Hero-Worship
To the present Editor, not less than to Bobus, a Government of
the Wisest, what Bobus calls an Aristocracy of Talent, seems the
one healing remedy: but he is not so sanguine as Bobus with
respect to the means of realizing it. He thinks that we have at
once missed realising it, and come to need it so pressingly,
by departing far from the inner eternal Laws and taking up
with the temporary outer semblances of Laws. He thinks that
'enlightened Egoism,' never so luminous, is not the rule by
which man's life can be led. That 'Laissez-faire,' 'Supply-and-
demand,' 'Cash-payment for the sole nexus,' and so forth, were
not, are not, and will never be, a practicable Law of Union for a
Society of Men. That Poor and Rich, that Governed and Governing,
cannot long live together on any such Law of Union. Alas, he
thinks that man has a soul in him, _different_ from the stomach
in any sense of this word; that if said soul be asphyxied, and
lie quietly forgotten, the man and his affairs are in a bad way.
He thinks that said soul will have to be resuscitated from its
asphyxia; that if it prove irresuscitable, the man is not long
for this world. In brief, that Midas-eared Mammonism, double-
barreled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries,
are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this his
Universe to go. That, once for all, these are not the Law:
and then farther that we shall have to return to what is
the Law,--not by smooth flowery paths, it is like, and with
'tremendous cheers' in our throat; but over steep untrodden
places, through stormclad chasms, waste oceans, and the bosom of
tornadoes; thank Heaven, if not through very Chaos and the
Abyss! The resuscitating of a soul that has gone to asphyxia is
no momentary or pleasant process, but a long and terrible one.
To the present Editor 'Hero-worship,' as he has elsewhere named
it, means much more than an elected Parliament, or stated
Aristocracy, of the Wisest; for, in his dialect, it is the
summary, ultimate essence, and supreme practical perfection of
all manner of 'worship,' and true worships and noblenesses
whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and, were it once in
perfection, blessed Aristocracy of the Wisest, god-honoured and
man-honoured, he does look for, more and more perfected,--as the
topmost blessed practical apex of a whole world reformed from
sham-worship, informed anew with worship, with truth and
blessedness! He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in
every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social
business among men; that the doing of it well, or the doing of
it ill, measures accurately what degree of well-being or of ill-
being there is in the world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the
whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world
ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a
Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser
and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet
of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we
must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better
and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its
asphyxia, and the return of blessed life to us,--Heaven's blessed
life, not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the
Asphyxied, apparently now moribund, and in the last agony if not
resuscitated: such and no other seems the consummation.
'Hero-worship,' if you will,--yes, friends; but, first of all,
by being ourselves of heroic mind. A whole world of Heroes; a
world not of Flunkeys, where no Hero-King _can_ reign: that is
what we aim at! We, for our share, will put away all Flunkeyism,
Baseness, Unveracity from us; we shall then hope to have
Noblenesses and Veracities set over us; never till then. Let
Bobus and Company sneer, "That is your Reform!" Yes, Bobus, that
is our Reform; and except in that, and what will follow out of
that, we have no hope at all. Reform, like Charity, O Bobus,
must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate
outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak
and work; kindling ever new light, by incalculable contagion,
spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide,--doing good only,
wheresoever it spreads, and not evil.
By Reform Bills, Anti-Corn-Law Bills, and thousand other bills
and methods, we will demand of our Governors, with emphasis, and
for the first time not without effect, that they cease to be
quacks, or else depart; that they set no quackeries and
blockheadisms anywhere to rule over us, that they utter or act no
cant to us,--that it will be better if they do not. For we shall
now know quacks when we see them; cant, when we hear it, shall
be horrible to us! We will say, with the poor Frenchman at the
Bar of the Convention, though in wiser style than he, and 'for
the space' not 'of an hour' but of a lifetime: _"Je demande
l'arrestation des coquins et des laches."_ 'Arrestment of the
knaves and dastards:' ah, we know what a work that is; how long
it will be before _they_ are all or mostly got 'arrested:'--but
here is one; arrest him, in God's name; it is one fewer! We
will, in all practicable ways, by word and silence, by act
and refusal to act, energetically demand arrestment,--_"le
demande cette arrestation-la!"_--and by degrees infallibly
attain it. Infallibly: for light spreads; all human
souls, never so bedarkened, love light; light once kindled
spreads, till all is luminous;--till the cry, "_Arrest_ your
knaves and dastards rises imperative from millions of hearts, and
rings and reigns from sea to sea. Nay, how many of them may we
not 'arrest' with our own hands, even now; we! Do not
countenance them, thou there: turn away from their lackered
sumptuosities, their belauded sophistries, their serpent
graciosities, their spoken and acted cant, with a sacred horror,
with an _Apage Satanas._--Bobus and Company, and all men will
gradually join us. We demand arrestment of the knaves and
dastards, and begin by arresting our own poor selves out of that
fraternity. There is no other reform conceivable. Thou and I,
my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us,
_one_ non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes
to begin with:--Courage! even that is a whole world of heroes to
end with, or what we poor Two can do in furtherance thereof!
