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Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle

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Widely known is the lucid and acid historic sense of Thomas Carlyle. This is what you will find in this book. More accessible than the monumental 'Sartor Resartus', but at the same high level. I strongly recomend that book as a way to enter into the vivid world of Carlyle.

A review of Carlyle's Past and Present written in Carlylese (he's much better at it than I am...)

This book could change the whole Western world, if only men would read it, and believe it! -We could have several Utopias springing up in North American and throughout Europe within the space of five years! So here you are. In this work, Carlyle criticizes the social, economic, and political arrangements in England of the 1840s. I will not bother to explain what those arrangements were; I will only say that his criticism is as relevant to us now as it was to the people of his own time. My friends, very simply put, then as now, we have 'parted company with the eternal inner Facts of this Universe, and followed the outer transient Appearances thereof...[we] have forgotten the right Inner True, and taken up with the Outer Sham-true.' Yes Carlyle's English is a bit strange, but try not to be distracted by outer appearances, that is his point! In many aspects of our Western life, we have forgotten what is true and at the heart of the matter, and taken up with superficial nonsense.

Let's begin with economics. In Carlyle's day, the Industrialists were trying their damnedest to figure out a way to make the production of cotton cheaper. This is a sham! Instead, figure out a way, with all your cotton cloth, to 'cover all the backs of England.' How like our present day Global Economists, wracking their brains trying to get the poor fools of the Third World to buy our products. Why don't they stop a moment and see if everyone at home is yet sufficiently provided for. Do your own fellow citizens need what you are producing, or have they enough of it, need they some other product which it is in your power to produce? And what is this of Advertising? Carlyle remembers a hat-maker who built a seven-foot hat of wood and plaster; wheeled it about the streets of London to attract customers to his shop. Does this improve the quality or utility of your hats, man, or does it only fool people into thinking that you have done honest work? I begin to think that more money is made in Advertising in these times of ours than in any other enterprise. What are our cities but places to tack up Billboards, to display Clothes in shop windows, to produce commercials for television, all to fool people into buying rubbish they don't need. Don't Advertise, Just Work!

Religion? Why all the silly ceremonies, the controversies, feuding between different sects. Do we need absurd ceremonies and idolatrous rituals to believe in a Divine Power? True Religion is 'Moral Conscience, Inner Light' 'All Religion [is] here to remind us, better or worse, of what we already know, better or worse, of the quite infinite difference between a Good man, and a Bad, to bid us love infinitely the one, abhor infinitely the other, to strive infinitely to be the one, and not the other.' A Religious man is he who makes his whole life an appeal to Heaven, to Divine Justice, to Goodness, and who cannot be happy if he do not always choose the right thing for his family, his country, his God and himself.

Politics? Why do we continue to elect Bill Slicktons and Tony Blears, vicious Garry Condits and brainless Bushes, when these rotten Governors have in their own souls nothing to govern by. They are play-actors, nothing more, and very poor ones at that. Behind the smile, the make-up, the $400 hair-cut lies only one thing: 'impudent dishonesty--brazen insensibility to lying and to making others lie' Look into the souls of such men and what will you see: 'a general grey twilight, looming with shapes of expediencies, parliamentary traditions, division lists [like opinion polls], election-funds, leading articles...' The true leader, on the other hand, is a hero: he wants none of our material rewards, fears none of our punishments, believes that there is such a thing as eternal justice, will stop at nothing until he has made life better, happier, more fruitful for his fellow citizens. How do we elect such a man, instead of another politician, that is, another professional liar, wood and plaster dummy? We as voters must cease to vote wrong! How is that to be accomplished? Well that is not so easily done. We must all awaken from this state of enchantment, says Carlyle, must begin to learn to distinguish just and unjust, admirable and despicable in our fellow men, and in ourselves. READ THE BOOK!!!

This is just a real though provoking book. If it's light reading you want, stick with the comics in the newpapers. If you want a book that that will make you think and learn - then this is a great choice. Also, the CreateSpace edition is physically attactive both inside and out, with an easy to read, clear typestyle and layout.
A classic.

Carlyle begins Past and Present by noting that England has the economic paradox of possessing great wealth in the aggregate but little that filters down to the common man: "England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition." He sees that England's poorhouses are full of out of work and homeless families. He uses the word "enchantment" to describe the look on their faces as they tell him a collective tale of economic and domestic woe caused by job loss. The inability to maintain a satisfactory life style is not limited to the poor; the rich suffer as well though certainly they have a safety buffer of long standing savings. Carlyle counts more than two million who are forced to live in these poorhouses with no hope: "They sit there, pent up, as in a kind of horrid enchantment; glad to be imprisoned and enchanted that they may not perish starved." Carlyle tells of a Tourist whose daily peregrinations take him past one such poorhouse. This Tourist is horrified at the mute, stupefied looks he sees printed on each unhappy face. The sheer numbers of those living there are staggering in their implications for the future of England: "You have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state to which all sides considered, there was literally never any parallel." Carlyle asks rhetorically: how did England come to such a sad state?

