Thomas Carlyle - Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History. Book: Thomas Carlyle Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History

First conversation Hero as a deity. One: paganism, Norse mythology

In these conversations, I mean to develop a few thoughts about great people: how they manifested themselves in the affairs of our world, what external forms they took in the process historical development what idea people had of them, what business they did. I'm going to talk about the characters, their roles, how people treated them; what I call hero-worship and heroism in human affairs.

Undoubtedly, this is too broad a topic. It deserves an incomparably more detailed consideration than is possible for us in this case. A vast subject is boundless, in fact it is as vast as the history of the world itself. For the history of the world, the history of what man has done in this world, is, in my opinion, in essence, the history of great people who have labored here on earth. They, these great people, were the leaders of mankind, educators, models and, in a broad sense, the creators of everything that the whole mass of people in general strove to realize, what they wanted to achieve. Everything done in this world is, in essence, an external material result, the practical implementation and embodiment of the thoughts that belonged to the great people sent to our world. The history of these latter is truly the soul of all world history. Therefore, it is quite clear that the topic we have chosen, due to its vastness, can in no way be exhausted in our conversations.

One thing, however, is comforting: great people, no matter how we talk about them, always make up an extremely useful society. Even with the most superficial attitude towards a great man, we still gain something from contact with him. He is the source of vital light, the proximity of which always acts beneficially and pleasantly on a person. It is the light that illumines the world, illuminating the darkness of the world. This is not just a kindled lamp, but rather a natural luminary, shining like a gift from heaven; a source of natural, original insight, courage and heroic nobility, spreading its rays everywhere, in the radiance of which every soul feels good. Be that as it may, you will not grumble that you decided to wander for some time near this source.

Heroes taken from six different spheres and, moreover, from very distant eras and countries, extremely unlike each other only in their own way. appearance will undoubtedly illuminate many things for us, once we treat them trustingly. If we could see them clearly, we would penetrate to a certain extent into the very essence of world history. How happy will I be if I can, at a time like this, show you, even in a small measure, the full meaning of heroism, clarify the divine relation (as I must call it) that exists at all times between a great man and other people, and , thus, not only to exhaust the subject, but only, so to speak, to prepare the ground! Anyway, I have to try.

In every sense it is well said that the religion of a man constitutes for him the most essential fact, the religion of a man or of an entire people. By religion, I mean here not the ecclesiastical creed of a person, the dogmas of faith, the recognition of which he testifies sign of the cross, in a word or in any other way; not quite this, and in many cases not quite this. We see people of all kinds of denominations equally respectable or irreverent, regardless of what particular belief they hold. This kind of confession confirms, in my opinion, not yet religion. It often constitutes only one external confession of a person, testifies to only one logical-theoretical side of him, even if it still has such depth. But what a person believes in deeds (although in this he quite often does not give an account even to himself, much less to others), he takes to heart, considers it reliable in everything related to his life relationship to the mysterious universe, duty, fate; that which, under all circumstances, is the main thing for him, conditions and determines everything else - this is his religion, or, perhaps, his pure skepticism, his unbelief.

Religion is the way in which a person feels spiritually connected with the invisible world or with the non-world. And I affirm that if you tell me what this attitude of a person is, you will thereby determine to me with a great degree of certainty what kind of person this person is and what kind of work he will do. So how about individual person, so with regard to a whole people, we first ask what is its religion? Is it paganism, with its numerous host of gods, just a sensual representation of the mystery of life, and physical strength is recognized as the main element? Is Christianity faith in the invisible, not only as something real, but also the only reality? Time resting in each of its most insignificant moments on eternity? The dominance of pagan power, replaced by a nobler supremacy, the supremacy of holiness? Is it skepticism, doubting and investigating whether there is an invisible world, whether there is any mystery of life, or is it all just madness, that is, doubt, and perhaps disbelief and complete denial of all this? To answer the question posed means to capture the very essence of the history of a person or a people.

The thoughts of men gave birth to the deeds they did, and their very thoughts were born of their feelings. Something invisible and spiritual, inherent in them, determined what was expressed in action; their religion, I say, was a fact of great importance to them. However much we may have to limit ourselves in present conversations, we think it will be useful to focus our attention on reviewing this religious phase in the first place. Having become acquainted with it well, it will not be difficult for us to understand everything else. From our series of heroes, we will deal first with one central figure in Scandinavian paganism, who is the emblem of the vast field of facts. First of all, let us be allowed to say a few words in general about the hero, understood as a deity - the oldest, primordial form of heroism.

Of course, this paganism seems to us an extremely strange phenomenon, almost incomprehensible at the present time: some kind of impenetrable thicket of all kinds of ghosts, confusion, lies and absurdities; thicket, which overgrown the whole field of life and in which people hopelessly wandered. A phenomenon capable of evoking in us extreme surprise, almost distrust, if only it were possible not to believe in this case. For it is really not easy to understand how sane people who look open eyes upon the peace of God, could ever believe with equanimity in such doctrines and live by them. For people to worship an insignificant creature similar to them, man, as their god, and not only him, but also stumps, stones, and in general all kinds of animate and inanimate objects; that they should take this incoherent chaos of hallucinations for their theories of the universe - all this seems to us an incredible fable. However, there is no doubt that they did just that. People like us have really held onto and lived in accordance with such a disgusting and hopeless confusion in their false worships and false beliefs. This is weird. Yes, we can only stop in silence and sorrow over the depths of darkness lurking in man, just as we, on the other hand, rejoice, reaching heights of clearer contemplation together with him. All this was and is in man, in all people and in ourselves.

Some theorists do not think long about the explanation of pagan religion. All this, they say, is one sheer charlatanism, the trickery of the priests, deceit. No sane person ever believed in these gods, he only pretended to believe in order to convince others, all those who are not even worthy of being called a sane person! But we feel it our duty to protest against this kind of explanation of human deeds and human history, and we often have to repeat it.

Here, on the eve of our conversations, I protest against the application of such a hypothesis to paganism [paganism] and in general to all kinds of other “isms” by which people, making their earthly journey, were guided in certain epochs. They recognized in them the indisputable truth, or otherwise they would not have accepted them. Of course, there is plenty of quackery and deceit; in particular, they terribly flood with themselves religions on the slope of their development, in epochs of decline; but charlatanism has never been a creative force in such cases; it meant not health and life, but decay and served as a sure sign of the coming end! Let's never lose sight of this. The hypothesis that charlatanism can give rise to belief, whatever belief is involved, even among savage people, seems to me the most deplorable error. Quackery does not create anything; it brings death wherever it appears. We will never look into the real heart of any object as long as we are concerned only with the deceptions that have accumulated on it. Let us not completely discard these latter as painful manifestations, perversions, in relation to which our only duty, the duty of every person, is to put an end to them, to sweep them away, to cleanse both our thoughts and our deeds of them.

Man is everywhere a natural enemy of lies. I find that even the great Lamaism contains a certain kind of truth. Read the "Report on the Embassy" to the country of Lamaism Turner 1 , a sincere, insightful and even somewhat skeptical man, and judge then. This poor Tibetan people believes that in each generation there is invariably the embodiment of providence sent down by this last one. After all, this is, in essence, a belief in a kind of pope, but more sublime. It is the belief that the greatest man exists in the world that he can be found, and once he is really found, he must be treated with boundless humility! This is the truth of great Lamaism. The only error here is the "search" itself. The Tibetan priests practice their own methods to discover the greatest person fit to become the supreme ruler over them. low methods. But are they much worse than ours, in which, in a well-known genealogy, such suitability is recognized for the first-born? Alas, it is difficult to find proper methods in this case!..

Paganism will only become accessible to our understanding when we first of all admit that for its followers it once constituted a real truth. Let us consider it quite certain that people believed in paganism - people who look at the world of God with open eyes, people with healthy feelings, created in exactly the same way as we are - and that if we lived at that time, we ourselves would also believe into it. Now let's just ask, what could paganism be?

Another theory, somewhat more venerable, explains everything in allegories. Paganism, say theorists of this kind, represents the game of the poetic imagination, the main reflection (in the form of an allegorical fable, personification, or tangible form) discarded from what the poetic minds of that time knew about the universe and what they perceived from it. Such an explanation, they add at the same time, is in accordance with the basic law of human nature, which everywhere actively manifests itself even now, although in relation to less important things. Namely: everything that a person strongly feels, he tries, one way or another, to express, reproduce in a visible form, endowing a known object with a kind of life and historical reality.

Undoubtedly, such a law exists, and, moreover, it is one of the most deeply rooted laws in human nature. We will also not doubt that in this case, too, it had its profound effect. The hypothesis that explains paganism by the activity of this factor seems to me a little more respectable; but I cannot recognize it as correct. Think about whether we would begin to believe in some allegory, in the game of poetic imagination, and recognize it as the guiding principle in our lives? Of course, we would demand from her not amusement, but seriousness. Living a real life is the most serious thing in this world; death is also no fun for man. Man's life has never seemed to him a game; it was always a harsh reality for him, a completely serious matter!

Thus, in my opinion, although these allegorical theoreticians were in this case on the way to the truth, nevertheless they did not reach it. Pagan religion is truly an allegory, a symbol of what people knew and felt about the universe. Indeed, all religions in general are the same symbols, always changing as our relationship to the universe changes. But to present allegory as the original, producing cause, when it is rather a consequence and completion, is to completely distort the whole thing, even just turn it inside out. Not in beautiful allegories, not in perfect poetic symbols people need. They need to know what they should believe about this universe; which path should be followed; what can they count on and what should they fear in this mysterious life; what they should do and what not to do.

The Pilgrim's Progress 2 is also an allegory, beautiful, true and serious, but consider how Bunyan's allegory could have preceded the faith it symbolized! First there must be a faith recognized and affirmed by all. Then already, as its shadow, an allegory can appear. With all her seriousness, it will be, one might say, an amusing shadow, a mere play of the imagination in comparison with the formidable fact and with the scientific certainty that she is trying to translate into well-known poetic images. Allegory does not give rise to certainty, but is itself the product of it. Such is Bunyan's allegory, and so are all the others. Therefore, with regard to paganism, we must still investigate beforehand, where did this scientific certainty come from, which gave rise to such a disorderly heap of allegories, errors, such confusion? What is it and how did it develop?

Of course, any attempt to "explain" here, or anywhere else, such a remote, incoherent, confused phenomenon as this cloud-shrouded paganism, which is more a cloudy realm than a remote continent of solid earth and facts, would be a foolish attempt! It is no longer a reality, although it was once a reality. We must understand that this apparent realm of clouds was indeed once a reality, not only poetic allegory, and, in any case, not charlatanism and deceit gave birth to it.

People, I say, never believed in idle songs, never risked the life of their souls for a mere allegory. People at all times, and especially in the serious initial era, have had some instinct to guess charlatans and have abhorred them.

Leaving aside both the theory of quackery and the theory of allegory, let us try to listen attentively and with sympathy to the distant, obscure rumble that reaches us from centuries of paganism. Shall we not at least be able to convince ourselves that they are based on a certain kind of fact, that even the pagan ages were not ages of lies and madness, but that they, in their own, albeit pitiful, way, were also distinguished by truthfulness and sanity!

You remember one of Plato's fantasies about a man who lived to adulthood in a dark cave and was then suddenly taken out into the open air to watch the sunrise. What, presumably, was his astonishment, ecstatic astonishment at the sight of the spectacle, daily contemplated by us with complete indifference! With the open, free feeling of a child, and at the same time with the mature mind of a mature man, he looked at this spectacle, and it inflamed his heart. He recognized in him the divine nature, and his soul fell before him in deep reverence. Yes, primitive peoples were distinguished by such childish grandeur. First

a pagan thinker among savage people, the first person who began to think, represented just such a mature child of Plato: simple-hearted and open, like a child, but at the same time, the strength and depth of a mature person are already felt in him. He has not yet given a name to nature, he has not combined in one word all this endless variety of visual impressions, sounds, forms, movements, which we now call by a common name - "universe", "nature" or in any other way, and, thus, get rid of them, in a word.

For a wild, deeply feeling person, everything was still new, not covered by words and formulas. Everything stood naked before him, blinding him with its light, beautiful, formidable, inexpressible. Nature was for him what it always remains for the thinker and prophet - supernatural.

This rocky land, green and blooming, these trees, mountains, rivers, seas with their eternal voice; this boundless, deep sea of ​​azure, hovering over the head of a man; the wind blowing above; black clouds, piled one on top of the other, constantly changing their forms and breaking out now with fire, then hail and rain - what is all this? Yes, what? In fact, we still do not know this and will never be able to find out. We avoid embarrassment by no means because we have greater insight, but because of our easy attitude, our inattention, lack of depth in our view of nature. We stop being surprised by all this just because we stop thinking about it. A thick, hardened shell of traditions, current phrases, mere words, has formed around our being, densely and on all sides enveloping any concept that we may form for ourselves. We call this fire, which cuts through a black, menacing cloud, "electricity," we study it scientifically, and by rubbing silk and glass we bring about something similar to it; but what is it? What produces it? Where does it come from? Where does it disappear? Science has done a lot for us. But pitiful is the science that would want to hide from us all the vastness, depth, sanctity of the endless ignorance, where we can never penetrate and on the surface of which all our knowledge floats like a light raid. This world, despite all our knowledge and all our sciences, still remains a miracle, amazing, inscrutable, magical for anyone who thinks about it.

A great mystery time, does it not represent another miracle? Boundless, silent, never resting, this is the so-called time. Rolling, rushing, fast, silent, like the tide of the ocean that carries everything away, in which we and the whole universe flicker, like vapors, shadows, appearing and disappearing - it will forever remain literally a miracle. It strikes us, and we are silent, because we lack the words to talk about it. This universe, alas, what could a wild man know about it? What can even we know? That she is a force, a combination of forces combined in a thousand ways. A force that is not us, that's all. She is not us, she is something completely different from us.

