On the Choice of Books

A man with his intellect a clear, plain, geometric mirror, brilliantly sensitive of all objects and impressions around it, and imagining all things in their correct proportions—not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless groping and manipulation—healthy, clear, and free, and all round about him. We never can attain that at all. In fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it. You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual operation—if you are going to write a book—at least, I never could—without getting decidedly made ill by it, and really you must if it is your business—and you must follow out what you are at—and it sometimes is at the expense of health. Only remember at all times to get back as fast as possible out of it into health, and regard the real equilibrium as the centre of things. You should always look at the heilig, which means holy, and holy means healthy.

Well, that old etymology—what a lesson it is against certain gloomy, austere, ascetic people, that have gone about as if this world were all a dismal-prison house! It has, indeed, got all the ugly things in it that I have been alluding to; but there is an eternal sky over it, and the blessed sunshine, verdure of spring, and rich autumn, and all that in it, too. Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given. Neither do you find it to have been so with old Knox. If you look into him you will find a beautiful Scotch humour in him, as well as the grimmest and sternest truth when necessary, and a great deal of laughter. We find really some of the sunniest glimpses of things come out of Knox that I have seen in any man; for instance, in his "History of the Reformation," which is a book I hope every one of you will read—a glorious book.

On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it—not in sorrows or contradiction to yield, but pushing on towards the goal. And don't suppose that people are hostile to you in the world. You will rarely find anybody designedly doing you ill. You may feel often as if the whole world is obstructing you, more or less; but you will find that to be because the world is travelling in a different way from you, and rushing on in its own path. Each man has only an extremely good-will to himself—which he has a right to have—and is moving on towards his object. Keep out of literature as a general rule, I should say also. (Laughter.) If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price. You will get good and evil as you go on, and have the success that has been appointed to you.

I will wind up with a small bit of verse that is from Goethe also, and has often gone through my mind. To me it has the tone of a modern psalm in it in some measure. It is sweet and clear. The clearest of sceptical men had not anything like so clear a mind as that man had—freer from cant and misdirected notion of any kind than any man in these ages has been This is what the poet says:—

 
The Future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow:
We press still thorow;
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us—Onward!
 
 
And solemn before us,
Veiled, the dark Portal,
Goal of all mortal.
Stars silent rest o'er us—
Graves under us, silent.
 
 
While earnest thou gazest
Comes boding of terror,
Come phantasm and error;
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.
 
 
But heard are the voices,
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages:
"Choose well: your choice is
Brief, and yet endless."
 
 
Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity's stillness;
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not.³¹
 

One last word. Wir heissen euch hoffen—we bid you be of hope. Adieu for this time.

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY CHAIR IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

The following is a letter addressed by Mr. Carlyle to Dr. Hutchison Stirling, late one of the candidates for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh:—

"Chelsea, 16th June, 1868.

"DEAR STIRLING,—

"You well know how reluctant I have been to interfere at all in the election now close on us, and that in stating, as bound, what my own clear knowledge of your qualities was, I have strictly held by that, and abstained from more. But the news I now have from Edinburgh is of such a complexion, so dubious, and so surprising to me; and I now find I shall privately have so much regret in a certain event—which seems to be reckoned possible, and to depend on one gentleman of the seven—that, to secure my own conscience in the matter, a few plainer words seem needful. To whatever I have said of you already, therefore, I now volunteer to add, that I think you not only the one man in Britain capable of bringing Metaphysical Philosophy, in the ultimate, German or European, and highest actual form of it, distinctly home to the understanding of British men who wish to understand it, but that I notice in you farther, on the moral side, a sound strength of intellectual discernment, a noble valour and reverence of mind, which seems to me to mark you out as the man capable of doing us the highest service in Ethical science too: that of restoring, or decisively beginning to restore, the doctrine of morals to what I must ever reckon its one true and everlasting basis (namely, the divine or supra-sensual one), and thus of victoriously reconciling and rendering identical the latest dictates of modern science with the earliest dawnings of wisdom among the race of men.

"This is truly my opinion, and how important to me, not for the sake of Edinburgh University alone, but of the whole world for ages to come, I need not say to you! I have not the honour of any personal acquaintance with Mr. Adam Black, late member for Edinburgh, but for fifty years back have known him, in the distance, and by current and credible report, as a man of solid sense, independence, probity, and public spirit; and if, in your better knowledge of the circumstances, you judge it suitable to read this note to him—to him, or indeed to any other person—you are perfectly at liberty to do so.

"Yours sincerely always,

"T. CARLYLE."

FAREWELL LETTER TO THE STUDENTS

Mr. Carlyle, ex-Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh, being asked before the expiration of his term of office, to deliver a valedictory address to the students, he sent the following letter to Mr. Robertson, Vice-President of the Committee for his election:—

"Chelsea, December 6, 1868.

"DEAR SIR,—

"I much regret that a valedictory speech from me, in present circumstances, is a thing I must not think of. Be pleased to advise the young gentlemen who were so friendly towards me that I have already sent them, in silence, but with emotions deep enough, perhaps too deep, my loving farewell, and that ingratitude or want of regard is by no means among the causes that keep me absent. With a fine youthful enthusiasm, beautiful to look upon, they bestowed on me that bit of honour, loyally all they had; and it has now, for reasons one and another, become touchingly memorable to me—touchingly, and even grandly and tragically—never to be forgotten for the remainder of my life. Bid them, in my name, if they still love me, fight the good fight, and quit themselves like men in the warfare to which they are as if conscript and consecrated, and which lies ahead. Tell them to consult the eternal oracles (not yet inaudible, nor ever to become so, when worthily inquired of); and to disregard, nearly altogether, in comparison, the temporary noises, menacings, and deliriums. May they love wisdom, as wisdom, if she is to yield her treasures, must be loved, piously, valiantly, humbly, beyond life itself, or the prizes of life, with all one's heart and all one's soul. In that case (I will say again), and not in any other case, it shall be well with them.