Yes, friends: Hero-kings and a whole world not unheroic, there
lies the port and happy haven, towards which, through all these
stormtost seas, French Revolutions, Chartisms, Manchester
Insurrections, that make the heart sick in these bad days, the
Supreme Powers are driving us. On the whole, blessed be the
Supreme Powers, stern as they are! Towards that haven will we, O
friends; let all true men, with what of faculty is in them, bend
valiantly, incessantly, with thousandfold endeavour, thither,
thither! There, or else in the Ocean-abysses, it is very clear
to me, we shall arrive.
Well; here truly is no answer to the Sphinx-question; not the
answer a disconsolate Public, inquiring at the College of Health,
was in hopes of! A total change of regimen, change of constitution
and existence from the very centre of it; a new body to be got,
with resuscitated soul,--not without convulsive travail-throes;
as all birth and new-birth presupposes travail! This is sad news
to a disconsolate discerning Public, hoping to have got off by
some Morrison's Pill, some Saint-John's corrosive mixtures and
perhaps a little blistery friction on the back!--We were prepared
to part with our Corn-Law, with various Laws and Unlaws: but
this, what is this?
Nor has the Editor forgotten how it fares with your ill-boding
Cassandras in Sieges of Troy. Imminent perdition is not usually
driven away by words of warning. Didactic Destiny has other
methods in store; or these would fail always. Such words
should, nevertheless, be uttered, when they dwell truly in the
soul of any man. Words are hard, are importunate; but how much
harder the importunate events they foreshadow! Here and there a
human soul may listen to the words,--who knows how many human
souls? whereby the importunate events, if not diverted and
prevented, will be rendered _less_ hard. The present Editor's
purpose is to himself full of hope.
For though fierce travails, though wide seas and roaring gulfs
lie before us, is it not something if a Loadstar, in the eternal
sky, do once more disclose itself; an everlasting light, shining
through all cloud-tempests and roaring billows, ever as we emerge
from the trough of the sea: the blessed beacon, far off on the
edge of far horizons, towards which we are to steer incessantly
for life? Is it not something; O Heavens, is it not all? There
lies the Heroic Promised Land; under that Heaven's-light, my
brethren, bloom the Happy Isles,--there, O there! Thither
will we;
There dwells the great Achilles whom we knew.*
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* Tennyson's _Poems_ (Ulysses)
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There dwell all Heroes, and will dwell: thither, all ye heroic-
minded!--The Heaven's Loadstar once clearly in our eye, how will
each true man stand truly to _his_ work in the ship; how, with
undying hope, will all things be fronted, all be conquered. Nay,
with the ship's prow once turned in that direction, is not all,
as it were, already well? Sick wasting misery has become noble
manful effort with a goal in our eye. 'The choking Nightmare
chokes us no longer; for we _stir_ under it; the Nightmare has
already fled.'--
Certainly, could the present Editor instruct men how to know
Wisdom, Heroism, when they see it, that they might do reverence
to it only, and loyally make it ruler over them,--yes, he were
the living epitome of all Editors, Teachers, Prophets, that
now teach and prophesy; he were an _Apollo_-Morrison, a
Trismegistus! and _effective_ Cassandra! Let no Able Editor hope
such things. It is to be expected the present laws of copyright,
rate of reward per sheet, and other considerations, will save him
from that peril. Let no Editor hope such things: no;--and yet
let all Editors aim towards such things, and even towards such
alone! One knows not what the meaning of editing and writing is,
if even this be not it.
Enough, to the present Editor it has seemed possible some
glimmering of light, for here and there a human soul, might lie
in these confused Paper-Masses now intrusted to him; wherefore
he determines to edit the same. Out of old Books, new Writings,
and much Meditation not of yesterday, he will endeavour to select
a thing or two; and from the Past, in a circuitous way,
illustrate the Present and the Future. The Past is a dim
indubitable fact: the Future too is one, only dimmer; nay
properly it is the same fact in new dress and development. For
the Present holds in it both the whole Past and the whole
Future;--as the LIFE-TREE IGDRASIL, wide-waving, many-toned, has
its roots down deep in the Death-kingdoms, among the oldest dead
dust of men, and with its boughs reaches always beyond the stars;
and in all times and places is one and the same Life-tree!