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Heroes and Hero Worship-Part17_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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tolerance is needful; very great. But a Priest who is not this at all, who



does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a character--of whom we had

rather not speak in this place.



Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully" target="_blank" title="ad.忠实地；诚恳地">faithfully

perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better here



to consider them chiefly in their historicalcharacter, rather as Reformers

than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equallynotable, in



calmer times, for doing faithfully" target="_blank" title="ad.忠实地；诚恳地">faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship;

bringing down, by faithfulheroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into



the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under God's

guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when this same _way_ was



a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who

led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his



leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfaring and battling

Priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labor as in smooth times,



but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a

more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not.



These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our

best Reformers. Nay I may ask, Is not every true Reformer, by the nature



of him, a _Priest_ first of all? He appeals to Heaven's visible" target="_blank" title="a.看不见的；无形的">invisible justice

against Earth's visible force; knows that it, the visible" target="_blank" title="a.看不见的；无形的">invisible, is strong and



alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a _seer_,

seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other,



of the divine truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a

Priest, he will never be good for much as a Reformer.



Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building up

Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories of Life



worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a Shakspeare,--we are

now to see the reverse process; which also is necessary, which also may be



carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious how this should be necessary:

yet necessary it is. The mild shining of the Poet's light has to give



place to the fiercelightning of the Reformer: unfortunately the Reformer

too is a personage that cannot fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his



mildness, what is he but the product and ultimateadjustment of Reform, or

Prophecy, with its fierceness" target="_blank" title="n.凶恶，残忍">fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaid



Eremites, there had been no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavor,

Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to



Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark

sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is



finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed.

Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of _music_; be



tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude creatures were by their Orpheus

of old. Or failing this rhythmic _musical_ way, how good were it could we



get so much as into the _equable_ way; I mean, if _peaceable_ Priests,

reforming from day to day, would always suffice us! But it is not so; even



this latter has not yet been realized. Alas, the battling Reformer too is,

from time to time, a needful and inevitablephenomenon. Obstructions are



never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances

become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,--a



business often of enormous difficulty. It is notable enough, surely, how a

Theorem or spiritual Representation, so we may call it, which once took in



the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory in all parts of it to

the highly discursive acute intellect of Dante, one of the greatest in the



world,--had in the course of another century become dubitable to common

intellects; become deniable; and is now, to every one of us, flatly



incredible, obsolete as Odin's Theorem! To Dante, human Existence, and

God's ways with men, were all well represented by those _Malebolges_,



_Purgatorios_; to Luther not well. How was this? Why could not Dante's

Catholicism continue; but Luther's Protestantism must needs follow? Alas,



nothing will _continue_.

I do not make much of "Progress of the Species," as handled in these times






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