"Adieu, my young friends, a long adieu, yours with great sincerity,

"T. CARLYLE"

BEQUEST BY MR. CARLYLE

At a meeting of the Senatus Academicus of Edinburgh University, a few weeks after his decease, a deed of mortification by Thomas Carlyle in favour of that body, for the foundation of ten Bursaries in the Faculty of Arts, was read. The document opens as follows:—

"I, Thomas Carlyle, residing at Chelsea, presently Rector in the University of Edinburgh, from the love, favour and affection which I bear to that University, and from my interest in the advancement of education in my native Scotland, as elsewhere, for these and for other more peculiar reasons, which also I wish to record, do intend, and am now in the act of making to the said University, a bequest, as underwritten, of the estate of Craigenputtoch, which is now my property. Craigenputtoch lies at the head of the parish of Dunscore, in Nithsdale, Dumfriesshire. The extent is of about 1,800 acres; rental at present, on lease of nineteen years, is £250; the annual worth, with the improvements now in progress, is probably £300. Craigenputtoch was for many generations the patrimony of a family named Welsh, the eldest son usually a 'John Welsh,' in series going back, think some, to the famous John Welsh, son-in-law of the reformer Knox. The last male heir of the family was John Welsh, Esq., surgeon, Haddington. His one child and heiress was my late dear, magnanimous, much-loving, and, to me, inestimable wife, in memory of whom, and of her constant nobleness and piety towards him and towards me, I am now—she having been the last of her kindred—about to bequeath to Edinburgh University with whatever piety is in me this Craigenputtoch, which was theirs and hers, on the terms, and for the purposes, and under the conditions underwritten. Therefore I do mortify and dispose to and in favour of the said University of Edinburgh, for the foundation and endowment of ten equal Bursaries, to be called the 'John Welsh Bursaries,' in the said University, heritably and irredeemably, all and whole the lands of Upper Craigenputtoch. The said estate is not to be sold, but to be kept and administered as land, the net annual revenue of it to be divided into ten equal Bursaries, to be called, as aforesaid, the 'John Welsh Bursaries.' The Senatus Academicus shall bestow them on the ten applicants entering the University who, on strict and thorough examination and open competitive trial by examiners whom the Senatus will appoint for that end, are judged to show the best attainment of actual proficiency and the best likelihood of more in the department or faculty called of arts, as taught there. Examiners to be actual professors in said faculty, the fittest whom the Senatus can select, with fit assessors or coadjutors and witnesses, if the Senatus see good, and always the report of the said examiners to be minuted and signed, and to govern the appointments made, and to be recorded therewith. More specially I appoint that five of the 'John Welsh Bursaries' shall be given for the best proficiency in mathematics—I would rather say 'in mathesis,' if that were a thing to be judged of from competition—but practically above all in pure geometry, such being perennial, the symptom not only of steady application, but of a clear, methodic intellect, and offering in all epochs good promise for all manner of arts and pursuits. The other five Bursaries I appoint to depend (for the present and indefinitely onwards) on proficiency in classical learning, that is to say, in knowledge of Latin, Greek, and English, all of these, or any two of them. This also gives good promise of a young mind, but as I do not feel certain that it gives perennially or will perennially be thought in universities to give the best promise, I am willing that the Senatus of the University, in case of a change of its opinion on this point hereafter in the course of generations, shall bestow these latter five Bursaries on what it does then consider the most excellent proficiency in matters classical, or the best proof of a classical mind, which directs its own highest effort towards teaching and diffusing in the new generations that will come. The Bursaries to be open to free competition of all who come to study in Edinburgh University, and who have never been of any other University, the competition to be held on or directly before or after their first matriculation there. Bursaries to be always given on solemnly strict and faithful trial to the worthiest, or if (what in justice can never happen, though it illustrates my intention) the claims of two were absolutely equal, and could not be settled by further trial, preference is to fall in favour of the more unrecommended and unfriended under penalties graver than I, or any highest mortal, can pretend to impose, but which I can never doubt—as the law of eternal justice, inexorably valid, whether noticed or unnoticed, pervades all corners of space and of time—are very sure to be punctually exacted if incurred. This is to be the perpetual rule for the Senatus in deciding."

After stating some other conditions, the document thus concludes:

"And so may a little trace of help to the young heroic soul struggling for what is highest spring from this poor arrangement and bequest. May it run for ever, if it can, as a thread of pure water from the Scottish rocks, trickling into its little basin by the thirsty wayside for those to whom it veritably belongs. Amen. Such is my bequest to Edinburgh University. In witness whereof these presents, written upon this and the two preceding pages by James Steven Burns, clerk to John Cook, writer to the signet, are subscribed by me at Chelsea, the 20th day of June, 1867, before these witnesses: John Forster, barrister-at-law, man of letters, etc., residing at Palace-gate House, Kensington, London; and James Anthony Froude, man of letters, residing at No. 5, Onslow Gardens, Brompton, London.

"(Signed) T. CARLYLE.

"JOHN FORSTER,}

"J.A. FROUDE, } Witnesses.