Latter-Day Pamphlets Kindle Edition

It will strike the reflective mind with some surprise that this classic piece of Victorian sagacity from the year 1850, a milestone in socio-moral analysis, is not better known to the modern reader. Carlyle was the last great prophet of the Western tradition, who looked at the atheistic, money-grabbing, materialistic society around him, enthralled to such cants as utilitarianism and other materialist philosophies, and felt himself compelled to protest in the strongest possible terms about the moral dung-heap the world had become. He called for a complete overhaul of the system of government - of democracy he had seen quite enough. Democracy does not cause the wisest to be given power, but the talking-machine, the man dedicated not to wisdom but to the sham of wisdom, to all the arts of popularity and stump-oratory. Better far to cultivate the greatest virtue, Silence. The Talker is insincere, much given to cant and flummery. He has departed from the Eternal Laws of the Universe, and so has the society which has produced him, and of which he is the emblem.

Carlyle called for the Organization of Labour, so in some respects one could perhaps call him a socialist, and, indeed, earlier works by Carlyle were favourably reviewed by Engels. Where Carlye differed from socialism was in that this organization was to be under the control of the wisest or ablest men, who were to reign tyranically, but with God's justice in their hearts. This was especially urgently required in the light of the Europe-wide revolutions of 1848. This year was not a glorious one in European history, said Mr C - quite the contrary, indeed! As he wrote on the first Pamphlet that makes up this collection, called "The Modern Age":

[W]e had the year 1848, one of the most singular, disastrous, amazing, and, on the whole, humiliating years the European world ever saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians has there been the like. Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane

Quite so. Alas that this benighted age has not its own Thomas Carlyle to declaim such great truths from on high. Not only that, but we neglect even to read the man himself, as though his prophecies did not hold good for our own age! This foolishness must end, as an offense against the Eternal Verities of the Universe. There is only one Sage, and this is he, fittingly reverenced by many in his own time (Charles Dickens for example called him "the man who knows everything", and also said "I would go farther to see Carlyle than any man living". His Hard Times is also inscribed "To Thomas Carlyle"), shamefully neglected in ours - I say shamefully, yet also dangerously, catastrophically, for his lessons are the lessons of the universe, if we could but read it aright. He, taking up where his hero Goethe left off, read the open secret of the universe, and set it down for us - find a wiser than thee, and reverence him, for he is wise, and thou art a blockhead. In this we have the essence of Carlyle, and let us not forget it.

This edition has only the first 5 of the 8 pamphlets that Carlyle issued monthly during 1850. This incompleteness seems to be common to many editions, for reasons I'm unsure of. It's not easy to get all 8. On original publication, the Latter-Day Pamphlets met with some disfavour; his biographer Froude said they caused "universal offence". Yet some there were to hear their message, and Carlyle's reputation survived this offence. To our day, they are still more relevant, for what does our age lack more than Obedience, the first of all virtues? As Carlyle said elsewhere, "[A]ll men, and especially all women, are born worshippers, and will worship, if it be but possible." Consider this well, O foolish Reader, till the meaning of it begins to make itself felt, even to thy poor, faithless head.