of the prophet was in him. … He was the greatest of the Britons of his time—and after the British fashion of not coming near perfection: Titanic, not Olympian: a heaver of rocks, not a shaper. But if he did no perfect work, he had lightning's power to strike out marvelous pictures and reach to the inmost of men with a phrase."
THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
Could men so apparently antipodal as these in temperament, utterance, and life have a thought or doctrine in common? Yet it was the great paradox of the Victorian era that the heart of their mystery, the source and pivot of their teaching, was the same dominating idea. The same idea led one man to insist on the value of the oldest clothes, and led the other to insist on getting rid of them. This dominating principle was the "Doctrine of the Unconscious."[1]
Carlyle first expounded this doctrine in his essay "Characteristics."[2] "The truly strong mind," he says, "view it as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; here as before the sign of health is unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward, world what is mechanical lies open to us; not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of our thinking, we might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is great, and cannot be understood." What is intuitive and spontaneous should be our guide. "The healthy understanding is not the Logical, argumentative, but The Intuitive." "The characteristic of right performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness; 'the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick.'" On this idea Carlyle bases his doctrines of Work and Heroes. By work the spontaneous self has a chance to reveal itself. Heroes are those Great Men who are spontaneous and sincere, those masters of their time who draw up into themselves the thoughts of masses of men.
- ↑ For an extended account see Professor J. B. Fletcher's article "Newman and Carlyle" in the "Atlantic Monthly," Vol. XCV, p. 669.
- ↑ H. C., xxv, 319.
