From:
hayesstw@telkomsa.net
On Sat, 9 Sep 2017 23:53:29 -0700 (PDT),
simo.runnel@gmail.com wrote:
How popular is Thomas Carlyle in the world today?
I have translated his books "Past and Present" and "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History".
I don't think I've read anything by Carlyle.
But G.K. Chesterton mentions him:
"Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the
effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is
scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things
have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which Christianity and
democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and
peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle -- the idea that
the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is
Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments on government at
all, its comment must be this -- that the man should rule who does
NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may say, "I will be king";
but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari." If the great
paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this -- that we
must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and
dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself
unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown
the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the
much more exceptional man who knows he can't."
--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com
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* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)