Carlyle has a limited love of abstract truth;
of action his love is unlimited. His lyre is not that of Orpheus, but
that of Amphion which built the walls of Thebes. _Laborare est orare._ He
alone is honourable who does his day's work by sword or plough or pen.
Strength is the crown of toil. Action converts the ring of necessity that
girds us into a ring of duty, frees us from dreams, and makes us men.
The midnight phantoms feel the spell,
The shadows sweep away.
There are few grander passages in literature than some of those litanies
of labour. They have the roll of music that makes armies march, and if
they have been made so familiar as to cease to seem new, it is largely
owing to the power of the writer which has compelled them to become
common property.
Carlyle's practical Ethics, though too little indulgent to the light and
play of life, in which he admitted no [Greek: adiaphora] and only the
relaxation of a rare genial laugh, are more satisfactory than his
conception of their sanction, which is grim. His "Duty" is a categorical
imperative, imposed from without by a taskmaster who has "written in
flame across the sky, 'Obey, unprofitable servant.'" He saw the infinite
above and around, but not _in_ the finite. He insisted on the community
of the race, and struck with a bolt any one who said, "Am I my brother's
keeper?"
All things, the minutest that man does, influence all men,
the very look of his face blesses or curses.
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