Power, power, power everywhere; we ourselves are the mysterious force at the center of it all. “There is no rotting leaf on the road that does not contain strength: otherwise how could it rot?” Yes, indeed, even for an atheist thinker, if such is possible at all, this must also be a miracle. This vast, boundless whirlwind of power that envelops us here; a whirlwind that never stops, rising as high as immensity itself, as eternal as eternity itself. What is he? The creation of God, religious people answer, the creation of the almighty God! Atheistic knowledge, with its scientific list of names, with its answers and all sorts of things, babbles its pitiful speeches about it, as if it were a matter of an insignificant, dead substance that can be poured into Leiden jars 3 and sold from the counter. But the natural common sense of man at all times, if only a man honestly addresses it, proclaims that it is something alive. Oh yes, something inexpressible, divine, in relation to which, no matter how great our knowledge, we most of all befits reverence, reverence and humility, silent worship, if there are no words.

Then I will remark further: that work, for which, in a time like ours, a prophet or poet is needed to teach and free people from this impious cover, list of names, current scientific phrases, in former times every serious mind did for itself, not still cluttered with similar notions. The world, which is now divine only in the eyes of the elect, was then so for everyone who turned their open gaze to it. The man then stood naked before him, face to face. "Everything was divine or God" - Jean Paul 4 finds that the world is like that. The giant Jean Paul, who had enough strength not to succumb to walking phrases; but then there were no walking phrases. Canopus 5, shining high above the desert with a blue diamond brilliance, this wild blue, as it were, spiritual brilliance, much brighter than what we know in our countries. He penetrated into the very heart of the wild Ishmaelite, served as a guiding star in the boundless desert. To his wild heart, which contained all feelings, but did not yet know a single word to express them, this Canopus must have seemed like a small eye, looking from the depths of eternity itself and revealing an inner brilliance. Can we not understand how these people revered Canopus, how they became the so-called Sabeites, worshipers of the stars? Such, in my opinion, is the secret of all kinds of pagan religions. Worship is the highest degree of wonder; wonder, knowing no boundaries and no measure, is worship. For primitive people all objects and every object that exists next to them, was represented by the emblem of the divine, the emblem of some God.

And notice what a thread of truth that never breaks through here. Does not the divinity also speak to our mind in every star, in every blade of grass, if only we open our eyes and our soul? Our reverence no longer has this character. But isn’t it still considered a special gift, a sign of what we call “poetic nature”, the ability to see in each object its divine beauty, to see how each object really represents until now “a window through which we can look into the very infinity"? A person who is able to notice in every object what deserves love, we call a poet, an artist, a genius, a gifted, loving person. These poor Sabeites did in their own way what such a great man does. Whatever way they did it, in any case, the very fact that they did speaks in their favor. They stood higher than a completely stupid person, than a horse or a camel, who do not think of anything like that!

But now, if everything that we turn our eyes to is for us the emblem of the Most High God, then, I add, to an even greater extent than any external thing, man himself represents such an emblem. You have heard the famous words of St. John Chrysostom, spoken by him regarding the shekinah, or the tabernacle of the covenant, the visible revelation of God given to the Jews: “The true shekinah is a man!” 6 Yes, that's right: this is not an empty phrase at all, it really is. The essence of our being, that mysterious thing that calls itself I- alas, what words do we have to designate all this - there is the breath of heaven. The highest being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours - does not all this constitute, as it were, the outer cover of an entity that has no name? “There is only one temple in the universe,” says Novalis 7 with reverence, “and this temple is the human body. There is no shrine greater than this exalted form. To bow the head before the people is to pay due respect to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the body of a man!” From all this, it strongly smacks of empty rhetoric, but in reality it is far from rhetoric. If you think about it well, it will turn out that we are dealing with a scientific fact, that this is a real truth, expressed in the words that we can have. We are a miracle of miracles, the great, inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand it; we don't know how to talk about it. But we can feel and know that it is so.

There is no doubt that this truth was once felt more vividly than it is now. The early generations of mankind retained the freshness of a youth. At the same time, they were distinguished by the depth of a serious person, not thinking that they had already done away with everything heavenly and earthly, giving scientific names to everything, but looking directly at the world of God with reverence and wonder, they felt more strongly that there is divine in man and nature. They could, without being mad, revere nature, man and the latter more than anything else in this nature. To honor, as I said above, is to wonder without limit, and they could do this with all the fullness of their abilities, with all the sincerity of their hearts. I regard the veneration of heroes as a great hallmark in the systems of ancient thought. What I call the thicket of paganism grew out of many roots. All admiration, all worship of any star or any object was the root or one of the threads of the root, but the veneration of heroes is the deepest root of all, the main, pivotal root, which to a large extent nourishes and grows everything else.

And now, if even the veneration of the star had its certain significance, how much more could the veneration of the hero have! Worshiping a hero is transcendent wonder at a great man. I say great people are amazing people so far; I say that, in fact, there is nothing else surprising! There is no nobler feeling in the breast of a man than this surprise before someone who is higher than him. And at the present moment, as in general at all moments, it produces a life-giving influence on a person's life. Religion, I say, rests on it; not only pagan, but much higher and truer religions, all religions known so far. Reverence for a hero, surprise that comes from the very heart and plunges a person to the ground, ardent, boundless humility before an ideally noble, god-like person - is this not precisely the grain of Christianity itself? The greatest of all heroes is He Whom we will not name here! Meditate upon this shrine in holy silence. You will find that she is the last incarnation of the principle passing through " red thread through the entire earthly history of man.

Or, turning to lower, less inexpressible phenomena, do we not see that all loyalty (fidelity, devotion) is also akin to religious faith? Faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher, some exalted hero. And what, therefore, is loyalty itself, the breath of life of any society, if not the result of the veneration of heroes, if not a humble astonishment before true greatness? Society is based on the veneration of heroes.

All sorts of titles and ranks, on which human unity rests, represent what we might call a geroarchy (the rule of heroes) or a hierarchy, since this geroarchy also contains enough of the “holy”! Duke ("duke") means Dux, "leader"; Kцnning, Canning - “a person who knows or can” 8 . Every society is an expression of the veneration of heroes in their gradual gradation, and it cannot be said that this gradualness is completely untrue, there is respect and obedience rendered to truly great and wise people.

Graduality, I repeat, cannot be said to be completely untrue! All of them, these public dignitaries, represent gold like banknotes, but, alas, there are always many counterfeit banknotes among them. We can carry out our operations with a certain number of counterfeit, counterfeit banknotes, even with a significant amount of them; but this becomes decidedly impossible when they are all fake or when most of theirs is! No, then a revolution must come, then the cries of democracy rise, freedom and equality are proclaimed, and I don't know what else. Then all tickets are considered fake; they cannot be exchanged for gold, and the people in despair begin to shout that there is no gold at all and never was! "Gold", hero worship, nevertheless exists, as it has always existed and everywhere, and it cannot disappear as long as man exists.

I know very well that at present the veneration of heroes is recognized as an obsolete cult, which has finally ceased to exist. Our age, for reasons that would once be a worthy subject of study, is an age that denies, so to speak, the very existence of great men, their very desirability. Show our critics a great man, such as Luther 9 , and they will begin with what they call "explanation." They will not bow before him, but will begin to measure him and find that he belongs to people of a small breed! He was "a product of his time," they would say. Time called him, time did everything, but he did not do anything that we, little critics, could not do as well! A miserable job, in my opinion, is such a criticism. Time caused? Alas, we have known times that rather loudly called their great man, but did not find him! It didn't show up. Providence did not send him. Time, calling him with all its might, was to sink into oblivion, since he did not come when he was called.

For if we think carefully, we shall be convinced that no time would be in danger of perishing if it could find a great enough man. Wise to correctly determine the needs of the time; brave, to lead him on a straight path to the goal; this is the salvation of all time. But I compare the vulgar and lifeless times with their unbelief, disasters, confusions, doubting and indecisive character, difficult circumstances. Times helplessly exchanging for worse and worse disasters, leading them to final destruction - I compare all this to a dry, dead forest, waiting only for lightning from the sky to ignite it. The great man, with his free power coming straight from the hands of God, is lightning. His word is a wise, saving word; everyone can believe in it. Everything around this person then ignites, since he strikes with his word, and everything burns with a fire similar to his own. It is thought that these dry, dust-turning branches called him into existence. Of course, it was extremely necessary for them, but as for the fact that they called! ..

Critics shouting, "Look, isn't this wood making fire!" - reveal, I think, great myopia. No man can more sadly testify to his own insignificance than by showing disbelief in a great man. There is no more sad symptom for the people of a certain generation than such universal blindness to spiritual lightning, with only faith in a bunch of dry, lifeless branches. This is the last word of unbelief. In every epoch of world history we will always find a great man who is the necessary savior of his time, the lightning without whom the branches would never have caught fire. The history of the world, as I have already said, is the biography of great people.

Our little critics are doing everything in their power to move forward unbelief and paralyze the general spiritual activity. But fortunately, they are not always able to keep up with their work. At all times a person can rise high enough to feel that they and their doctrines are chimeras and cobwebs. And what is especially remarkable is that they could never, at any time, completely eradicate from the hearts of living people the well-known, completely exclusive reverence for great people: genuine surprise, adoration, no matter how obscure and perverted it may seem.

Hero worship will last forever as long as man exists. Boswell, even in the 18th century, sincerely reveres his Johnson. The unbelieving French believe in their Voltaire, and their veneration for the hero manifests itself in an extremely curious way in last moment his life when they "thrown him roses" 11 . This episode in the life of Voltaire has always seemed to me extremely interesting. Indeed, if Christianity is the highest example of hero worship, then here, in Voltairianism, we find one of the lowest! One whose life was in some way the life of the Antichrist, and in this respect presents a curious contrast. No people has ever been less inclined to be surprised at anything than the French of Voltaire's time. Laughing was a characteristic feature of their whole mental make-up; there was not the slightest place for adoration here.

However, look! The Ferney elder comes to Paris, a staggering, decrepit man of eighty-four. He feels that he is also a hero in his own way, that all his life he fought against delusion and injustice, freed Kalas 12 , exposed high-ranking hypocrites, in short, he also fought (although in a strange way) as appropriate brave man. They also understand that if mocking is a great thing, then there has never been such a mocker. In him they see their own embodied ideal. He is what they all long for; the most typical Frenchman of all Frenchmen. He is, in fact, their god, the god they can believe in. Don't they all really revere him, from Queen Antoinette to the customs officer at the port of Saint-Denis? Noble persons dress up as tavern servants. The postman with rude abuse orders the driver: "Drive well, you are carrying Mr. Voltaire." In Paris, his carriage forms "the nucleus of a comet whose tail fills all the streets." Ladies pull out a few hairs from his fur coat to keep them as holy relics. In all of France, everything that was most sublime, beautiful, noble was aware that this man was even higher, even more beautiful, even more noble.

Yes, from the Scandinavian Odin 13 to the English Samuel Johnson, from the divine founder of Christianity to the withered high priest of encyclopedism, heroes have always been worshiped in all times and places. And so it will be forever. We all love great people: we love, honor them and humbly bow before them. And can we honestly bow down to anything else? ABOUT! Does not every truthful person feel that he himself is becoming higher, paying due respect to what is really higher than him? There is no nobler, more blessed feeling in the heart of man than this. The thought that no logic corroded by skepticism, no general vulgarity, insincerity, callousness of any time with its trends can destroy that noble innate devotion, that reverence that is inherent in man - this thought gives me tremendous consolation.

In epochs of unbelief, which soon and inevitably turn into epochs of revolutions, much, as anyone can easily see, undergoes collapse, tends to a sad decline and destruction. As for my opinion regarding the time we are living through, I am inclined to see in this invincibility of the cult of heroes that eternal diamond, beyond which the disorderly destruction revealed by the revolutionary course of things cannot go. The chaotic destruction of things falling into small pieces, crashing down and overturning around us in our revolutionary years, will continue precisely up to this moment, but no longer. This is the eternal cornerstone on which the building will be erected again. In the fact that a person, one way or another, worships heroes, that we all revere and will always revere great people, I see a living rock among all kinds of collapses, the only stable point in modern revolutionary history, which otherwise would seem bottomless and boundless.

This is the truth that I find in the paganism of the ancient peoples. She is only covered with an old, worn robe, but her spirit is still true. Nature still remains divine, it is still a revelation of the works of God; the hero is still revered. But it is precisely this same thing - true, in forms that are still only nascent, poor, connected - that all pagan religions are trying, as best they can, to put forward.

I think Scandinavian paganism is of more interest to us in this case than any other form of paganism. First of all, it belongs to later times. It lasted in northern regions Europe until the end of the XI century; eight hundred years ago, the Norwegians were still worshipers of Odin. Then it is interesting as the belief of our fathers, those whose blood still flows in our veins, and whom we, no doubt, still resemble so much. Strangely, they really believed in this, while we believe in something completely different. Let us stop a little, for many reasons, on the poor Old Norse belief. We have sufficient data to do this, since Norse mythology is quite well preserved, which further increases the interest in it.

On this amazing island Iceland, raised, as the geologists say, from the bottom of the sea by the action of fire; in a wild country of barrenness and lava, yearly swallowed up for many months by terrible storms, and in the summer season by its wild beauty; rising harshly and impregnably here in the Northern Ocean, with its snowy peaks, noisy geysers, sulfuric lakes and terrible volcanic abysses, like a chaotic, devastated battlefield between fire and ice - here, I say, where there is less than in any In another place, they would start looking for literary or written monuments in general, a recollection of things long past was recorded. Along the seashore of this wild country stretches a meadow strip of land where cattle can graze, and thanks to it and the prey taken from the sea, people can exist. These people were distinguished, apparently, by a poetic feeling. Deep thoughts were accessible to them, and they knew how to express them musically. Much would not exist if the sea had not pushed this Iceland out of its depths, if it had not been discovered by the ancient Scandinavians! Many of the ancient Scandinavian poets were natives of Iceland.

