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Heroes and Hero Worship-Part32_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too, in those days seem to have

been singularly candid; and to have given the Printer precisely what they



found on their own note-paper. And withal, what a strange proof is it of

Cromwell's being the premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a



play before the world, That to the last he took no more charge of his

Speeches! How came he not to study his words a little, before flinging



them out to the public? If the words were true words, they could be left

to shift for themselves.



But with regard to Cromwell's "lying," we will make one remark. This, I

suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All



parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to be

meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns out to have been



meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But now,

intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man



in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have

_reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws



to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's

taking up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is to be



himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to

those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent inquiries



made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer uninformed on that matter; not,

if you can help it, misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was! This,



could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and faithful

man would aim to answer in such a case.



Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern

parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little party thought



him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find him not of their

party, but of his own party. Was it his blame? At all seasons of his



history he must have felt, among such people, how, if he explained to them

the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered aghast at it, or



believing it, their own little compact hypothesis must have gone wholly to

wreck. They could not have worked in his province any more; nay perhaps



they could not now have worked in their own province. It is the inevitable

position of a great man among small men. Small men, most active, useful,



are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction

which to you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_.



But would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to disturb

them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on



some thin traditionality, conventionality; to him indubitable, to you

incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! "I might



have my hand full of truth," said Fontenelle, "and open only my little

finger."



And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in all

departments of practice! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to himself_



cannot practice any considerable thing whatever. And we call it

"dissimulation," all this? What would you think of calling the general of



an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private

soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about



everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in a manner we

must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex of such questioning



"corporals" rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he

did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed



this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that

ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say so much?--



But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to the

very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about their



"ambition," "falsity," and such like. The first is what I might call

substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and starting-point



of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined

on being Protector of England, at the time when he was ploughing the marsh



lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped out: a program of the

whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically unfolded, with all



manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow,

scheming [Gr.] _Upokrites_, or Play-actor, that he was! This is a radical



perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how




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