'But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.'
The ballad of the white horse

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Chesterton on Thomas Carlyle

I should start by confessing that I never consciously read even one sentence by Carlyle. Chesterton, though, makes me want to change that, for several reasons. First of all, he starts his discussion with the following fascinating paragraph:
There are two main moral necessities for the work of a great man: the first is that he should believe in the truth of his message; the second is that he should believe in the acceptability of his message. It was the whole tragedy of Carlyle that he had the first and not the second.
A second interesting observation is that Carlyle focused more on the underlying assumptions of logic, as opposed to the more normal stress on the subsequent logical reasoning from these assumptions.
Lastly, Chesterton makes clear that he does not agree with Carlyle's tendency to desire a consistent world view. He argues that this causes Carlyle to have some strange viewpoints, all in the name of consistency. This stress on consistency, is, according to Chesterton, a 'remarkable modern craze for making one's philosophy, religion, politics, and temper all of a piece'. He says that this 'existed comparatively little in other centuries'.
The last point is actually something I have to think more about: I have the tendency to think that consistency is a good thing. Chesterton seems to be pointing out that it can lead people to extremes.

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