Semund, one of the first Christian priests on this island, with a perhaps somewhat belated sympathy for paganism, collected some of the old local pagan songs that were already beginning to fall into disuse at that time - namely, poems or songs of the mythical, prophetic, image of religious content, called the Old Norse critics "Elder (Song) Edda". The etymology of the word "Edda" is unknown. It is thought to mean "ancestors". Then Snorri Sturluson, a highly remarkable person, an Icelandic nobleman, brought up by the grandson of this same Semund, conceived, almost a century later, among his other works, to compile something like a prosaic survey of all mythology and illuminate it with new passages from the verses preserved by tradition. He performed this work with remarkable skill and natural talent, with what some call unconscious art. The work turned out to be absolutely clear and understandable, which is pleasant to read even at the present time. This is the "Younger Edda" (prose).

Thanks to these works, as well as numerous sagas, mostly of Icelandic origin, and using Icelandic and non-Icelandic commentaries, which are still zealously practiced in the North, we can even now become directly acquainted with the subject, become, so to speak, face to face with the system Old Norse belief. Let's forget that this was an erroneous belief. Let us regard it as an old idea, and see if there is anything in it that we could sympathize with at the present time.

I see the main distinguishing feature of this Old Norse mythology in the personification of visible natural phenomena. Serious, frank recognition of the phenomena of physical nature as a work of the wholly miraculous, amazing and divine. What we are now studying as the subject of our knowledge aroused astonishment among the ancient Scandinavians, and they, stricken with reverent horror, prostrated themselves before him, as before the object of their religion. They imagined the dark, hostile forces of nature in the form of "jotuns", giants, huge shaggy creatures with a demonic character. Frost, fire, sea storm are jotuns. Good forces, like summer warmth, the sun, these are the gods. Power over the universe is shared between the one and the other. They live separately and are in eternal deadly civil strife. The gods live above, in Asgard, in the garden of the aesir, or deities. The home of the jotuns is Jotunheim 14, a remote, gloomy country where chaos reigns.

All this is strange, but not empty, not meaningless, if only we look more closely at the very essence! For example, the power of fire or flame, which we denote by some hackneyed chemical term that hides from ourselves only the real nature of the miracle that affects this phenomenon, as in all others, for the ancient Scandinavians represents Loki 15, the fastest, insinuating demon from Jotun families.

The savages of the Mariana Islands (say Spanish travelers) considered fire, which they had never seen before, also a devil or god, living in a dry tree and biting cruelly if touched. But no chemistry, unless supported by stupidity, can hide from us the fact that the flame is a miracle. Indeed, what is a flame? .. Frost (an ancient Scandinavian clairvoyant) is considered a monstrous, gray-haired jotun, a giant Hold, Khryum or Rome. This old word is now almost completely out of use in England, but it is still used in Scotland for frost 16 . Rome was not dead then chemical compound, as now, but a living jettun or a demon. The monstrous Jotun Rim drove his horses home for the night and began to "comb their manes." These horses were hail clouds or fast frosty winds. Ice blocks are not his cows or bulls, but a relative, the giant Ymir. This Ymir had only to "look at the rocks" with his devil's eye, and they split from his brilliance.

Thunder was not considered then only as electricity flowing from glass or resin; it was the god Donar 17 ("thunder"), or Thor; he is also the god of the beneficent summer warmth. Thunder is his anger. The piling up black clouds are Thor's frowning formidable eyebrows. A fiery arrow tearing apart the sky is an all-destroying hammer lowered by the hand of Thor. He rushes on his booming chariot over the tops of the mountains - thunder rolls. Angrily "he blows his red beard" - the rustling and gusts of wind before the thunder begins to rumble.

On the contrary, Balder 18 - a white god, beautiful, just and beneficent (the first Christian missionaries found him similar to Christ) - the sun, the most beautiful of all visible objects. It remains for us all the same wonderful, all the same divine, despite all our astronomy and calendars!

But perhaps the most remarkable of all the gods we have heard about is the god whose traces were discovered by the German etymologist Grimm, the god Wünsch, or Wish ("desire"). God Wish can give us anything we wish for (wished)! Is not the extremely sincere, albeit extremely rude voice of the human soul heard in this? The crudest ideal that man has ever created for himself? An ideal that still makes itself felt in the latest forms of our spiritual culture? Higher reflections should show us that the god Wish is not the true god.

I will mention other gods or jotuns only for the sake of their etymological interest. The sea storm is a very dangerous jotun Aegir. And in our time on the River Trent, as I have heard, Nottingham boatmen call a certain rise in the river (a kind of reverse current, forming whirlpools, very dangerous for them) Eager (Eager). They shout: "Be careful, Yeager is coming!" Strange, this word, which has survived to this day, is like a peak rising from some sunken world!

The ancient Nottingham boatmen believed in the god Aegir! And indeed, our English blood is largely the same Danish, Scandinavian blood. Or rather, a Dane, a Scandinavian, a Saxon have, in essence, only external, superficial differences: one is a pagan, the other is a Christian, etc.

Throughout the island, we are, in fact, especially strongly mixed with the Danes. This is due to their incessant raids, and, moreover, in large proportion, naturally, along the eastern coast, and most of all, as I find, on the northern outskirts. Starting from the river Humber up all over Scotland common people still strikingly reminiscent of the Icelandic dialect; his Germanism has a special Scandinavian coloring. They are also "Norman", if anyone can find special charm in this!

About the main deity, Odin, we will talk further. Now let's note the following: the main essence of Scandinavian and, in fact, any other paganism is the recognition of the forces of nature as personalized, extraordinary, divine figures, like gods and demons. It cannot be said that it was incomprehensible to us. This is a childish thought of a person, revealing itself, with surprise and horror, in front of an eternally amazing universe. In the Old Norse system of thought, I see something extremely sincere, extremely large and courageous. Perfect simplicity, rudeness, so unlike the easy gracefulness of ancient Greek paganism, constitute the distinctive feature of this Scandinavian system. She is a thought; the sincere thought of deep, coarse, serious minds, looking openly at the objects around them. To approach all phenomena face to face, heart to heart, is the first characteristic of every good thought at all times.

Not graceful lightness, semi-amusement, as in Greek paganism, but a certain rustic truthfulness, artless strength, enormous, rude sincerity are revealed here before us. It's a strange feeling to go from our beautiful statues of Apollo and merry, laughing myths to the Norse gods "brewing beer" to feast with Aegir, the jotun of the sea, who sends Thor to get a cauldron in the land of the jotuns. Thor, after numerous adventures, puts the bowler hat on his head like a huge hat and, disappearing into it completely, so that the ears of the bowler hat touch his shoulders, comes back! Some kind of desert immensity, a wide, clumsy gigantism characterize this Scandinavian system; excessive strength, still completely ignorant, walking independently, without any other support, with its huge, unsteady steps.

Notice just this original creation myth. The gods, having taken possession of the slain giant Ymir, a giant born from "warm winds" and various substances that came from the struggle of frost and fire, decided to create a world out of him. His blood became the sea, his flesh became the earth, his bones became rocks. From his eyebrows they made Asgard - the home of the gods. His skull turned into a blue vault of majestic infinity, and his brain into clouds. What a hyperbrobdingneg thing! The thought is unbridled, enormous, gigantic, monstrous; in due time it will be tamed and become a concentrated majesty, not gigantic, but godlike, more powerful than the gigantism, the grandeur of Shakespeare and Goethe! These people are our forefathers spiritually as well as physically.

I also like their idea of ​​the tree Yggdrasil 20 . They imagined the totality of life in the form of a tree. Yggdrasil, the ash tree of life, is deeply rooted in the realm of Heli, or death 21 . The top of its trunk reaches the high sky; branches spread over the whole universe; this is the tree of life. At its roots, in the realm of death, sit three norns, fates - past, present and future - they irrigate the roots of the tree with water from a sacred source. Its "branches" with blossoming buds and falling leaves - events, deeds suffered, deeds committed, catastrophes - spread over all countries and for all times. Does not each leaf represent it separate biography, each fiber - an act or a word? Its branches are the history of nations. The rustling of leaves is the noise of human existence, ever increasing since ancient times. It is growing. The breath of human passion is heard in its rustle; or a stormy wind, shaking it, howls like the voice of all the gods. This is Yggdrasil, the tree of life. It is past, present and future; what is done, what is being done, what will be done is “the infinite conjugation of the verb “to do””.

Thinking about the cycle that human deeds make, how hopelessly each of them is confused with all the others, like the word I said to you today, you can meet not only in Ulfilas of Gotha 22, but in the speeches of all people, since the first one spoke man, I don't find a comparison more appropriate for the occasion than this tree. Great analogy; beautiful and majestic. "The mechanism of the universe" - alas, think of it only for the sake of contrast!

So, this Old Norse view of nature seems rather strange. It differs quite significantly from what we adhere to. How did it come about? They do not like to answer this especially precisely! One thing we can say: it originated in the minds of the Scandinavians; in the head, first of all, of the first Scandinavian, who was distinguished by the original power of thinking; the first Scandinavian "genius man", as we should call him! Countless people passed, making their way in the universe with a vague, mute wonder, such as even animals can experience, or with an agonizing, fruitlessly questioning wonder, such as only people feel, until a great thinker, an original man, a soothsayer appeared.

The formulated and expressed thought awakened the dormant abilities of all people and aroused in them a thought as well. This is always the image of the influence of the thinker, spiritual hero. All the people were not far from saying what he said; everyone wanted to say it. Everyone's thought awakens, as it were from a painful enchanted sleep, and strives for his thought and answers it: yes, that's right! Great joy for people, like the onset of day after night. Isn't this really an awakening for them from non-existence to being, from death to life? We still honor such a person, we call him a poet, a genius, etc.; but for wild people he was a real magician, the creator of an unheard-of, miraculous good, a prophet, a god! Once awakened, the thought no longer falls asleep, it develops into known system thoughts, grows from person to person, from generation to generation, until it reaches its full development, after which this system of thought can no longer grow and must give way to another.

For the Norse people, such a person, as we imagine it, was a man now called Odin. He is the main Scandinavian god; teacher and leader of soul and body; a hero with immeasurable merit, whose surprise, having crossed all known boundaries, turned into adoration. Doesn't he have the ability to mint his thought and many other abilities that are still surprising to this day? That is precisely how the rude Scandinavian heart must have felt with boundless gratitude. Doesn't he solve for them the riddle of the sphinx of this universe, doesn't he inspire them with the certainty of their own destiny here on earth? Thanks to him, they now know what they must do here and what they must expect afterwards. Thanks to him, their existence became clear, melodic, he was the first to make their life alive!

We may call this Odin, the progenitor of Scandinavian mythology, Odin, or whatever name the first Scandinavian thinker had while he was a man among men. Expressing his view of the universe, he thereby causes a similar view in the minds of all. It grows, constantly evolving, and is held to as long as it is considered worthy of faith. It is written in the minds of all, but invisible, as if in sympathetic ink, and at its word it appears with complete clarity. Is it not in every world era the advent of a great event into the world of the thinker, giving rise to everything else?

We must not forget another circumstance that explains part of the confusion of the Scandinavian "Edds". They constitute, in fact, not one coherent system of thought, but a stratification of several successive systems. All this Old Norse belief, according to the time of its origin, appears to us in the Edda as a picture drawn on the same cloth; but in reality this is not the case at all. Here we are dealing, rather, with a whole series of pictures, at all possible distances, placed in different depths, according to the successive series of generations that have come since the belief was first proclaimed.

Every Scandinavian thinker, from the first, has contributed to this Scandinavian system of thought. Constantly reworked and complicated by new additions, it is now their combined work. No one will ever know now what its history was, what changes it underwent, passing from one form to another, thanks to the contributions of different thinkers who followed one after another, until it reached its finally complete form, which we see in the Edda. These cathedrals in Trebizond, Trient, these Athanasius, Dante, Luther - they all plunged into the deep darkness of the night, leaving no trace behind! And all our knowledge in this case should be limited only to the fact that this system had a similar history.

Every thinker, wherever and whenever he appears, makes a certain contribution, a new acquisition into the sphere where his thought is directed, produces a change, a revolution. Alas, has not this most majestic of all revolutions, the "revolution" produced by Odin himself, perished for us, as all the rest perished! What is the story of Odin? It is somehow strange even to say that he had a history. This Odin, in his wild Scandinavian attire, with his wild eyes and beard, coarse Scandinavian speech and address, was a man like us. He had the same sorrows and joys that we have; the same members, the same facial features - in a word, that, in essence, it was absolutely the same person as we are; And he did such a great job! But the work, most of the work, perished, and only the name remained of the creator himself. Wednesday ("Wednesday"), people will say later, that is, the day of Odin!

History knows nothing about Odin. Not a single document has been preserved concerning him, not the slightest hint worth talking about him.

Suppose Snorri, in the most imperturbable, almost businesslike tone, tells in his Heimskringla 23 how Odin, the heroic prince who reigned in the area near the Black Sea, with twelve knights and numerous people was constrained within its boundaries. Then, how he brought these aces (Asians) out of Asia and after a valiant victory remained to live in the northern part of Europe. After he invented letters, poetry, etc., and little by little he began to be revered by the Scandinavians as the main deity, and the twelve knights turned into his twelve sons, the same gods as himself. Snorri has no doubts about all this.

Saxo Grammaticus, a very remarkable Norman of the same century, shows even fewer doubts. He does not hesitate to recognize in any particular myth a historical fact and to render it as an earthly incident, whether in Denmark or elsewhere. Thorpheus, a careful scholar who lived several centuries later, even figures out the appropriate dates. One, he says, came to Europe about 70 BC.

But of all such statements I will not say anything here. They are built on nothing but uncertainties, and therefore cannot be maintained at present. Earlier, much earlier than in 1970! The appearance of Odin, his brave adventures, his entire earthly history, in general his personality and the environment that surrounded him, have been swallowed up forever for us by unknown millennia.

Moreover, the German archaeologist Grimm 24 even denies that there has ever been any kind of person Odin. He proves his opinion etymologically. The word "Wotan", representing the original form of the word "Odin", is found frequently among all the peoples of the Teutonic tribe as the name of the main deity. It has, according to Grimm, a common origin with the Latin word vadere, the English word wade, etc. It originally means movement (“movement”), the source of movement, power, and is a completely appropriate word for the name of the greatest god, not man. This word, he says, means "deity" among the Saxons, the Germans, and all the Teutonic peoples; all adjectives derived from him mean "divine", "supreme" or in general something peculiar to the main deity. Pretty plausible!

