16 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



present as contrasted with the spirit of the past, and that a prophet 

 who has been so disastrously mistaken in all his vehement forecasts 

 must now be treated as an extinct volcano. We are reminded that 

 Sartor Resartus used to be a favourite book with undergraduates, and 

 that freshmen thirty years ago loved to talk about the Immensities 

 and the Eternities. It seems that the taste of undergraduates and 

 freshmen has changed, and Mr. Courtney regards it as having changed 

 for the better. He points out that Sartor and Frederick have been 

 convicted of misleading the world on the relative value of Germany 

 and France both in the field of thought and in the field of action. He 

 recalls how Carlyle hated the things we now know to be most vital, 

 how he scorned democracy, and parliament, and statistics, and 

 political economy, and philanthropy towards criminals, and universal 

 sufïrage. He calls him a militarist, an enthusiast for the strong man 

 armed, a worshipper of autocracy with its implied suppression of 

 individual freedom. And he notes as early as the publishing of Sartor 

 itself the "complete Germanisation of Carlyle's mind." 



Professor Sherman in the New York Nation of 14th September, 

 1918, took as his subject "Carlyle and Kaiser-Worship." The great 

 work on the French Revolution, says Mr. Sherman, "may be said to 

 teach three lessons; First, that Louis XVI did not know his business, 

 and therefore deserved to die; Second, that the French Parliamentary 

 Assembly was necessarily, like all such assemblies, a pack of quarrel- 

 some and ineffective doctrinaires, anarchists, and professors of palaver; 

 Third, that Napoleon Bonaparte knew his business, and therefore 

 deserved to rule." "For Carlyle" exclaims this epigrammatist, "the 

 reappearance of God in the affairs of France was manifested by the 

 whiff of grapeshot with which the Corsican lieutenant dispersed the 

 enemies of the Convention. The great truth which Carlyle saw danc- 

 ing in the hellfire of the French Revolution was that God is a first-rate 

 military man." 



Passing to Heroes and Hero-Worship, Professor Sherman finds 

 that Odin, Mohammed, Cromwell, Bonaparte, are all glorified on 

 no other ground than that of their success. He points out that when 

 Napoleon is defeated Carlyle deserts him as no longer God's lieutenant. 

 This critic is particularly struck by Carlyle's account of Charlemagne's 

 conversion of the Saxons. He thinks it an unmistakeable endorsement 

 of what the German war-lords have called Shrecklichkeit. For 

 Carlyle admitted that preaching was not the instrument used, declared 

 that if an enterprise of any sort is supported by beak and claws it will 

 in the long run conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered, 

 even wrote such words as these: "What is better than itself it cannot 



