Laughter.)

When the seven free Arts on which the old Universities were based came to be modified a little, in order to be convenient for or to promote the wants of modern society—though, perhaps, some of them are obsolete enough even yet for some of us—there arose a feeling that mere vocality, mere culture of speech, if that is what comes out of a man, though he may be a great speaker, an eloquent orator, yet there is no real substance there—if that is what was required and aimed at by the man himself, and by the community that set him upon becoming a learned man. Maid-servants, I hear people complaining, are getting instructed in the "ologies," and so on, and are apparently totally ignorant of brewing, boiling, and baking (laughter); above all things, not taught what is necessary to be known, from the highest to the lowest—strict obedience, humility, and correct moral conduct. Oh, it is a dismal chapter, all that, if one went into it!

What has been done by rushing after fine speech? I have written down some very fierce things about that, perhaps considerably more emphatic than I would wish them to be now; but they are deeply my conviction. (Hear, hear.) There is very great necessity indeed of getting a little more silent than we are. It seems to me the finest nations of the world—the English and the American—are going all away into wind and tongue. (Applause and laughter.) But it will appear sufficiently tragical by-and-bye, long after I am away out of it. Silence is the eternal duty of a man. He wont get to any real understanding of what is complex, and, what is more than any other, pertinent to his interests, without maintaining silence. "Watch the tongue," is a very old precept, and a most true one. I do not want to discourage any of you from your Demosthenes, and your studies of the niceties of language, and all that. Believe me, I value that as much as any of you. I consider it a very graceful thing, and a proper thing, for every human creature to know what the implement which he uses in communicating his thoughts is, and how to make the very utmost of it. I want you to study Demosthenes, and know all his excellencies. At the same time, I must say that speech does not seem to me, on the whole, to have turned to any good account.

Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker if it is not the truth that he is speaking? Phocion, who did not speak at all, was a great deal nearer hitting the mark than Demosthenes. (Laughter.) He used to tell the Athenians—"You can't fight Philip. You have not the slightest chance with him. He is a man who holds his tongue; he has great disciplined armies; he can brag anybody you like in your cities here; and he is going on steadily with an unvarying aim towards his object: and he will infallibly beat any kind of men such as you, going on raging from shore to shore with all that rampant nonsense." Demosthenes said to him one day—"The Athenians will get mad some day and kill you." "Yes," Phocion says, "when they are mad; and you as soon as they get sane again." (Laughter.)

It is also told about him going to Messina on some deputation that the Athenians wanted on some kind of matter of an intricate and contentious nature, that Phocion went with some story in his mouth to speak about. He was a man of few words—no unveracity; and after he had gone on telling the story a certain time there was one burst of interruption. One man interrupted with something he tried to answer, and then another; and, finally, the people began bragging and bawling, and no end of debate, till it ended in the want of power in the people to say any more. Phocion drew back altogether, struck dumb, and would not speak another word to any man; and he left it to them to decide in any way they liked.

It appears to me there is a kind of eloquence in that which is equal to anything Demosthenes ever said—"Take your own way, and let me out altogether." (Applause.)

All these considerations, and manifold more connected with them—innumerable considerations, resulting from observation of the world at this moment—have led many people to doubt of the salutary effect of vocal education altogether. I do not mean to say it should be entirely excluded; but I look to something that will take hold of the matter much more closely, and not allow it slip out of our fingers, and remain worse than it was. For if a good speaker—an eloquent speaker—is not speaking the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation? (Loud cheers.) Of such speech I hear all manner and kind of people say it is excellent; but I care very little about how he said it, provided I understand it, and it be true. Excellent speaker! but what if he is telling me things that are untrue, that are not the fact about it—if he has formed a wrong judgment about it—if he has no judgment in his mind to form a right conclusion in regard to the matter? An excellent speaker of that kind is, as it were, saying—"Ho, every one that wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not true, come hither." (Great laughter and applause.) I would recommend you to be very chary of that kind of excellent speech. (Renewed laughter.)