We must bow before the authority of Grimm, before his knowledge of etymology. Let us consider it quite decided that Wotan signifies the force of movement. But then we ask why this word cannot also serve as the name of a heroic man and engine, how does it serve as the name of a deity? As for adjectives and words derived from it, let us take, for example, the Spaniards. Didn't they, under the influence of their general surprise at Lope, express themselves like this: "Lopé the flower", "Lopé the lady", in those cases when a flower or a woman struck them with its extraordinary beauty? Then, if such a habit existed for a long time, then the word "Lope" would turn into an adjective in Spain, meaning also "divine". Indeed, Adam Smith, in his Essay on Language, 25 suggests that all adjectives originated in this way. Any object that stands out brightly for its green color receives the meaning of the common name "green", and then any object that differs in the same feature, for example a tree, is called a "green tree". Just like we still say: the steam coach ("steam locomotive"; literally - "carriage driven by steam") and four-horse coach ("coach drawn by four"), etc.

All root adjectives, according to Smith, were formed in this way: at first they were nouns and served as the name of objects. But we cannot forget a person because of such etymological calculations. Of course, there was the first teacher and leader. Of course, Odin, tangible, accessible to human feelings, had to exist in a certain era, not as an adjective, but as a real hero with flesh and blood! The voice of any tradition, history or the echo of history, confirming everything that we arrive at theoretically, convinces us finally of the justice of this.

How the man Odin came to be considered a god, the main deity, is, of course, a question about which no one would undertake to speak in a dogmatic tone. His people, as I said, knew no bounds in their wonder at him; he did not yet know at that time any yardstick by which to measure his astonishment. Imagine, your own noble, heartfelt love for one of the greatest people grows so much that it goes beyond all boundaries, fills and floods the entire field of your thought! Or imagine, this very man is One, since every great, deep soul, with its inspiration, mysterious ebbs and flows of foresight and suggestions descending on it from nowhere, is always a mystery, a kind of horror and amazement for itself, felt to be maybe that he carries a deity in himself, that he is some emanation of Wotan, “movement”, a higher power and a deity, the prototype of which for his admiring imagination was all nature, felt that some emanation of Wotan lives here, in him! And it cannot be said that he inevitably had to lie at the same time. He was simply delusional, expressing the most reliable that only he knew.

Every great soul, every sincere soul does not know what she is, and then ascends to the highest height then plunges into the deepest abyss. Least of all can a man measure himself! What others take him for, and what he seems to himself, according to his own conjectures, these two conclusions affect one another in a strange way, are determined by one through the other. All people are reverently surprised at him. His own wild soul is full of noble ardor and noble aspirations; chaotic stormy darkness and glorious new light. The wonderful universe shines around him in all its divine beauty, and there is no person with whom something like this has ever happened - what could he think after all this about himself, who is he? Wotan? All the people answered: “Wotan!”

And then consider what time alone does in such cases, how a man, if he was great in life, becomes ten times more great after his death. What an immensely magnifying camera obscura tradition represents! How every thing increases in human memory, imagination, when love, worship and everything that the human heart gives, render their assistance to it. And, moreover, in darkness, complete ignorance, without any chronology and documents, with the complete absence of books and marble inscriptions: only here and there a few mute tombstones. But after all, where there are no books at all, a great man in thirty or forty years becomes mythical, since all contemporaries who knew him die out. And after three hundred, and after three thousand years! ..

Any attempt to theorize about such matters will be of little use. These questions do not fit into theorems and diagrams; logic must know that it cannot solve them. Let us be satisfied if we can see in the distance, the most extreme distance, a certain flickering, as it were, of some insignificant real luminary, located in the center of this huge image of a camera obscura. If we consider that the center of the whole picture is not madness or nothing at all, but common sense and something.

This light, kindled in the vast, dark abyss of the Scandinavian soul, but in the living abyss, waiting only for light. This light, in my opinion, represents the center of everything. How then it will burn and spread, what forms and colors it will take, scattering in an amazing way in a thousand ways - this depends not so much on itself, but on the national spirit that perceives it. The color and shape of light changes depending on the prism through which it passes. It is strange to think how the most reliable fact in the eyes different people takes on a wide variety of forms according to human nature!

I said, a serious man, addressing his fellow human beings, inevitably always affirms what seems to him a fact, a real natural phenomenon. But the way in which he understands this phenomenon or fact, exactly what kind of fact it becomes for him, has changed and is changing according to his own laws of thought, deep, elusive, but at the same time universal, eternally active. The world of nature for every person is a fantasy about himself. This world is a polysyllabic "image of his own dream". Who can say by what inexpressible subtleties of spiritualistic law all these pagan fables come into one form or another!

The number "twelve", the most divisible - it can be divided in half, into four parts, three, six - the most wonderful number! This was enough to establish the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve sons of Odin, and countless other "twelve". Every vague notion of number has some tendency towards twelve. The same must be said of every other subject. And besides, all this is done completely unconsciously, without the slightest thought of any kind of "allegories"! The cheerful and clear look of these first centuries must have quickly penetrated into the secret of the relations of things and quite freely submitted to their power.

Schiller finds in the "Girdle of Venus" 26 sublime aesthetic truth about the nature of all that is beautiful. At the same time, interestingly, he does not try to make it clear that the ancient Greek mythologists had some kind of intention to give a lecture on "critical philosophy"! .. In the end, we must leave these boundless realms. Can't we imagine that Odin actually existed? True, there was a delusion, not a small delusion, but a real deception, empty fables, premeditated allegories - no, we will not believe that our fathers believed in them.

The runes of Odin are of great importance for characterizing his personality. The runes and the "magical" miracles he performed with them occupy a prominent place in the traditional Odin story. Runes are the Scandinavian alphabet. It is believed that Odin was the inventor of writing, as well as magic for his people! To express the invisible thought that exists in man by means of written letters is the greatest invention that man has ever made. It is, in a way, a second speech, almost as marvelous as the first. Remember the surprise and distrust of the Peruvian king Atahualpa 27 . The Inca state (Tauantinsuyu) occupied the territory of modern Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Northern Chile and Northwestern Argentina and was conquered by the Spaniards in 1532–1536. Atahualpa was executed, although he paid the conquerors the huge ransom they had set, when he made the Spanish soldier guarding him scrawl the word Dios 28 on his thumbnail, so that he could then, by showing this inscription to the next soldier, see whether such a miracle was really possible. If Odin introduced letters among his people, then he was able to perform magic.

Runic writings were, apparently, an original phenomenon among the ancient Scandinavians. This is not the Phoenician alphabet, but the original Scandinavian. Snorri tells further that Odin also created poetry, the music of human speech, as he created this amazing runic writing of the latter.

Take yourself mentally to a distant, childhood era in the life of peoples. The first beautiful sunny morning of our Europe, when it still rests in the fresh, early radiance of the majestic dawn, and Europe for the first time begins to think, to exist! Amazement, hope, an endless radiance of hope and amazement, like the radiance of the thoughts of a young child, in the hearts of these courageous people! Courageous sons of nature - and among them a man appears, he is not just a wild leader and fighter, who sees with his wildly sparkling eyes what must be done, and with his wild, lion-like heart he dares and does his due, but also a poet. He embodies everything that we understand as a poet, a prophet, a sincere great thinker and inventor, and who every truly great person always is.

A hero is a hero in all respects - in his soul and in his thought above all. This Odin knew, in his own way, rudely, semi-clearly, what to say to him. A great heart opened up to receive the great universe and human life and say a great word about it. This is a hero, I say, according to my own crude model, a wise, gifted man with a noble heart.

And now, if we are still surprised at such a person, mainly before all others, then how must the wild Scandinavian minds, in which the thought was first awakened, have treated him! For them (until then they had no corresponding word) he was noble and most noble; hero, prophet, god; Wotan, the greatest of all. A thought remains a thought, it makes no difference whether it is pronounced in syllables or in coherent speech. In fact, I admit that this Odin was probably created from the same matter as the vast majority of people. There is a great thought in his wild, deep heart! Do not the harsh words which he articulated constitute the original roots of those English words which we still use? He thus worked in this dark element. But he was the light kindled in her; the light of reason, the coarse nobility of the heart, the only kind of light we know today. He is a hero, in my opinion. He had to shine here and at least somehow illuminate his dark element, which is still our universal task.

We imagine him as a typical Scandinavian, the most real Teuton that this race has produced up to now. Rough Scandinavian hearts burned to him with boundless surprise, adoration. It constitutes, as it were, the root of numerous great deeds. The fruits brought by him grow from the depths of the past millennia throughout the entire field of Teutonic thought. Our word "Wednesday" (Wednesday), does not it still mean, as I have already noted, the day of Odin? Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth, - One, growing, penetrated also into England - all these are but leaves from the same root! He was the main deity for all the Teutonic peoples, their ideal of the Old Norse husband. Thus, they really expressed surprise at their Scandinavian ideal. Such was his fate in this world.

So, if One-man disappeared completely, then his huge shadow remained, still lying on the whole history of his people. For since this Odin was recognized as a god, it is easy to understand that the whole Scandinavian system of views on nature, or their vague unsystematic nature, whatever it may have been until then, should have begun to develop from that moment on in a completely different way and grow, following other, new paths. . What Odin learned and what he taught with his runes and rhymes, the entire Teutonic people took to heart and continued to move forward. His way of thinking became their way of thinking. Such is the history of every great thinker up to now, only taking shape under different conditions. This Scandinavian mythology itself, in its obscure giant outlines similar to the huge reflection of a camera obscura, which falls from the dead depths of the past and covers the entire northern part of the sky, is it not in some way a reflection of this man Odin? A gigantic reflection of his real appearance, clearly or indistinctly outlined here, but too extended and therefore obscure! Yes, a thought, I say, always remains a thought. There is no great man who lives in vain. The history of the world is only biographies of great people.

I find something very touching in this primitive image of heroism, artlessness, helplessness and, at the same time, the deepest cordiality with which people then treated the hero. Reverence has never had such a seemingly helpless character, but at the same time it was the most noble feeling, in one form or another as invariably existing as the person himself is invariably existing. If only I could show, to whatever extent, what I have deeply felt for a long time! Namely, that this feeling is the vital element of humanity, the soul of human history in our world, then I would achieve the main goal of my present conversations. We do not now call our great people gods, we are not infinitely surprised before them; oh no, pretty limited! But if we did not have great people at all, if we were not at all surprised by them, then it would be even worse.

This poor Norse cult of heroes, all this Old Norse view of nature, adaptation to it, have an enduring value for us. A childish-rough understanding of the divinity of nature, the divinity of man; extremely rude, but at the same time deeply felt, courageous, gigantic, foreshadowing already what a giant-man this child will grow up! This understanding was the truth, but now it is no longer the truth. Doesn't it seem to you like a strangled, barely audible voice of the long-buried generations of our own fathers, called up from the eternal depths before our face, those in whose veins their blood still flows.

“Here,” they say, “is what we thought about the world; idea, concept, which only we could form for ourselves about this great mystery of the life of the world. Don't be contemptuous of them. You have gone far ahead of such an understanding, wider and freer horizons are spread before you, but you have not yet reached the peak either. Yes, your understanding, however broad it may seem, is still a partial, imperfect understanding. It is a matter of a subject which no man will ever, either in time or outside of time, understand. More and more millennia will pass, and a person will struggle again and again for understanding only some new particular. This object is larger than man, it cannot be understood by him, it is an infinite object!”

The essence of Scandinavian mythology, as well as any pagan mythology in general, lies in the recognition of the divinity of nature and in the sincere communication of man with the mysterious invisible forces that are found in the world work that takes place around him. And this side, I would say, is more sincerely expressed in Scandinavian mythology than in any other known to me. Sincerity is its great characteristic.

A deeper (much deeper) sincerity reconciles us to its total lack of ancient Greek grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these ancient Scandinavians looked at nature with open eyes and an open soul. Extremely serious, honest, like children, but at the same time, like men. With great heartfelt simplicity, depth and freshness, truthfully, lovingly, fearlessly admiring. A truly valiant, truthful race of people of ancient times. Everyone will agree that such an attitude towards nature is the main element of paganism. The attitude towards man, the moral duty of man, although it is not completely absent in paganism, is the main element of the already purer forms of religion. This is indeed a great difference, constituting an era in human beliefs. There is a great demarcation line separating different epochs in the religious development of mankind. Man first of all establishes his relationship to nature and its forces, marvels at them and bows before them. Then, in a later age, he learns that every force is a moral phenomenon, that the main task for him is to distinguish between good and evil, what "you should" from what "you should not."

With regard to all these fabulous descriptions found in the Eddas, as already said, it is most likely to be assumed that they are of later origin. Most likely, from the very beginning they were not of particular importance to the ancient Scandinavians, representing something like a game of poetic imagination. Allegory and poetic descriptions, as I said above, cannot constitute a religious belief. First there must be faith in itself, and then the allegory grows around it, just as the proper body grows around its soul. The Old Norse belief, I am very inclined to admit, like other beliefs, was most effective mainly during the period of its silent state, when it was not yet much talked about and no songs were composed at all.

The essence of practical belief, which a person at that time could have and which can be discovered in these foggy materials presented by the Eddas, a fantastically heaped mass of all sorts of statements and traditions, their musical myths, was, in all probability, reduced only to the following. To faith in the Valkyries and the chamber of Odin (Valhalla), immutable fate and the fact that a person needs to be brave.

The Valkyries are the chosen maidens of the slain. An inexorable fate, which it would be useless to try to bend or soften, decided who should be killed. This was the main point for the believing Scandinavian, as for every serious person everywhere - Mohammed, Luther, Napoleon. For any such person, belief in fate lies at the very foundation of life. This is the fabric from which the whole system of his thought is developed. Back to Valkyries. These chosen maidens lead the brave man to the heavenly chamber of Odin. Only the vile and servile plunge into the realm of Heli, the goddess of death. Such, in my opinion, is the spirit of all Old Norse belief.

