NIETZSCHE'S WORKS THOMAS CARLYLE-A PARALLEL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 153, 26 December 1914, Page 3

NIETZSCHE'S WORKS THOMAS CARLYLE-A PARALLEL

IS IT AI3SIIJRD? English people who ha\c been denouncing Nietzsche and all bis noiks were rather taken back leeently by the suggestion that they had a Nietzsche of (heir own in Thomas Carlyle. The parallel (says the Springfield Republican) may seem absurd, yot anyone who will kike the trouble to look up Carlyle's more extreme utterances may press it a,= far -as he likes. The two men weie as unlike as it is possible for a dyspeptic Scotchman -md a crazy Polish Gem.an to be, but both extolled force and Ihe superhuman whom Ca.lylo called the hero. Both hated mediocrity and the mob. Carlyle had no patience with the kindly tolerance of the English ; he would have made short work with the inefficient, and praised forced labour under taskmasters for those who could rot find a place in the industrial system. Democracy he hated, in England or elsewhere, and he would have sympathised entii ely with Bismarck m suppressing popular movements and building up an efficient bureacracy. The rebellion of 1849' tioubled him: "Prussia, too, solid Germany itself, has all broken out into crackliiig of musket ly, loud -pamphleteering, v.nd Frankfort parliamenting and palavering." Carlyle's idea of a Parliament' matched Bismarck's ; he goes back to old memo England for his model: "That Red William, or whoever had taken on him the terrible task of being King of England, was wont to invite, oftenest about Christmas time, his subordinate kinglets, barons, he called .them, to give them the pleasure of their company, for a week or two; there, in earnest conference all morning, in freer talk over Christmas cheer all evening, in some big royal hall of Westminster, Winchester, or whichever it might be, • with log •fires, huge rounds of roast and boiled, not lacking malmsey and other generous liquor, they took counsel concerning the arduous matters of the kingdom." WARS OF CONQUEST. It was the business, in Carlyle"s view, of tho strong and the wise to govern; England was "40 millions, mostly fools." On the same principle he advocates wars of conquest, as. in his defence of the partition of Poland, by showing what an efficient government Frederick the Great set up there : "Everywhere there began a digging, a hammering, a building ; cities were peopled anew ; street alter street rose out of the heap of ruins ; new villages of colonists were laid out, new modes of agriculture ordered. In the first year the great canal of Brombeig was built; the vast breadths of land, gained from the state of swamp by drainage into this canal, were immediately peopled by German colonists. Surely peace hath her victories no less worthy of renown than those of war. Such was some of the more beneficent work of the man denounced as a tyrant by humanitarians and lying pamphleteers." A German kultureki ieg could hardly ask a fairer charter, and it is not surprising that Carlyle's life of Frederick the Great should long have been a-text-book in German military schools. It would hardly have appealed to Nietzsche, who prided himself on his Polish descent and hated Prussia, but as much as Nietzsche did Cailylo worship the stiong man who imposes his will on the mob. It is easy to exaggerate the representative character ot an author. Germans deny that Nietzsche is> representative — is Carlyle more so? Such queries should check too hasty generalisation. There was a time when Carlyle had as much vogue in England as Nietzsche has ever had in Germany, but can wo call it more than a coincidence that it was also the time when England ran to jingo politics and began to cherish the ideai of governing the world in the name of efficiency? If England had precipitated a great war while Carlyle was a favourite author would not foreign critics have been justified in blaming hero worship and the gospel of force? CARLYLE'S INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND. Tho truth is that despite the genius of Carlyle, his influence in England was never very great because he represented a reaction. Readers found inspiration in his energy, but few could follow him | because so Tar as England was concerned he was leading backward. He was really far more in sympathy with GerI many, whose language affected his style, and whose literature he helped to introduce to England. ]f he had lived he would probably have been as warm an admirer as_ Professor Burgess of the I present Kaiser, and unless he had shot | off at one of his unexpected angles, it ( is hard to see how he could have failed to sympathise with a war for the extension of German culture. In. 1870 he wrote to The Times: 1 "I believe Bismaick will get his Alsace anil what ho wants of Lorraine ; and likewise that it will do him, and us, and oil the world, and even France itself by and by. a great deal of good. Bismarck, in fact seems to me to be striving with .•trong faculty, by patient, grand, and successful steps, toward an object beneficial to Germans and to all other men. That noble, patient, deep, and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation and become queen of the continent, instead of -wiporing, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless nnd oversensitive France, appears to me the hopefullest public fact that has occurrrd in my time." It is not &urprir-ing that Carlyle should be highly praised, if not widely read, in Germany, but if a paiallel with Nietzsche is 'attempted, it must be noted that Carlyle's ideals are much more consonant with those of modern Germany than with those of modern England, where as an influence he has long since ceased to exist. For political or social ideals the 20th century Englishman would be as likely to go to Samuel Johnson.