酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Heroes and Hero Worship-Part11_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one blessing. "Ye shall sit on



seats, facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of your

hearts." All grudges! Ye shall love one another freely; for each of you,



in the eyes of his brothers, there will be Heaven enough!

In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and Mahomet's sensuality, the



sorest chapter of all for us, there were many things to be said; which it

is not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks only I shall make, and



therewith leave it to your candor. The first is furnished me by Goethe; it

is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In one of



his Delineations, in _Meister's Travels_ it is, the hero comes upon a

Society of men with very strange ways, one of which was this: "We



require," says the Master, "that each of our people shall strict" target="_blank" title="vt.限制；限定；约束">restrict himself

in one direction," shall go right against his desire in one matter, and



_make_ himself do the thing he does not wish, "should we allow him the

greater latitude on all other sides." There seems to me a great justness



in this. Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is

the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is. Let a man



assert withal that he is king over his habitudes; that he could and would

shake them off, on cause shown: this is an excellent law. The Month



Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Mahomet's Religion, much in his own Life,

bears in that direction; if not by forethought, or clear purpose of moral



improvement on his part, then by a certain healthy manful instinct, which

is as good.



But there is another thing to be said about the Mahometan Heaven and Hell.

This namely, that, however gross and material they may be, they are an



emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so well remembered elsewhere.

That gross sensual Paradise of his; that horribleflaming Hell; the great



enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually insists on: what is all this but a

rude shadow, in the rude Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual Fact,



and Beginning of Facts, which it is ill for us too if we do not all know

and feel: the Infinite Nature of Duty? That man's actions here are of



_infinite_ moment to him, and never die or end at all; that man, with his

little life, reaches upwards high as Heaven, downwards low as Hell, and in



his threescore years of Time holds an Eternity fearfully and wonderfully

hidden: all this had burnt itself, as in flame-characters, into the wild



Arab soul. As in flame and lightning, it stands written there; awful,

unspeakable, ever present to him. With bursting earnestness, with a fierce



savage sincerity, half-articulating, not able to articulate, he strives to

speak it, bodies it forth in that Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in



what way you will, it is the first of all truths. It is venerable under

all embodiments. What is the chief end of man here below? Mahomet has



answered this question, in a way that might put some of us to shame! He

does not, like a Bentham, a Paley, take Right and Wrong, and calculate the



profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other; and summing

all up by addition and subtraction into a net result, ask you, Whether on



the whole the Right does not preponderate considerably? No; it is not

_better_ to do the one than the other; the one is to the other as life is



to death,--as Heaven is to Hell. The one must in nowise be done, the other

in nowise left undone. You shall not measure them; they are



incommensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other is life

eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss; reducing this



God's-world to a dead brute Steam-engine, the infinitecelestial Soul of

Man to a kind of Hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures



and pains on:--If you ask me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier

and falser view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I will answer,



it is not Mahomet!--

On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mahomet's is a kind of



Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking

through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号