The Scandinavians in the depths of their hearts understood that it was necessary to be brave, Odin would not show them the slightest favor, on the contrary, he would despise them and reject them if they were not brave. Think also, do these thoughts contain anything of value? It is an eternal obligation, valid today as it was then, the obligation to be brave.

Courage still has its value. Man's first duty is still to suppress fear. We must be free from fear; we cannot act at all until we achieve this. Until a person crushes fear with his feet, his actions will be of a slavish nature, they will not be true, but only plausible: his very thoughts will be false, he will begin to think entirely, like a slave and a coward. The religion of Odin, if we take its true grain, remains true to this hour. Man needs to be, and he needs to be brave. He must go forward and justify himself as a man, trusting unwaveringly to the direction and choice of higher powers, and above all not to be afraid at all. Now, as always, he is only as human as he conquers his fear.

Undoubtedly, the courage of the ancient Scandinavians was extremely wild character. Snorri says that they considered it a shame and a misfortune to die not on the battlefield. When natural death approached, they opened their wounds so that Odin could recognize in them the warriors who fell in the fight against the enemy. The Scandinavian prince, at the onset of death, ordered to be transferred to the ship. Then a slow fire was laid out on the ship and launched into the sea with the sails unfurled. When he swam out into the open space, the flame engulfed him and rose high to the sky. Thus, the ancient heroes buried themselves with dignity, both in the sky and on the ocean! A wild, bloody courage, but a kind of courage nonetheless. Courage, in any case, is better than the absence of any courage.

And in the ancient sea princes, what an indomitable harsh energy! They are, as I imagine them, silent, their lips compressed. Themselves, not realizing their selfless courage, these people are not afraid of the stormy ocean with its monsters, they are not afraid of either people or things; the ancestors of our Blakes and Nelsons 30! The Scandinavian sea princes did not have their own Homer, who would sing them. Meanwhile, the courage of Agamemnon seems insignificant, and the fruits brought by it are insignificant compared to the courage of some of them - for example, Rolf. Rolf, or Rollon, Duke of Normandy, the wild prince of the sea, still takes a certain part in the government of England.

Even these wild sea wanderings and battles that had lasted for so many generations had their own meaning. It was necessary to ascertain which group of people had the greatest power, who was to dominate whom. Among the rulers of the North, I also find princes who bore the title of "foresters", forest princes-cutters. This title contains great sense. I assume that many of them were, in fact, as good woodcutters as they were warriors. Although the skalds speak mainly of the latter and thus mislead some critics. For no nation could ever live by war alone, since such an occupation does not seem to be productive enough!

I suppose that a truly good warrior was most often also a truly good woodcutter, an inventor, a connoisseur, a doer and a worker in every field, since true courage, not at all similar to cruelty, is the basis of everything. It was the most legitimate display of courage. She took up arms against the impenetrable virgin forests, the cruel dark forces of nature, in order to defeat nature. Do not we, their descendants, continue to go further and further in the same direction since then? If only such courage could inspire us forever!

Man Odin, who possessed the word and heart of a hero and the power to impress, sent down to him from heaven, revealed to his people the infinite meaning of courage, showed how, thanks to it, a person becomes a god. His people, feeling in their hearts a response to this sermon, believed in his mission and recognized it as something sent from heaven. And he himself, who brought them this news, is a deity. This, in my opinion, is the original germ of the Old Norse religion, from which all sorts of myths, symbolic rites, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas have naturally grown. Growing up - how strange!

I called Odin a small luminary, burning and spreading its transforming light in a huge whirlpool of Scandinavian darkness. However, it was, mind you, living darkness. It was the spirit of the entire Scandinavian people, ardent, not yet fully expressed, not cultivated, but only longing to find an articulate expression for itself and forever move forward and forward along this path! Living teaching grows and grows. The original seed is essential. Each branch, leaning down, grows into the ground and becomes a new root. Thus, with endless repetitions, we get a whole forest, a thicket generated by just one grain. Was not, therefore, the whole of Old Norse religion, to a certain extent, what we have called "an unreasonably huge reflection of this man"?

Critics find in some Scandinavian myths, such as the story of creation, etc., similarities with Hindu myths. The cow Audumla, "licking the frost off the rocks" 32 reminds them of something Hindu. Hindu cow transported to the land of frost! Pretty plausible. Indeed, we may not hesitate to admit that such ideas, taken from the most distant countries and from the earliest epochs, will turn out to be kindred. Thought does not die, but only changes. The first man who began to think on this planet of ours was the original creator of everything. And then also the second man, the third man - no, every true thinker up to the present day is in some way Odin, he teaches people his way of thinking, casts a reflection of his own face on entire periods of world history.

I do not have enough time to talk here about the characteristic features of poetry and the distinctive merits of Old Norse mythology, which, moreover, has little to do with the subject of interest to us. Some of the wild prophecies that we encounter here, such as, for example, "Velva Divination" 33 in " Elder Edda", have an allegorical, passionate, sibilistic 34 character. But these are relatively idle additions to the main content, additions by later skalds, people who, so to speak, amused themselves with what constitutes the main content, and yet their songs have mostly been preserved. In later ages, I believe, they sang their songs, created poetic symbols, as our modern painters now paint that which no longer comes from the very depths of their hearts, which does not even lie in their hearts at all. This fact should never be overlooked.

Gray 35 in his notes is relatively ancient Scandinavian legends does not give us, in fact, any concept of them; no more than Pop 36 about Homer. This is not at all a gloomy square palace of black unhewn marble, seized with horror and fear, as Gray imagines. No, the Old Norse worldview is wild and uncultivated, like the northern cliffs and deserts of Iceland. But among all the horrors - cordiality, simplicity, even traces of good humor and healthy gaiety. The courageous heart of the Scandinavians did not respond to theatrical pomp, they did not have time to indulge in awe.

I really like their healthy simplicity, truthfulness, directness of understanding. Thor "furrows his eyebrows", seized with true Scandinavian anger, "squeezes his hammer in his hand with such force that the knuckles of his fingers turn white." The feeling of pity, sincere pity, is also beautifully depicted. Balder, the "white god", is dying, the beautiful, beneficent sun-god. Everything in nature was tested, but no real cure was found, and he died. Frigga, his mother, sends Hermod to find and see him. For nine days and nine nights he rides through dark, deep valleys, in a labyrinth of darkness. Comes to a bridge with a golden roof. The watchman says: "Yes, Baldr passed through here, but the realm of death is down there, far to the north." Hermod rides on, slips through the gates of the underworld, the gates of Heli. He really sees Baldr and speaks to him. Balder cannot be freed. Relentless Hel does not give it to either Odin or any other god. The beautiful, the noble must stay here. His wife volunteers to go and die with him. They will stay there forever. He sends his ring to Odin, and Nanna, his wife, sends her thimble to Frigga as a keepsake. Oh grief!..

In fact, courage is also always the source of real pity, truth, and everything great and good that is in a person. In these figures, we are strongly attracted by the healthy, artless power of the Old Norse heart. Is it not a sign of true honest power, says Uhland, who wrote a beautiful "Experience" about Thor, that the Old Norse heart finds a friend in the thunder god; is not afraid of its thunder and does not run in fear from it. It knows that the heat of summer, the beautiful glorious summer, must inevitably be accompanied by thunder! The Old Norse heart loves Thor and his lightning hammer, plays with him. Thor, summer heat, god of peaceful activity as well as thunder. He is a farmer's friend. His faithful servant and companion is Tyalvi, manual labor. Thor himself is engaged in all sorts of rough manual work, he does not shun any plebeian occupation; from time to time he raids the country of the jotuns, disturbs these chaotic monsters of frost, subdues them, or at least embarrasses and inflicts damage on them. Some of these stories have strong and deep humor.

Thor, as we have seen, goes to the country of the jotuns to find Ymir's cauldron, necessary for the gods who wished to brew beer. Ymir comes out, a huge giant, with a gray beard, covered with frost and snow. At one glance from his eyes, the pillars turn into wood chips. Thor, after much effort and fuss, seizes the bowler hat and puts it on his head; "the ears of the bowler hat reached his shoulders." The Scandinavian skald is not averse to playing a loving joke on Thor. This is the same Ymir, whose cows and bulls, as critics have discovered, represent blocks of ice. A huge, uncouth, brobdingnag genius, lacking only the discipline to be Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe!

All these deeds of the Old Norse heroes have long since receded into the past. Thor, the god of thunder, turned into Jack the Victorious, who struck down the giants 37 ; but the spirit that filled them still remains. How strange everything grows, and dies, and does not die! Some shoots of this great world tree of Scandinavian belief can still be traced. This poor Jack, the sucker, in his miraculous walking shoes; a dress woven from darkness; with a sword that pierces all obstacles - one of these offspring. Hillbilly Etin and even more red Etin from Ireland 38 in Scottish ballads. They both came from the Scandinavian countries. Etin is obviously the same Jotun.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is also the offspring of the same world tree, which, apparently, there can be no doubt about. Hamlet, Amlet, I find, is in reality a mythical person. His tragedy, the poisoning of his father, poisoning in his sleep with a few drops of poison poured into his ear, and everything else is also a Scandinavian myth! Old Saxon 39 turned it, as he used to, into a Danish story. Shakespeare, borrowing the story from Saxo, made it what we see now. This is the offspring of the world tree, which has grown, has grown due to nature or chance!

Indeed, Old Norse songs contain truth, essential, eternal truth and greatness, as everything that can be preserved for a number of centuries thanks to tradition alone must necessarily contain them. And it's not just greatness. physical body, gigantic massiveness, but also the rough grandeur of the soul. In the hearts of the ancient Scandinavians one can notice sublime sadness without any tearfulness; a bold, free look, turned into the very depths of thought. They, these brave ancient people of the North, seemed to understand what reflection leads all people in all ages, namely, that our world is only an appearance, a phenomenon or an appearance, and by no means reality. All deep minds recognize this - the Hindu mythologist, the German philosopher, Shakespeare and every serious thinker, whoever he may be:

“We are woven from the same fabric as dreams!” 40

One of Thor's campaigns, a trip to Utgard (Outer Garden - "outer garden" - a central place in the country of the Jotuns), is of particular interest in this regard. Thjalvi and Loki were with him. After various adventures, they entered the country of the giants. They wandered over the plains, wild and desert places, among rocks and forests. As night fell, they noticed the house, and as the door, which actually occupied a whole wall of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple dwelling, one vast hall, almost completely empty. They stayed in it. Suddenly, at the dead of midnight, they were alarmed by a loud noise. Thor grabbed his hammer, stood at the door and prepared to fight. His companions rushed about in fear, looking for some way out of this deserted hall. Finally they found a small nook and hid there. But Thor did not have to fight either, because with the onset of morning it turned out that the noise was nothing more than the snoring of the huge, but peace-loving giant Skrymir, who peacefully rested nearby. What they took to be a house was just his glove, lying to the side. The door was the wrist of the glove, and the little nook where they had taken refuge was the thumb. That's the glove! I will also note that she did not have separate fingers, like our gloves, except for one large one; all the rest were connected together - a very old, peasant mitten!

Now they traveled constantly with Skrymir. However, Thor continued to harbor suspicions, he did not like the treatment of Skrymir, and he decided to kill him at night when he would sleep. Raising his hammer, he delivered a truly thunderous blow right in the giant's face, strong enough to split rocks. But the giant just woke up, wiped his cheek and said: “It must be a leaf fell?” As soon as Skrymir fell asleep again, Thor hit him again. The blow came out even cleaner than the first; but the giant only grumbled: “A grain of sand, or what?” Thor struck a third time with both hands (probably so that "the joints of the fingers turned white"), and it seemed to him that he left a deep mark on the face of Skrymir; but he just stopped snoring and remarked: “It must be that the sparrows build their nests on this tree, what is it that falls from there?”

Skrymir went on his way and arrived at the gates of Utgard, located on such a high place that you would have to "stretch your neck and throw your head back to see their top." Thor and his companions were let in and invited to take part in the coming games. At the same time, Thor was given a bowl of horn; it had to be drained to the bottom, which, according to the giants, was the most trifling matter. Making terrible efforts, taking it three times, Thor tried to drain it, but almost without any noticeable result. He is a weak child, they told him. Can he lift this cat? No matter how insignificant this matter seemed, but Thor, with all his divine strength, could not cope with it: the back of the animal was bent, and the paws did not come off the ground. All he could do was lift one paw. “Yes, you are not a man at all,” said the inhabitants of Utgard, “here is an old woman who will overcome you!” Thor, wounded to the core, grabbed this old fury woman, but could not knock her to the ground.

But when they left Utgard, the chief jotun, politely seeing them off, said to Thor: “You were defeated then, but don’t be especially ashamed of this, there is a deception, an illusion. That horn you tried to drink was the sea. You have made some loss of water in it, but who can drink it, the boundless sea! The cat you were trying to raise, but it was the Midgard serpent 41 , the great world snake, it has a tail in its mouth, it encircles the entire created world and supports it. If you were to tear it off the ground, the whole world would inevitably collapse and perish in ruins. As for old woman then it was time, old age, longevity. Who can fight with her? There is no such person and there is no such god. Gods and people, it takes over all! And then these three blows that you delivered - look at these three valleys: they were formed from your three blows!

Thor glanced at his jotun companion; it was Skrymir. It was, say the Scandinavian critics, the personification of the old, chaotic, rocky earth, and the gauntlet represented the cave in it! But Skrymir disappeared. Utgard, with its gates as high as the sky itself, scattered into the air when Thor swung his hammer to strike at them. And only the mocking voice of the giant was heard: “It is better never to come to the kingdom of the Jotuns again.”