Well, all that being the too well-known product of our method of vocal education—the mouth merely operating on the tongue of the pupil, and teaching him to wag it in a particular way (laughter)—it had made a great many thinking men entertain a very great distrust of this not very salutary way of procedure, and they have longed for some kind of practical way of working out the business. There would be room for a great deal of description about it if I went into it; but I must content myself with saying that the most remarkable piece of reading that you may be recommended to take and try if you can study is a book by Goethe—one of his last books, which he wrote when he was an old man, about seventy years of age—I think one of the most beautiful he ever wrote, full of mild wisdom, and which is found to be very touching by those who have eyes to discern and hearts to feel it. It is one of the pieces in "Wilhelm Meister's Travels." I read it through many years ago; and, of course, I had to read into it very hard when I was translating it (applause), and it has always dwelt in my mind as about the most remarkable bit of writing that I have known to be executed in these late centuries. I have often said, there are ten pages of that which, if ambition had been my only rule, I would rather have written than have written all the books that have appeared since I came into the world. (Cheers.) Deep, deep is the meaning of what is said there. They turn on the Christian religion and the religious phenomena of Christian life—altogether sketched out in the most airy, graceful, delicately-wise kind of way, so as to keep himself out of the common controversies of the street and of the forum, yet to indicate what was the result of things he had been long meditating upon. Among others, he introduces, in an aërial, flighty kind of way, here and there a touch which grows into a beautiful picture—a scheme of entirely mute education, at least with no more speech than is absolutely necessary for what they have to do.

Three of the wisest men that can be got are met to consider what is the function which transcends all others in importance to build up the young generation, which shall be free from all that perilous stuff that has been weighing us down and clogging every step, and which is the only thing we can hope to go on with if we would leave the world a little better, and not the worse of our having been in it for those who are to follow. The man who is the eldest of the three says to Goethe, "You give by nature to the well-formed children you bring into the world a great many precious gifts, and very frequently these are best of all developed by nature herself, with a very slight assistance where assistance is seen to be wise and profitable, and forbearance very often on the part of the overlooker of the process of education; but there is one thing that no child brings into the world with it, and without which all other things are of no use." Wilhelm, who is there beside him, says, "What is that?" "All who enter the world want it," says the eldest; "perhaps you yourself." Wilhelm says, "Well, tell me what it is." "It is," says the eldest, "reverence—Ehrfurcht—Reverence! Honour done to those who are grander and better than you, without fear; distinct from fear." Ehrfurcht—"the soul of all religion that ever has been among men, or ever will be." And he goes into practicality. He practically distinguishes the kinds of religion that are in the world, and he makes out three reverences. The boys are all trained to go through certain gesticulations, to lay their hands on their breast and look up to heaven, and they give their three reverences. The first and simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better in man than that. Then there is reverence for what is around us or about us—reverence for our equals, and to which he attributes an immense power in the culture of man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us—to learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those things, odious as they are to flesh and blood—to learn that there lies in these a priceless blessing. And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian religion—the highest of all religions; a height, as Goethe says—and that is very true, even to the letter, as I consider—a height to which the human species was fated and enabled to attain, and from which, having once attained it, it can never retrograde. It cannot descend down below that permanently, Goethe's idea is.

Often one thinks it was good to have a faith of that kind—that always, even in the most degraded, sunken, and unbelieving times, he calculates there will be found some few souls who will recognise what that meant; and that the world, having once received it, there is no fear of its retrograding. He goes on then to tell us the way in which they seek to teach boys, in the sciences particularly, whatever the boy is fit for. Wilhelm left his own boy there, expecting they would make him a Master of Arts, or something of that kind; and when he came back for him he saw a thundering cloud of dust coming over the plain, of which he could make nothing. It turned out to be a tempest of wild horses, managed by young lads who had a turn for hunting with their grooms. His own son was among them, and he found that the breaking of colts was the thing he was most suited for. (Laughter.) This is what Goethe calls Art, which I should not make clear to you by any definition unless it is clear already. (A laugh.) I would not attempt to define it as music, painting, and poetry, and so on; it is in quite a higher sense than the common one, and in which, I am afraid, most of our painters, poets, and music men would not pass muster. (A laugh.) He considers that the highest pitch to which human culture can go; and he watches with great industry how it is to be brought about with men who have a turn for it.