Part of the answer lies in the nature of the hard to locate wealth, which he labels "enchanted." It is everywhere but nowhere, he adds paradoxically as if its enchanted status is explanation enough. Carlyle suggests that the missing wealth is not missing in the physical sense since after all it must lie somewhere even if fallow. It is what its users do with the wealth that marks its utility and hence its presence. As far as the wealth is concerned, "What increase of blessedness is there?" He questions the happiness that wealth ought to provide. A man may have possession of money in his pocket but not have access to the goods that he might otherwise purchase. This lack of access is what makes his wealth seem invisible. Thus, when he again asks rhetorically, "To whom then is this wealth of England wealth," he can lament only, "As yet no one." In the midst of seemingly unlimited resources, there is a "fatal financial paralysis spreading inwards from the extremities." He closes by alluding to Midas who was punished by the gods for arrogance. Whatever Midas touched turned to useless, and thus, fatal gold.

When Carlyle wrote Past and Present, England was experiencing a severe economic downturn that would continue for nearly a decade. High unemployment was rife and hundreds of thousands were rendered homeless. Events continued to worsen until Carlyle felt that he had to do something to halt the slide. He had been working on a biography of Cromwell but due to this crisis, he shelved this project to write with amazing speed a book whose purpose it was to "shake" England out of its doldrums so that he could apply his various philosophical tenets as a cure. Past and Present was written as four books, with Book II dealing with events from England's past (hence the title). The other three focused on the present such that Carlyle could expatiate on what was then plaguing England and what cures he could offer. The problems were the same that he addressed in his other books: creeping capitalism, enervating moral degeneracy, a vanishing belief in matters spiritual, a growing trend to accept conspicuous consumption, and the lack of a Great Leader to set things aright. The cures were also recycled from those very same books: a focus on duty, work, and obedience to a Great Leader. In "Midas," Carlyle alludes to the economic depression that he saw as tearing apart the British social and spiritual fabric. His grasp of economics is faulty in that he assumes that the root cause of England's various woes was due mostly to a shortage of goods to purchase rather than a lack of money to buy them. He implies that the blame for this belongs to those who were then suffering the most. Hence, there was a growing need for a Great Leader to arise to force the common man to plan his affairs with more prudence. Carlyle would spend the remainder of his life justifying this search for a Great Leader.

Carlyle introduces one of his favorite themes: that the love of money is the root of all evil. But he does so in a roundabout way as he first discusses Heaven and Hell before he connects them with his theme. He writes that Hell is a concept that varies from culture to culture and individual to individual. For England, Hell is the gospel of Mammonism, which simply means that the desire to earn money trumps the need to help one's fellow man. "Verily," he notes, "Mammonism is a melancholy creed." Carlyle uses the murder of Able by Cain to illustrate the perfidy that wages allegedly played in the killing.

The forced paying of unneeded money is the equivalent of going to Hell. An employer may pay lawful wages to an employee but the concept of paying more, say for maternity leave, would consign that employer to the darkest recesses of Hell.

Carlyle is upset with any "ism" that threatens to supplant belief in a Higher Power. Should such one belief misdirect men away from their pre-ordained creed, then it follows that malicious cant becomes the order of the day. And if cant be the coin of social interaction, then there can never arise the true hero as a counter weight: "For if there be no Hero and the Histrio (loud orator) himself begin to be seen into, what hope is there for the seed of Adam here below?" The result can be none other than "We are the doomed everlasting prey of the Quack." Such a Quack may maul and consume any man, but Carlyle is determined not to acquiesce passively: "Though he slay me yet will I not trust in him." The world is replete with false heroes, quacks, moral dissolutes, and pre-converted Teufelsdrockhs. Carlyle tells an anecdote of a poor widow who needed medicine for a fever. She made the rounds of her city's welfare agencies, all of which rudely turned her away. She died in agony, but before her death, she passed on to others her contagion, killing seventeen of them. One doctor posed the question: "Would it not have been economy to help this poor Widow?" It was not simply a balance sheet thought process that denied her aid. She was turned away because those who could have and should have helped her had long since lost their souls. Carlyle's conclusion: The misuse of money is but the external manifestation of those who resemble human beings in all aspects but lack an immortal soul.

Carlyle saw England in the economic bear hug of a capitalistic philosophy that required all concerned to value things over people. As soon as the majority of the populace accepted that world view, then it became inevitable that this culture was crumbling under the weight of its own excesses. The failure of man to help his fellow man opened the door to other equally invidious evils, one of which was the rise of the Quack. Carlyle held several spots open in his heart for the damnation of specified groups of miscreants. Chief among these was the Quack. As long as the Quack held sway, then the Great Leader could not arise. It became necessary for Carlyle as the Knight to slay the Quack-dragon, hence his willingness to postpone his beloved book on Cromwell for the moment. In the "Gospel of Mammonism," Carlyle identifies and tries his level best to marginalize such false prophets. He would spend his lifetime doing so.

This is for sure a great book, if you have the ability to concentrate for more than five minutes, unlike the majority of the Herd, in mean people, of today. If your intrest lies in the substance of this book, read some other review, I'm only going to tell you that, the (1909) publication, stinks; the so called book, is more like a oversized magizine, and the print is about the size of a footnote in the bible.