This story, as we see, belongs to the period of allegory, half-jokes, and not to the period of prophecy and complete reverence. But as a myth, does it contain real old Scandinavian gold? The metal is unworked, in the rough form as it comes out of the mythical forge, but of a higher standard than in many famous Greek myths folded much better! The uncontrollable, loud laughter of brobdingnag, true humor is felt in this Skrymir; gaiety resting on seriousness and sadness, like a rainbow on a black storm. Only a truly courageous heart can laugh like that. This is the dark humor of our Ben Jonson, the incomparable old Ben. It flows in our blood, I think, for echoes of it, although in a different form, can be heard in the American inhabitants of the forests.

An extremely striking concept is also presented by Ragnarök 42, the end or twilight of the gods, in the song "Divination of the Velva". Apparently, here we are dealing with a very ancient prophetic thought. Gods and jotuns, divine forces and chaotic forces, animals, after a long struggle and partial victory of the former, finally enter into a general battle, embracing the entire world of competition. The world serpent is against Thor, strength is against strength, until mutual extermination. "Twilight" turns into darkness, and death consumes the created world. The ancient world perished, perished with its gods. But this is not the final death. There must be new heavens and a new earth. A more exalted and just divinity must reign among men.

It is curious that the law of change, the law imprinted in the very depths of human consciousness, was, of course, accessible to a peculiar understanding of these ancient serious thinkers. Although everything dies, even the gods die, yet this universal death is only the extinguished flame of the Phoenix and the rebirth to a greater and better existence! This is the basic law of being for a being created in time, living in a world of hopes. All serious people understood this and can still understand it to this day.

And now, in connection with what has been said, let's take a quick look at the last myth about the appearance of Thor and end there. I think that this myth is of the latest origin of all Scandinavian legends; a mournful protest against the advancing Christianity reproachfully expressed by some conservative pagan.

King Olaf was severely rebuked for his excessive zeal in the planting of Christianity. Of course, I would much rather blame him for his lack of jealousy! He paid dearly for his work. He died during the uprising of the pagans subject to him, in 1033, in the battle of Stiklestad near Drontheim. The main cathedral in the whole North has been standing there for many centuries, dedicated in gratitude to his memory as St. Olaf. The myth of the Torah relates to this event.

King Olaf, the Christian king, reformer, sails with a reliable escort along the coast of Norway, from harbor to harbor, administers justice and performs all other royal duties. Leaving one of the harbors, the sailors noticed how some passer-by with a stern expression of eyes and face, a red beard, a majestic, powerful figure boarded the ship. The courtiers turn to him with questions; his answers surprise them with their tact and depth; he is eventually brought before the king. The traveler and with him conducts an equally wonderful conversation, as they move along the beautiful shores. But suddenly he turns to King Olaf with the following words: “Yes, King Olaf, everything is beautiful along with the sun shining above. Vividly green, fertile, a truly beautiful home for you. And more hard days Thor held, many fierce battles he withstood with rocky jotuns before he achieved all this. And now you seem to be planning to reject Thor. King Olaf, be careful!" exclaimed the traveler, drawing his eyebrows together; and when those around the king looked round, they could no longer find him anywhere. This is the last appearance of Thor in this world!

Doesn't this case provide a rather convincing example of how fiction can arise, in addition to any desire to tell an unconditional lie? In this way the appearance of the vast majority of gods among men is explained. So, if in the time of Pindar "Neptune was seen once during the Nemean Games", then this Neptune was also "a wanderer noble, severe in appearance", created in such a way that he could be "seen". In this last word of paganism I hear something pathetic, tragic. Thor disappears. The entire Scandinavian world has disappeared and will never return. In the same way the most exalted things pass. Everything that was in this world, everything that is, that will be, everything must disappear, and we have to say our sad “sorry” to everything.

This Scandinavian religion, this crude but serious, pronounced consecration of courage (so we may define it) satisfied the old Norman daring. The consecration of courage is not something base! We will constantly regard courage as good. It would also be useful for us to know something about the ancient paganism of our fathers. Although we do not realize it, but the old belief, in conjunction with other, higher truths, lives in us to this day! If we cognize it consciously, then this will only make it possible for us to have a closer and clearer relationship to the past, our own property in the past, for all the past, I insist on, is the property of the present. The past has always had something true and is a precious asset.

At different times, in different countries, some special aspect of our universal human nature develops each time. The real truth is the sum of all of them, but no single side in itself expresses all that human nature has developed from itself until then. It is better to know them all than to misinterpret them. “Which of the three religions do you have a particular attachment to?” the Maester asked his teacher. “To all three! he answered. “To all three, because through their union, true religion first arises” 43 .

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle

(1795-1881) historian, writer, translator, publicist, educator, critic, philosopher Blessed is he who has found his work in life; we have not been given more. Piety and a sour mine are two different things. The wealth of light lies precisely in the original people. Thanks to them and their works, the light is the light, and not the desert. The memory of people and the history of their lives is the sum of his strength, his sacred property for all eternity, supporting him and, as far as possible, helping him to push forward through the still unknown depth. All the destitute must understand only one thing: to be destitute is stupid. (...) Everywhere, constantly, a person must “pay with his life”, he must, like a soldier, do his job at the expense of his life. (…) All labor is noble, and only labor is noble. All greatness is unconscious - otherwise it is worth little or nothing. Genius is, first of all, an outstanding ability to be responsible for everything. Geniuses are our real people, our great people, the leaders of the stupid crowd that follows them, as if obeying the dictates of fate. (...) They possessed a rare ability not only to "guess" and "think", but to know and believe. By nature, they were inclined to live, not relying on rumors, but based on certain views. While others, blinded by the one outer side of things, rushed aimlessly through the great fair of life, they considered the essence of things and went forward like people who have a guiding star before their eyes and tread on safe paths. (...) How many people there are among the people who can generally see the invisible justice of heaven and know that it is omnipotent on earth - so many people stand between the people and its fall. So much, and no more. The almighty heavenly power sends us more and more new people who have a heart of flesh, not of stone, but a severe misfortune, already quite severe, will turn out to be a teacher of people! (...) The main organ of the human body, the unshakable foundation on which the soul rests, is the wallet. Stupidity and good digestion are indispensable qualities for dealing with deprivation. Two - three - this is the Society. One will become God, the other the devil, one will speak from the pulpit, the other will hang under the crossbar. If a person knows the measure, he knows everything. If you want to keep a person from doing something, make him talk about it: the more people talk, the less they have the inclination to do. If we ourselves are serfs, then there can be no heroes for us. If Jesus Christ appeared today, no one would crucify him. He would have been invited to dinner, listened to and laughed heartily. Life is short, very a short time between two eternities… A healthy person is the most precious product of nature. Health is a great thing both for the one who uses it and for others. The life of a great man is not a merry dance, but a battle and a campaign, a struggle with rulers and entire kingdoms. Of all the manifestations of human creativity, the most amazing and worthy of attention are books. The thoughts of past times live in books; the voices of people whose ashes have long been scattered like a dream are heard clearly and distinctly. Everything that humanity has done, changed its mind, everything that it has achieved - all this has been preserved, as if by magic, on the pages of books. I do not believe in the collective wisdom of ignorant individuals. Sincere joy gives a person the opportunity to admire someone; nothing so exalts him - even for a short time - above all petty conditions as sincere admiration. Golden rain blurs all boundaries. The errors of the sage are positively more instructive than the truths of the fool, for the wise man soars in lofty regions, whence everything is seen far away, while the fool treads low beaten paths. The ideal is in you. The obstacles to achieving it are in you. Your position is the material from which you must realize this ideal. Of all rights, the most irrefutable is the right of the wise (whether by force or persuasion) to lead a fool. The three main components of modern civilization: Gunpowder, Seal and Protestantism. A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-lived one. No matter how often we are told that a closer and more detailed acquaintance with people and things will lessen our admiration, or that only the obscure and half unfamiliar can seem sublime, still we should not absolutely believe this. And here, as in many other things, it is not knowledge, but only a little knowledge that makes one proud, and instead of admiration for a recognized object, it puts admiration for the one who recognizes it. (...) Despotism, limited by epigrams, reigned in France for a long time. Life is a faint reflection of time between two eternities. With every dispute, at the moment when we start to get angry, we stop fighting for the truth and enter into an argument for ourselves. One who has done nothing knows nothing. The history of the world is the biography of great people. History is the quintessence of gossip. Any reform other than moral reform is useless. People should be more modest. Metaphysics is the mind's attempt to rise above the mind. One can adore something, even though it be very insignificant; but it is impossible to adore the purest, aching nonentity. Silence is deep as eternity; conversations are shallow, like Time. Music with its melody brings us to the very edge of eternity and gives us the opportunity to comprehend its greatness within a few minutes. In our radiant sky there is always a dark spot - and this is our own shadow. Cash is not the only connection between man and man. As far as a person conquers fear, so much he is a person. The present is the sum of the past. Our destiny is not to try to see clearly what is remote from us and hidden in the fog, but to work on what we have at hand. Don't be a slave to words. There is no more sad proof of the insignificance of a person than disbelief in great people. There is no more moral law among people than the law of power and subordination. No one knows what the crowd will do, especially the crowd itself. Nothing teaches like the realization of one's mistake. This is one of the main means of self-education. A new point of view is always in the minority ... Experience is the most the best teacher, only the tuition fee is too high. Man's first duty is to overcome fear. As long as a person's hamstrings are shaking, his actions will remain slavish. The writer is the same priest. Hero worship should be expressed in the fact that we ourselves will be heroically disposed. It is rightly said in all respects: every man is judged according to his faith. And in disbelief. Nature does not tolerate lies. Speech is the destiny of man; silence is the lot of God; but also the beast, and death ... Therefore, we must comprehend both arts. Anything can be proven with numbers. The greatest guilt is not to admit one's guilt. The worst feeling is the feeling of powerlessness. The worst disbelief is disbelief in yourself. The most miserable of people is the one for whom there is no work in the world. Sentimental people are the most senseless of mortals... A blind man can go around the whole world and not notice anything. Happy is that people whose annals are not in the history books. Hundreds of people can endure hardships, only a few can bear well-being. Man must not complain about the times; nothing comes of it. Time is bad: well, that's what a person is for, to improve it. A person cannot be irreparably bad if he laughed heartily at least once. Man lives only in hope; hope is, in fact, his only property. Economics is a sinister science ... I think that respect for heroes, manifested in different ways in different eras, is the soul of social relations between people and that the way this respect is expressed serves as a true measure of the normality or abnormality of relations prevailing in the world. I do not pretend to comprehend the universe - it is many times larger than me ... The greatness of a great man is revealed in the way he treats small people. The book is the purest essence of the human soul.

(Source: "Aphorisms. The Golden Fund of Wisdom." Eremishin O. - M .: Education; 2006.)

Other books on similar topics:

Thomas Carlyle (Carlyle) was born December 4, 1795 in Ecclefehan (Scotland) in the family of a bricklayer and a farmer. He received his primary education in Eklfehan and in private school Scottish city of Ennan. In 1809 he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he prepared for a spiritual career, but instead received a degree in mathematics and after graduation from the university from 1814 was a teacher at Ennan, then at Kirkcaldy. In 1818 Thomas Carlyle returned to Edinburgh to study law, but paid more attention to the German language, history and philosophy. In 1820, Carlyle finally abandoned the career of a priest, lawyer and teacher and decided to earn a living by literary work. In 1824 he published a biography of Schiller and a number of translations, lived in Edinburgh and on his wife's farm, and made his living as a journalist. In 1834, Carlyle published the novel Sartor Resartus. The Life and Opinions of Professor Teufelsdrok, written in the spirit of German romanticism and classical idealism, which generally had a strong influence on the writer's worldview. This philosophical and journalistic novel expressed the essence of Carlyle's philosophy: the modern world is "dislocated", because to solve its problems it has chosen the methods of scientific rationalism, instead of reviving the truth of the spirit.
From 1834 Thomas Carlyle lived permanently in London, producing books, essays, talks and letters. In 1837, Carlyle's best historical work, The History of the French Revolution, appeared. In it, along with the justification of the overthrow of the absolutist system by the masses of the people, an extremely subjectivist idealistic concept of the "cult of heroes" is already outlined in the series of lectures "Heroes, the veneration of heroes and the heroic in history" (1842). Carlyle's other works include Now and Before (1843), Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845-1846), Modern Pamphlets (1850), Life of John Sterling (1851), History of Frederick II of Prussia "(1858-1865). By the end of his life, having become famous, Thomas Carlyle refused honors, including the title of nobility and pension. He died in London on February 5, 1881, and his "Memoirs" saw the light after the death of the author.
The book of Thomas Carlyle includes works of the late period devoted to the role of the individual in world history.
CONTENT:

Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History

First session. The hero is like a god. One: paganism,
Scandinavian mythology
Second session. The hero is like a prophet. Mohammed: Islam
Third session. The hero is like a poet. Dante. Shakespeare
Fourth session. The hero is like a shepherd.
Luther: Reformation. Knox: puritanism
Fifth session. The hero as a writer. Johnson. Rousseau. Burns
Sixth session. The hero is like a leader. Cromwell.
Napoleon: Modern Revolutionaryism
Notes

Historical and critical experiences

Count Cagliostro
diamond necklace
Chapter I. Age of Romanticism
Chapter II. necklace done
Chapter III. The necklace cannot be sold
Chapter IV. Affinity: two dominant ideas
Chapter V. The Artist
Chapter VI. Will the two dominant ideas unite?
Chapter VII. Marie Antoinette
Chapter VIII. Both dominant ideas are combined
Chapter IX. Versailles park
Chapter X. Backstage
Chapter XI. necklace sold
Chapter XII. The necklace disappears
Chapter XIII. scene three
Chapter XIV. The necklace cannot be paid for
Chapter XV. scene four
Chapter last. missa est
Voltaire
Diderot
Mirabeau
Robert Burns
Walter Scott
Notes

Now and before

I. Introduction
Midas
Morrison pills
Aristocracy of Talent
Revered Heroes
Monk Samson

II. ancient monk
Electoral struggle
Elections
Abbot Samson
Saint Edmund
Beginnings
ghosts

III. Modern worker
English
Democracy
Morrison again
aristocracy

IV. Horoscope
Industry leaders
Owners of the land
instructive chapter
Notes

Ethics of life. Work hard and don't give up!

