Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/46

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the heart is full, it seeks, for a thousand reasons, in a thousand ways, to impart itself. How sweet, indispensable, in such cases, is fellowship; soul mystically strengthening soul! The meditative Germans, some think, have been of opinion that Enthusiasm in general means simply excessive Congregating—Schwärmerey, or Swarming. At any rate, do we not see glimmering half-red embers, if laid together, get into the brightest white glow?

In such a France, gregarious Reunions will needs multiply, intensify; French life will step out of doors, and, from domestic, become a public Club Life. Old Clubs, which already germinated, grow and flourish; new everywhere bud forth. It is the sure symptom of Social Unrest: in such way, most infallibly of all, does Social Unrest exhibit itself; find solacement, and also nutriment. In every French head there hangs now, whether for terror or for hope, some prophetic picture of a New France: prophecy which brings, nay which almost is, its own fulfilment; and in all ways, consciously and unconsciously, works towards that.

Observe, moreover, how the Aggregative Principle, let it be but deep enough, goes on aggregating, and this even in a geometrical progression; how when the whole world, in such a plastic time, is forming itself into Clubs, some One Club, the strongest or luckiest, shall by friendly attracting, by victorious compelling, grow ever stronger, till it become immeasurably strong; and all the others, with their strength, be either lovingly absorbed into it, or hostilely abolished by it. This if the Club-spirit is universal; if the time is plastic. Plastic enough is the time, universal the Club-spirit: such an all-absorbing, paramount One Club cannot be wanting.

What a progress, since the first salient-point of the Breton