Very wise and beautiful it is. It gives one an idea that something greatly better is possible for man in the world. I confess it seems to me it is a shadow of what will come, unless the world is to come to a conclusion that is perfectly frightful; some kind of scheme of education like that, presided over by the wisest and most sacred men that can be got in the world, and watching from a distance—a training in practicality at every turn; no speech in it except that speech that is to be followed by action, for that ought to be the rule as nearly as possible among them. For rarely should men speak at all unless it is to say that thing that is to be done; and let him go and do his part in it, and to say no more about it. I should say there is nothing in the world you can conceive so difficult, prima facie, as that of getting a set of men gathered together—rough, rude, and ignorant people—gather them together, promise them a shilling a day, rank them up, give them very severe and sharp drill, and by bullying and drill—for the word "drill" seems as if it meant the treatment that would force them to learn—they learn what it is necessary to learn; and there is the man, a piece of an animated machine, a wonder of wonders to look at. He will go and obey one man, and walk into the cannon's mouth for him, and do anything whatever that is commanded of him by his general officer. And I believe all manner of things in this way could be done if there were anything like the same attention bestowed. Very many things could be regimented and organized into the mute system of education that Goethe evidently adumbrates there. But I believe, when people look into it, it will be found that they will not be very long in trying to make some efforts in that direction; for the saving of human labour, and the avoidance of human misery, would be uncountable if it were set about and begun even in part.

Alas! it is painful to think how very far away it is—any fulfilment of such things; for I need not hide from you, young gentlemen—and that is one of the last things I am going to tell you—that you have got into a very troublous epoch of the world; and I don't think you will find it improve the footing you have, though you have many advantages which we had not. You have careers open to you, by public examinations and so on, which is a thing much to be approved, and which we hope to see perfected more and more. All that was entirely unknown in my time, and you have many things to recognise as advantages. But you will find the ways of the world more anarchical than ever, I think. As far as I have noticed, revolution has come upon us. We have got into the age of revolutions. All kinds of things are coming to be subjected to fire, as it were; hotter and hotter the wind rises around everything.

Curious to say, now in Oxford and other places that used to seem to live at anchor in the stream of time, regardless of all changes, they are getting into the highest humour of mutation, and all sorts of new ideas are getting afloat. It is evident that whatever is not made of asbestos will have to be burnt in this world. It will not stand the heat it is getting exposed to. And in saying that, it is but saying in other words that we are in an epoch of anarchy—anarchy plus the constable. (Laughter.) There is nobody that picks one's pocket without some policeman being ready to take him up. (Renewed laughter.) But in every other thing he is the son, not of Kosmos, but of Chaos. He is a disobedient, and reckless, and altogether a waste kind of object—commonplace man in these epochs; and the wiser kind of man—the select, of whom I hope you will be part—has more and more a set time to it to look forward, and will require to move with double wisdom; and will find, in short, that the crooked things that he has to pull straight in his own life, or round about, wherever he may be, are manifold, and will task all his strength wherever he may go.

But why should I complain of that either?—for that is a thing a man is born to in all epochs. He is born to expend every particle of strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing the work he finds he is fit for—to stand it out to the last breath of life, and do his best. We are called upon to do that; and the reward we all get—which we are perfectly sure of if we have merited it—is that we have got the work done, or, at least, that we have tried to do the work; for that is a great blessing in itself; and I should say there is not very much more reward than that going in this world. If the man gets meat and clothes, what matters it whether he have £10,000, or £10,000,000, or £70 a-year. He can get meat and clothes for that; and he will find very little difference intrinsically, if he is a wise man.

I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men—"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)

Finally, gentlemen, I have one advice to give you, which is practically of very great importance, though a very humble one.

I have no doubt you will have among you people ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of high; and you are to consider throughout, much more than is done at present, that health is a thing to be attended to continually—that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things for you. (Applause.) There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What are nuggets and millions? The French financier said, "Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?" Sleep was not in the market at any quotation. (Laughter and applause.)

It is a curious thing that I remarked long ago, and have often turned in my head, that the old word for "holy" in the German language—heilig—also means "healthy." And so Heil-bronn means "holy-well," or "healthy-well." We have in the Scotch "hale;" and, I suppose our English word "whole"—with a "w"—all of one piece, without any hole in it—is the same word. I find that you could not get any better definition of what "holy" really is than "healthy—completely healthy." Mens sana in corpore sano. (Applause.)

A man with his intellect a clear, plain, geometric mirror, brilliantly sensitive of all objects and impressions around it, and imagining all things in their correct proportions—not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless groping and manipulation—healthy, clear, and free, and all round about him. We never can attain that at all. In fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it. You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual operation—if you are going to write a book—at least, I never could—without getting decidedly made ill by it, and really you must if it is your business—and you must follow out what you are at—and it sometimes is at the expense of health. Only remember at all times to get back as fast as possible out of it into health, and regard the real equilibrium as the centre of things. You should always look at the heilig, which means holy, and holy means healthy.

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 sunshine, 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 pushing 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 rushing 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 noble 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.[31 - 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 snatch 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:—