I. Work hard
II. Do not be sad
III. people and heroes
IV. False paths and goals
V. Silence
Notes
Aphorisms

Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), English publicist, historian and philosopher. He put forward the concept of the "cult of heroes", the only creators of history.

Carlyle Thomas (1795/1881) - English philosopher and historian, author of journalistic works. Carlyle created the theory of the "cult of heroes", who, in his opinion, are the only creators of history.

Guryeva T.N. New literary dictionary / T.N. Guriev. – Rostov n/a, Phoenix, 2009 , With. 122.

Carlyle Thomas (1795-1881) English bourgeois philosopher and historian. Promoted the German idealistic philosophy and reactionary romanticism, close to pantheism. Carlyle applied Fichte's doctrine of active activity of the subject as the creative beginning of the world to society, substantiating the "cult of heroes". The history of society, according to Carlyle, is the biography of great people. Carlyle is a supporter of the historical cycle of theory. His critique of capitalism is close to "feudal socialism". Modern bourgeois philosophers and sociologists use the legacy of Carlyle to fight Marxism-Leninism. Major works: "Sartor Revartus" (1834), "Heroes, the veneration of heroes and the heroic in history" (1840), "Past and Present" (1843), "History of the French Revolution" (vols. 1-3, 1837), " Modern Pamphlets" (1850).

Philosophical Dictionary. Ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 1991 , With. 182.

Philosopher

Carlyle Thomas (December 4, 1795, Ecclefehan, Dumfries, Scotland - February 5, 1881, London) - British philosopher, writer, historian and essayist. Born in the family of a bricklayer. He was brought up in the spirit of severe puritanism, in respect for a sense of duty and worship of work. From the age of 5 he studied at the local village school, starting from 1805 - at the "Latin school" in Annan. In 1809 he entered the University of Edinburgh. After completing the preparatory course (which included the study of languages, philosophy and mathematics), he abandoned the plan to take a course in theology. In 1814 he became a mathematics teacher at Annan. Here Carlyle became interested in literature, studied the German language. In 1816 he became friends with the later famous preacher E. Irving; headed a boys' school in Kirkkaldy. From December 1819 he lived in Edinburgh, studied law at the university, gave private lessons. In 1818-20 he collaborated in Brewster's Encyclopedia of Edinburgh, and in 1822 he received a job as a home teacher. The first significant publications were devoted to German literature: in 1822, Carlyle's article on Goethe's Faust appeared in the New Edinburgh Review, and in 1823-24 in the London Magazine, a series of articles entitled Schiller's Life (separate ed. 1825). In 1818-21 he experienced a spiritual crisis, which he explained by the fact that the spirit of research, driven by love for the truth, inspired him with knowledge that was contrary to the faith of childhood. Carlyle characterized his condition as a loss of hope and faith, which is everything in a person's life. The whole universe, including his own "I", seemed to him a mechanism that did not know freedom. Carlyle was tormented by his weakness, which, as he understood, could only be overcome by action, while action required awareness of one's strength, the ability to resist the necessity of a dead nature. In June 1821, Carlyle experienced a spiritual rebirth, overcoming the "nightmare of unbelief", getting rid of fear and acquiring contempt for evil. In the 1820s actively engaged German philosophy and poetry, was fond of Goethe , Schiller , Novalis , Fr. Schlegel , Fichte And Schelling. I saw my mission in the promotion of German culture. Carlyle's worldview took shape in the era of associationist psychology, utilitarianism in ethics, and individualistic political economy dominating the spiritual life of England. Carlyle called this kind of philosophy "the mechanical philosophy of profit and loss." Carlyle rejected systems in philosophy; mysticism, romanticism, subjectivism and activism in worldview were close to him. In the 1820s recognized the logical impeccability of Holbach's "System of Nature", believed that the world is an insensitive mechanism hostile to the human "I" as a source and bearer of freedom, rebelling against the world. Recognizing the correct materialistic view of the world, Carlyle understood that it is based on the thesis of the reality of matter in time and space. Acquainted through Novalis and Fr. Schlegel with Kant's teaching on the phenomenality of space and time, Carlyle changed his views on the natural world. However, unlike Kant, he is convinced of the substantiality of the soul as a source of strength and creativity. The inner strength of the soul is manifested in the spiritual and bodily existence of a person, but Carlyle now considers the entire material world as a form of manifestation of the highest internal power - God, deifies matter as the garment of God. The eternity of God is manifested in the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future, the meeting of which constitutes the present. All history for Carlyle is a continuous revelation, and every person who seeks God and preaches about him to others is a prophet. Both nature and history, Carlyle believes, deserve reverence and an "eternal Yes." October 17, 1826 Carlyle marries Jane Walsh, until 1828 lives in Edinburgh. Publications in the 1820s devoted mainly to German literature: in 1823 his translation of Wilhelm Meister was published (Carlyle sent it to Goethe, a correspondence began, which became more and more meaningful; it was subsequently published; Carlyle's Life of Schiller was published in German with a preface by Goethe), in 1827 - article on German literature, in 1828 - articles on Goethe, Hein and Burns, in 1829 - essays on Voltaire, Novalis and the article "Signs of the Times", in 1830 - an article on history, in 1832 - three articles on Goethe, in 1833 - three articles about history, the novel "Sartor Resartus". In the years 1828-1834, due to financial difficulties, he lived on the Kregenpattock estate, where he worked on the Sartor Resartus. In 1831, while in London in connection with the troubles surrounding the publication of the novel, Carlyle met J. S. Millem. In 1833 he met R. W. Emerson, an American philosopher influenced by Carlyle; thanks to Emerson, the book "Sartor Resartus" was published separate edition in America (1836, in England - 1838). In 1833-34 the novel was published in Fraser's Magazine.

The novel Sartor Resartus. The Life and Thoughts of Herr Teufelsdrock is a complex literary work, replete with symbols and allegories. In the image of the protagonist, who wrote the work "Clothing, Its Origin and Philosophy", Carlyle traces the development of the human soul to freedom. In the chapters "Eternal No", "Center of Indifference" and "Eternal Yes", he depicts his own spiritual experience of the years of crisis. Carlyle argues that God and his own soul are the only support of man. Everything that exists is related to our spiritual being and, like it, comes from God. Therefore man must love the whole creation. The novel outlines Carlyle's thoughts about the world, about eternity and time, about nature, man and mind, about society, religion, the Church, symbols, ideals, immortality, past and future, etc. The philosophy of "clothing" turns into a real worldview. Space, time and everything that is in them are only symbols of God, behind which one must see the Divinity itself. But the world, the dress of God, is not dead, it is his living garment, and everything that happens in the world symbolizes the eternal activity of God. The spirit of each age burns in the flame that devours it, but instead of the end of things, the phoenix is ​​reborn. Behind the smoke we see the Divine. Therefore, a person's attitude to the world cannot be purely contemplative, he must contribute to the birth of a new phoenix. At the end of the book, Carlyle satirically depicts a modern society that has lost its inner essence, having degenerated into symbols, both on the part of the ruling classes and on the part of the proletariat.

Since 1834 Carlyle has been living in London. Here he is working on the "History of the French Revolution" (publ. 1837). In 1835 he met D. Sterling, who in 1839 wrote an essay on Carlyle's worldview - the best, according to Carlyle, of everything written about him (published in the appendix to the Russian edition of Sartor Resartus). Sterling emphasizes in Carlyle's worldview the requirement of a reverent attitude towards the world and man, treating them as a miracle; the assertion that the highest form of a person's relationship to the world is religion, which is based on a sense of the divine; this is the last one highest form divine in human existence. Carlyle also highly appreciates poetry. The main task of a person is not so much knowledge as work, creativity, which reward noble efforts. Through the confusion of past and present, one must be able to consider the foundations of human actions. Reverent observation, however, will horrify a person from evil, untruth, weakness, collisions. The moral support of a person in such a situation should be labor, courage, simplicity and truthfulness.

After the publication of Sartor Resartus, Carlyle gradually loses interest in literature, which he had not previously considered as a goal in himself, seeing in it a way to comprehend the world and man. Carlyle's worldview is developing in the direction of the philosophy of history. In the works “Signs of the Times” (1829) and “Characteristics of Our Time”, his critical position was expressed in relation to public institutions, contemporary social philosophy; Carlyle considers modern society to be sick, argues that people are too preoccupied with their "I", too worn with their problems; the most serious disease of society is the excessive wealth of some and the poverty of others. The current situation is worse than before because of the lack of faith and ideals. People do nothing intuitively, from the depths of their essence, everyone is guided by hardened recipes. They have lost faith in themselves, in the effectiveness of their own efforts, they care not about internal improvement, but about external adaptation, they are chasing external transformations. Meanwhile, reforms are premature without self-improvement, without achieving freedom, not only in the political sense. In the essay "Chartism", which had a huge public outcry, Carlyle does not speak from party positions, he considers Chartism as a symptom of social life, deeply rooted in the dissatisfaction of the workers with their position. Exploring the general causes of Chartism, Carlyle dwells in detail on various aspects of the social life of England at that time, argues with modern economists, does not accept the thesis about the temporary nature of the disasters of the working people, which supposedly will disappear by itself, does not agree with the principle of complete non-intervention of the state in economic life. In 1843, in the book "Past and Present", starting from one medieval chronicle, Carlyle compares the current situation with the past; he argues that the former strong ties between people have been replaced by a bond in the form of a monetary contract, and the current formal freedom of people has only worsened the situation, since it completely removed the responsibility for their situation from the masters. According to Carlyle, only a strong man, a genius, can properly manage a society. In "Pamphlets" last day"(1850) Carlyle criticizes modernity even more sharply, talking about slavery, government offices, parliament, model prisons (where the life of prisoners is better than the life of workers), double morality(the British profess two religions: Christianity on Sundays, political economy on weekdays), etc. In his journalism, Carlyle speaks from the standpoint of morality, conscience and duty, pessimistically assessing the current state of society.

In 1837-40, Carlyle repeatedly spoke in London with public lectures. The last course was published under the title On Heroes, the Cult of Heroes, and the Heroic in History (1840). According to Carlyle, world history is the history, the biography of great people: educators, patrons, creators. All things existing in the world are the embodiment of their thoughts and aspirations. Great people - prophets, poets, preachers, writers, rulers. Contrary to the then prevailing tendencies, Carlyle sees in great people a miracle, something supernatural, prophets through whom there is a continuous revelation of God. Their souls are open to the divine content of life, their qualities are sincerity, originality, a sense of reality. In 1845, Carlyle published Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, and in 1851, a biography of D. Sterling. Carlyle's last major work is The Life of Frederick the Great (vols. 1-5, 1858-65). While working on the book, Carlyle visited Germany twice (1852, 1858). During the Franco-Prussian War, Carlyle published in the Times on the side of Germany, for which Bismarck awarded him the Order of Merit. Carlyle exerted a tremendous moral and literary (in particular, on Dickens, Ruskin, and others) influence on his contemporaries, defending moral values ​​in an age of revolution and change.

I. V. Borisova

New Philosophical Encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Huseynov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Thought, 2010 , vol. II, E - M, p. 218-219.

Historian

Carlyle, Carlyle, Thomas (4.XII.1795 - 4.II.1881) - English publicist, historian, philosopher. The son of a rural mason. Graduated from the University of Edinburgh (1814). The philosophical and historical views of Carlyle were formed under the strong influence of the German idealist philosophers and reactionary romantics, and partly of Saint-Simon. Engels defined Carlyle's worldview as pantheism (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 589). In Carlyle's pamphlets "Chartism" ("Chartism", L., 1840), "Now and Before" (L., 1843; Russian translation - M., 1906) and other works of the 30s - early 40s, sympathy for the working people , a deep, sometimes revolutionary criticism of capitalism was combined with the apotheosis of the Middle Ages and calls for the restoration of feudal-hierarchical social relations, which brought Carlyle closer to feudal socialism. In Carlyle's best historical writing" French revolution"(L., 1837; Russian translation - St. Petersburg, 1907), along with the justification of the overthrow of rotten absolutism by the masses of the people, an extremely subjective idealistic concept of the "cult of heroes" is already outlined, deployed in the series of lectures "Heroes, the veneration of heroes and the heroic in history" ( L., 1841; Russian translation - St. Petersburg, 1908), read in the years 1837-1840. This concept is the basis of "Letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell" ("Oliver Cromwell" s letters and speeches ", L., 1845- 46). According to Carlyle, the laws of the development of the world determined by providence are revealed only to the "chosen ones", "heroes", the only real creators of history ("the history of the world is the biography of great people"), and the masses - "the crowd, the tool in their hands"; the heroic principle in society periodically weakens, and then the blind destructive forces hidden in the crowd break out until the society again finds in itself "true heroes" - "leaders" (for example, Cromwell, Napoleon). Such, according to Carlyle, is the vicious circle of history. As the class struggle of the proletariat developed, Carlyle's petty-bourgeois philosophical and historical conception became more and more reactionary. (See, for example, "Pamphlets of the last day" (L., 1850; Russian translation - St. Petersburg, 1907), etc.). The "History of Friedrich II of Prussia", v. 1-13, 1858-65, praising Prussian militarism, testified to a deep crisis historical creativity Carlyle. The concept of Carlyle's "cult of heroes" was taken up by bourgeois historiography and is widely used by the ideologists of imperialist reaction.

I. N. Nemanov. Smolensk.

Soviet historical encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 7. KARAKEEV - KOSHAKER. 1965 .

Compositions: The works, v. 1-30, L., 1896-1905; letters. 1826-1836, v. 1-2, L.-N. Y., 1888.

