Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/113

 vesture; the issue of it always a melancholy farce-tragedy, in one Age as in another!’ Wherein lies very obviously a truth; but also in secret a very sad error withal. Sure enough, the highest Life touches always, by large sections of it, on the vulgar and universal: he that expects to see a Hero, or a Heroic Age, step forth into practice in yellow Drury-lane stage-boots, and speak in blank verse for itself, will look long in vain. Sure enough, in the Heroic Century as in the Unheroic, knaves and cowards, and cunning greedy persons were not wanting,—were, if you will, extremely abundant. But the question always remains, Did they lie chained, subordinate in this world’s business; coerced by steel-whips, or in whatever other effectual way, and sent whimpering into their due subterranean abodes, to beat hemp and repent; a true neverending attempt going on to handcuff, to silence and suppress them? Or did they walk openly abroad, the envy of a general valet-population, and bear sway; professing, without universal anathema, almost with general assent, that they were the Orthodox Party, that they, even they, were such men as you had right to look for?—

Reader, the Ages differ greatly, even infinitely, from one another. Considerable tracts of Ages there have been, by far the majority indeed, wherein the men, unfortunate mortals, were a set of mimetic creatures rather than men; without heart-insight as to this Universe, and its Heights and Abysses; without conviction or belief of their own regarding it, at all;—who walked merely by hearsays, traditionary cants, black and white surplices, and inane confusions;—whose whole Existence accordingly was a grimace; nothing original in it, nothing genuine or sincere but this only, Their greediness of appetite and their faculty of digestion. Such unhappy Ages, too numerous here below, the Genius of Mankind indignantly seizes, as disgraceful to the Family, and with Rhadamanthine ruthlessness—annihilates; tumbles large masses of them swiftly into Eternal Night. These are the Unheroic Ages; which cannot serve, on the general field of Existence, except as dust, as