BIB_ID
79942
Accession number
MA 1420
Creator
Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881.
Display Date
[1849 December 9?]
Credit line
Gift of DeCoursey Fales, 1952.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 28.9 x 22.5 cm
Notes
It does not appear that this essay has ever been printed. Carlyle has written the title on the verso of the last page in the top left corner and enclosed the title in brackets.
At the foot of the third page, written in brackets, is "This surely is dreadful stuff! Oh, Heaven, shall I never get to speak again at all? - 'Tile off', 'Health' (for tomorrow) 9 December 1849." It seems likely this was the date of writing as his reference to a "tile blown out by the wind" is what he discusses in the following paragraph.
Housed with a typed transcription.
At the foot of the third page, written in brackets, is "This surely is dreadful stuff! Oh, Heaven, shall I never get to speak again at all? - 'Tile off', 'Health' (for tomorrow) 9 December 1849." It seems likely this was the date of writing as his reference to a "tile blown out by the wind" is what he discusses in the following paragraph.
Housed with a typed transcription.
Provenance
Gift of DeCoursey Fales, 1952.
Summary
Discussing the ill effects of laissez-faire; saying "An idle notion has taken possession of all men's minds that somehow the world will go on of itself, without government, administration, or the expenditure of human wisdom and authority in any department of it; and that this, found out after long centuries of helpless groping, is really the one best and one good method...Tolerance is good; yet let us know whom we tolerate. Perhaps there has now been sufficient preaching of tolerance; and we ought to turn round and ask ourselves the question, Are there none then whom we are bound not to tolerate?...'It will mend itself.' 'Time will mend it' : convenient indeed. Did you ever happen to see a thing actually mending 'itself'? A tile blown out by the wind : you have seen it, for example, getting up from the street, and gradually sticking itself into its place again? Never till the end of human history will that tile rise, my friend. To the end of time it will be there; and the holed roof will hang, with the rain beating into it, and gradual rottenness and dissolution supervening. At the end you will find a mound of weedy rubbish; and Time, instead of mending it, looking with perfect composure on the process. Time mends nothing; Time's only mode of mending anything is to render the ruin of the thing so abominable that at least some man, unable to endure it longer shall dismount, and in the sweat of his brow and indignant sorrow of his heart, do himself mend it...Man is the born enemy of anarchy; life, even animal life, wherever we find it, strives to organize and regulate more or less, testifies more or less its loyalty to the Giver of life...A great man is needed; where is the great man? cry many blockheads, and talk of the coming man, etc. Ye unfortunate loud blockheads...Not from the Devil, nor in these moods and times from any God will you borrow an Oliver Cromwell; with Daniel O'Connell and Lord John Russell, Ballotboxes, and the Doctrine of Supply-and-Demand, you must journey on witherward they are leading you, and speak with (and think much idle folly) till the appointed quagmires that have no bottom receive you and them."
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