The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-12-29
A DAY OF JupGMENT.
Thomas CarIyle's Grotesque Miseries and
False Philosophy.

course, he might have dined on the logical
consequences, to the edification OF his char
acter, if not his digestion. When the wife's
weary hands were folded in their final rest,
The fastidious husband did not die. What
ever may have been the flavor of his chops
or the condition of his stomach, he lived
many years of cheerful and rudy health.
He might just as we'll have done without her
drudgery in her life as in her death. She
feared that his frightful impotence with any
new servant, unframed TO his ways, would
drive a woman out of the house with hair on
end, if allowed to act directly upon her.
But it would have been wiser to
let his frightful impatieuce drive a process
sion of women out of the house, until sJarva-
ton should have taught the prudence of self
control; since tine only effect of Mrs. Car
lyle's constant standing between, 10 gather
the spears into his own breast, was her own
prolonged ~death-wound, and Carlyle.s
.~posthumous annotation: 'Oh, heavens, the
comparisonl 1t is TOO trueI'' On a Journey
home, her husband had insisted on her sit
ting in a violent draught all the way-the
same husband who SO properly counseled
his brother, James, to do nothing that is
selfish;' in consequence of which he had to
record "a sad, sick winter awaited nv dear
one" which sad, sick winter made such an
impression on his dear one that, two years
afterward, she refused to join him. because
she might need to have a window shut when
be preferred it open. 81 = Il
Mrs. Carlyle injured her husband. Her
self-surrender nourished in him the violence,
the unreason, the arrogance, the injustice,
the insensibiiity which should have been an
initiated. There is no sign that a single
fault of his grew less under her tutelage.
The very virtue for which he is praised he
owed to the GOODNESS OF his temperament. He
apparently never resisted a temptation. The
vices to which he was inclined he -indulged
in without restraint. In calm and solitude
his conscience sometimes stirred; but when
occasion offered, his violent self-indulgence
crowded it down. II IT = The one reason
which relieves her servitude from weakness
is, that she thought his health demanded
and his genius justified her sacrifice. And,
indeed, he roared so Justify over his NAL
aides that a more experienced woman
than Mrs. Carlyle might be excused for sup
posing them real, while his genius was in
truth sufficient to justify the sacrifice of
everything but character. But mis- maladies
were more than doubtful. Froude openly
SCOTS at his dyspepsia. In 1860, when he was
sixty-five wears old, sleeplessness was such a
novelty to him that he could only express his
mpatience at it by jumping violently out of
bed, though, says the anxious wife, that
"rd overhead used to set my heart
that / couldn't
.rah on the
Aen he left.'
les the sorrowful
JItlful record after he
al, through the valley of the
enaoow OF death.
Carlyle's miseries are usually grotesque,
even when his own retrospective review of
them is thoroughly sincere and solemn. En-
thusiastic praise, for him, is, 81 did not fare
intolerably there at ALL" Twinges of shame
for his multifarious waIIlng over his i'll
health rarely appear. "By this time she must
be beginning to know he says, with a GER
tain shamefaced b~razenness, after having
reused his mothers deep anxiety, THAT
: when>I shout Murderp [ am not always
being killed'-which his wife could never
learn. bad health, too" he pleads again,
and then, with a simultaneous CLEAN of self
knowledge and of self-defense against it-"at
least, singularly changed health!' lntoler-
able suffering. rage, almost despair, was the
result Of his having to SIT on a
all times through life the solid comfort OF
believing like a bull of Bashan against its
ills. He should not have been taken too Sc
riously. The whole creation soured on his
stomach; yet, ten years after his wife was in
her grave, Lord Ronald Cover reports him
as "wonderfully hale and hearty for our
score. his cheeks as rudy as those OF a char
ity-school boy, in force and in good spirits,
his talk full of grist and humor," which
shows how sanitary an act is believing. = =
Her life was lofty. Her moral plane was
immeasurelv above Carlyle's. Her i~ntellec-
tual forces were far more accurately poised,
Her human insight was keener and clearer.
While Carlyle clamored through the amazed
earth for Lis right relations with the uni
yers. Mrs. CARLYLE calmly and silently ad
iusted her visible relations with time and with
CARLYLE. While Carlyle was Gathering in
ali ears the stern command to be rigidly vir
tuous, Mrs. Carlyle was quietly, in the deviP'
name, being y%irtuous, and no more about 1t
Carlyle spent a long life OF the deepest fan
1ied woe in explaining, enforcing, lnculcat
ing himself, under the mistaken idea, in
deed, that himself was the universe. Mrs
CARLYLE effaced herself, considering trul!
that her theory of the infinite was uniniport
ant; while her discharge of the finite dut.
imported all. CARLYLE was not content to be
come the best kind of man; but he made tn
poorest kind of god. Mrs. Carlyle looking
upward in her enforced low state, discerneC
a truth of which Carlyle never dreamed
that it is not the victory, but the struggle
which signifies. To man belongs the strue
gle. The victory is to the power outside I
ourselves which established the universe.
What Carlyle's lips prophesied, what hi
life belied, is taught with stern severity /
his death. To a pressing, and what to hill
was an irresistible philosophy, he sacrifice
his nearest duty, and his philosophy ws
false. There needs no marvellous knowledg,
no divine revelation. for this judgment. Ca
lyle himself shall be the judge. "Withot
love there is no knowledge" he says, an
thereby stands condemned. He had no 10y
for humanity, and the motive OF human H.
escaped him. He loved his own notion
: humanity. He loved the intellectual phal
tom of some remote phase of humanity, b.
men and women he did not love. L
lacked that human sympathy whiC
is essential to the comprehension
human character, to the interpretatic
of human action. His acute. massive al
splendid intellect was held in leash by g
Incredibly sluggish heart. 1t was the san
in great things and in small-a woman, a n
ton, a pet. He stumbled along blindfo
and blundering because he did not kno
what love alone could tell him.. He liv'
beside his wife forty years and never disco