Literature: Engels F., The situation of England. Thomas Carlyle. "Past and Present", K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 1; Marx K. and Engels F., Thomas Carlyle. "Modern pamphlets. No 1. The modern era. No 2. Exemplary prisons", ibid., vol. 7; Lenin, V.I., Notebooks on Imperialism, Soch., 4th ed., vol. 39, p. 509; Nemanov IN, The subjectivist-idealistic essence of T. Carlyle's views on the history of society, "VI", 1956, No 4; Froude J. A., Thomas Carlyle, N. Y., 1882; Wilson D.A., Life of Thomas Carlyle, v. 1-6, N. Y., 1923-34; Young L. M., Thomas Carlyle and the art of history, L., 1939; Gascoyne D., Thomas Carlyle, L.-N. Y., 1952.

Carlyle, Carlyle Thomas (December 4, 1795, Ecclefehan, Scotland - February 5, 1881, London), English philosopher, writer and historian. Carlyle's worldview was formed under the influence of Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and the German romantics. Opponent of French materialism and Scottish utilitarianism.

In the philosophical novel Sartor Resartus (1833-34, Russian translation, 1902), in the mythological spirit traditional for romanticism, he created a philosophical picture of the world, "dressed" in a kind of symbolic cover-emblems that hide the transcendent reality of nature and society. Following Fichte, he considered space and time as an illusion of feelings, which hides the divine order of the universe from man. Philosophy, according to Carlyle, is called upon to "unravel" the presence of the pantheistic spirit in the visible forms of the perceived world by the symbols-emblems. Cosmism is inherent in Carlyle's romantic naturalism - the desire to unite the microcosm of "appearing" nature with universal nature and eternity, identical with spirit. Carlyle's subjectivism sometimes led him to solipsism. The spiritualistic philosophy of Carlyle was used by representatives of Theosophy.

Carlyle's pantheistic symbolism extended to society and culture. He sharply criticized the Anglican Church and the whole system of bourgeois spiritual values. In the philosophy of history, Carlyle acted as the herald of the "cult of heroes" - the bearers of the divine destiny and the spiritual creators of the historical process, towering above the "average" mass. Some features of Carlyle's sociology give reason to compare it with the ideology of Nietzsche's "superman". Developing the concept of "kinship relations" between landowners and the lower classes of feudal society, he idealized the corporate structure of feudalism, passing it off as socialism. The feudal socialism of Carlyle was criticized in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by K. Marx and F. Engels.

Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ch. editors: L. F. Ilyichev, P. N. Fedoseev, S. M. Kovalev, V. G. Panov. 1983 .

Compositions: Works..., v. 1-30, L., 1899-1923; in Russian per. - Historical and critical experiments, M., 1878; Ethics of life, St. Petersburg, 1906; Franz. revolution, St. Petersburg, 1907; Heroes, the veneration of heroes and the heroic in history, St. Petersburg, 1908.

Read further:

Philosophers, lovers of wisdom

Historians (biographical guide).

Historical Persons of England (Great Britain) (biographical guide).

Compositions:

Works, v. 1-30. L., 1899-1923, in Russian. trans.: Novalis. M., 1901; Sartor Resartus. The Life and Thoughts of Herr Teufelsdrock, Vol. 1-3. M., 1902; Ethics of life. Work hard and don't give up! St. Petersburg, 1906; Now and before. M., 1906; Pamphlets of the last day. St. Petersburg, 1907; Heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history. St. Petersburg, 1908; Historical and critical experiences. M., 1978; French revolution. Story. M 1991.

Literature:

Yakovenko V. I. T. Carlyle, his life and literary activity. SPb., 1891; Hansel P. T. Carlyle. St. Petersburg, 1903; Kareev N. I. Thomas Carlyle. His life, his personality, his works, his ideas. Pg, 1923; Simone D. Carlyle. M., 1981; Froude J.A. Thomas Cairlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of Life, 1795-1835. L., 1882; Idem. Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834-81. L., 1884; Hood E. P. T. Carlyle. Philosophic Thinker, Theologian, Historian and Poet. N.Y., 1970; Campbell I. T. Carlyle. L., 1974.

First conversation Hero as a deity. One: paganism, Norse mythology

In these conversations, I mean to develop several thoughts about great people: how they manifested themselves in the affairs of our world, what external forms they took in the process of historical development, what idea people had of them, what business they did. I'm going to talk about the characters, their roles, how people treated them; what I call hero-worship and heroism in human affairs.

Undoubtedly, this is too broad a topic. It deserves an incomparably more detailed consideration than is possible for us in this case. A vast subject is boundless, in fact it is as vast as the history of the world itself. For the history of the world, the history of what man has done in this world, is, in my opinion, in essence, the history of great people who have labored here on earth. They, these great people, were the leaders of mankind, educators, models and, in a broad sense, the creators of everything that the whole mass of people in general strove to realize, what they wanted to achieve. Everything done in this world is, in essence, an external material result, the practical implementation and embodiment of the thoughts that belonged to the great people sent to our world. The history of these latter is truly the soul of all world history. Therefore, it is quite clear that the topic we have chosen, due to its vastness, can in no way be exhausted in our conversations.

One thing, however, is comforting: great people, no matter how we talk about them, always make up an extremely useful society. Even with the most superficial attitude towards a great man, we still gain something from contact with him. He is the source of vital light, the proximity of which always acts beneficially and pleasantly on a person. It is the light that illumines the world, illuminating the darkness of the world. This is not just a kindled lamp, but rather a natural luminary, shining like a gift from heaven; a source of natural, original insight, courage and heroic nobility, spreading its rays everywhere, in the radiance of which every soul feels good. Be that as it may, you will not grumble that you decided to wander for some time near this source.

Heroes taken from six different spheres and, moreover, from very distant epochs and countries, extremely different from each other only in their external appearance, will undoubtedly illuminate many things for us, since we will treat them trustingly. If we could see them clearly, we would penetrate to a certain extent into the very essence of world history. How happy will I be if I can, at a time like this, show you, even in a small measure, the full meaning of heroism, clarify the divine relation (as I must call it) that exists at all times between a great man and other people, and , thus, not only to exhaust the subject, but only, so to speak, to prepare the ground! Anyway, I have to try.

In every sense it is well said that the religion of a man constitutes for him the most essential fact, the religion of a man or of an entire people. By religion, I mean here not a person's ecclesiastical confession, the dogmas of faith, the recognition of which he testifies with the sign of the cross, word, or in any other way; not quite this, and in many cases not quite this. We see people of all kinds of denominations equally respectable or irreverent, regardless of what particular belief they hold. This kind of confession confirms, in my opinion, not yet religion. It often constitutes only one external confession of a person, testifies to only one logical-theoretical side of him, even if it still has such depth. But what a person believes in deeds (although in this he quite often does not give an account even to himself, much less to others), he takes to heart, considers it reliable in everything related to his life relationship to the mysterious universe, duty, fate; that which, under all circumstances, is the main thing for him, conditions and determines everything else - this is his religion, or, perhaps, his pure skepticism, his unbelief.

Religion is the way in which a person feels spiritually connected with the invisible world or with the non-world. And I affirm that if you tell me what this attitude of a person is, you will thereby determine to me with a great degree of certainty what kind of person this person is and what kind of work he will do. That is why, both in relation to an individual and in relation to a whole people, we first ask what is his religion? Is it paganism, with its numerous host of gods, just a sensual representation of the mystery of life, and physical strength is recognized as the main element? Is Christianity faith in the invisible, not only as something real, but also the only reality? Time resting in each of its most insignificant moments on eternity? The dominance of pagan power, replaced by a nobler supremacy, the supremacy of holiness? Is it skepticism, doubting and investigating whether there is an invisible world, whether there is any mystery of life, or is it all just madness, that is, doubt, and perhaps disbelief and complete denial of all this? To answer the question posed means to capture the very essence of the history of a person or a people.

The thoughts of men gave birth to the deeds they did, and their very thoughts were born of their feelings. Something invisible and spiritual, inherent in them, determined what was expressed in action; their religion, I say, was a fact of great importance to them. However much we may have to limit ourselves in present conversations, we think it will be useful to focus our attention on reviewing this religious phase in the first place. Having become acquainted with it well, it will not be difficult for us to understand everything else. From our series of heroes, we will deal first with one central figure in Scandinavian paganism, who is the emblem of the vast field of facts. First of all, let us be allowed to say a few words in general about the hero, understood as a deity - the oldest, primordial form of heroism.

Of course, this paganism seems to us an extremely strange phenomenon, almost incomprehensible at the present time: some kind of impenetrable thicket of all kinds of ghosts, confusion, lies and absurdities; thicket, which overgrown the whole field of life and in which people hopelessly wandered. A phenomenon capable of evoking in us extreme surprise, almost distrust, if only it were possible not to believe in this case. For it is really not easy to understand how men of sound mind, looking with open eyes at the world of God, could ever believe unperturbed in such doctrines and live by them. For people to worship an insignificant creature similar to them, man, as their god, and not only him, but also stumps, stones, and in general all kinds of animate and inanimate objects; that they should take this incoherent chaos of hallucinations for their theories of the universe - all this seems to us an incredible fable. However, there is no doubt that they did just that. People like us have really held onto and lived in accordance with such a disgusting and hopeless confusion in their false worships and false beliefs. This is weird. Yes, we can only stop in silence and sorrow over the depths of darkness lurking in man, just as we, on the other hand, rejoice, reaching heights of clearer contemplation together with him. All this was and is in man, in all people and in ourselves.

Some theorists do not think long about the explanation of pagan religion. All this, they say, is one sheer charlatanism, the trickery of the priests, deceit. No sane person ever believed in these gods, he only pretended to believe in order to convince others, all those who are not even worthy of being called a sane person! But we feel it our duty to protest against this kind of explanation of human deeds and human history, and we often have to repeat it.

Here, on the eve of our conversations, I protest against the application of such a hypothesis to paganism [paganism] and in general to all kinds of other “isms” by which people, making their earthly journey, were guided in certain epochs. They recognized in them the indisputable truth, or otherwise they would not have accepted them. Of course, there is plenty of quackery and deceit; in particular, they terribly flood with themselves religions on the slope of their development, in epochs of decline; but charlatanism has never been a creative force in such cases; it meant not health and life, but decay and served as a sure sign of the coming end! Let's never lose sight of this. The hypothesis that charlatanism can give rise to belief, whatever belief is involved, even among savage people, seems to me the most deplorable error. Quackery does not create anything; it brings death wherever it appears. We will never look into the real heart of any object as long as we are concerned only with the deceptions that have accumulated on it. Let us not completely discard these latter as painful manifestations, perversions, in relation to which our only duty, the duty of every person, is to put an end to them, to sweep them away, to cleanse both our thoughts and our deeds of them.

Man is everywhere a natural enemy of lies. I find that even the great Lamaism contains a certain kind of truth. Read the "Report on the Embassy" to the country of Lamaism Turner 1 , a sincere, insightful and even somewhat skeptical man, and judge then. This poor Tibetan people believes that in each generation there is invariably the embodiment of providence sent down by this last one. After all, this is, in essence, a belief in a kind of pope, but more sublime. It is the belief that the greatest man exists in the world that he can be found, and once he is really found, he must be treated with boundless humility! This is the truth of great Lamaism. The only error here is the "search" itself. The Tibetan priests practice their own methods to discover the greatest person fit to become the supreme ruler over them. low methods. But are they much worse than ours, in which, in a well-known genealogy, such suitability is recognized for the first-born? Alas, it is difficult to find proper methods in this case!..

Paganism will only become accessible to our understanding when we first of all admit that for its followers it once constituted a real truth. Let us consider it quite certain that people believed in paganism - people who look at the world of God with open eyes, people with healthy feelings, created in exactly the same way as we are - and that if we lived at that time, we ourselves would also believe into it. Now let's just ask, what could paganism be?

Another theory, somewhat more venerable, explains everything in allegories. Paganism, say theorists of this kind, represents the game of the poetic imagination, the main reflection (in the form of an allegorical fable, personification, or tangible form) discarded from what the poetic minds of that time knew about the universe and what they perceived from it. Such an explanation, they add at the same time, is in accordance with the basic law of human nature, which everywhere actively manifests itself even now, although in relation to less important things. Namely: everything that a person strongly feels, he tries, one way or another, to express, reproduce in a visible form, endowing a known object with a kind of life and historical reality.

Undoubtedly, such a law exists, and, moreover, it is one of the most deeply rooted laws in human nature. We will also not doubt that in this case, too, it had its profound effect. The hypothesis that explains paganism by the activity of this factor seems to me a little more respectable; but I cannot recognize it as correct. Think about whether we would begin to believe in some allegory, in the game of poetic imagination, and recognize it as the guiding principle in our lives? Of course, we would demand from her not amusement, but seriousness. Living a real life is the most serious thing in this world; death is also no fun for man. Man's life has never seemed to him a game; it was always a harsh reality for him, a completely serious matter!

Thus, in my opinion, although these allegorical theoreticians were in this case on the way to the truth, nevertheless they did not reach it. Pagan religion is truly an allegory, a symbol of what people knew and felt about the universe. Indeed, all religions in general are the same symbols, always changing as our relationship to the universe changes. But to present allegory as the original, producing cause, when it is rather a consequence and completion, is to completely distort the whole thing, even just turn it inside out. People do not need beautiful allegories, not perfect poetic symbols. They need to know what they should believe about this universe; which path should be followed; what can they count on and what should they fear in this mysterious life; what they should do and what not to do.

The Pilgrim's Progress 2 is also an allegory, beautiful, true and serious, but consider how Bunyan's allegory could have preceded the faith it symbolized! First there must be a faith recognized and affirmed by all. Then already, as its shadow, an allegory can appear. With all her seriousness, it will be, one might say, an amusing shadow, a mere play of the imagination in comparison with the formidable fact and with the scientific certainty that she is trying to translate into well-known poetic images. Allegory does not give rise to certainty, but is itself the product of it. Such is Bunyan's allegory, and so are all the others. Therefore, with regard to paganism, we must still investigate beforehand, where did this scientific certainty come from, which gave rise to such a disorderly heap of allegories, errors, such confusion? What is it and how did it develop?

Of course, any attempt to "explain" here, or anywhere else, such a remote, incoherent, confused phenomenon as this cloud-shrouded paganism, which is more a cloudy realm than a remote continent of solid earth and facts, would be a foolish attempt! It is no longer a reality, although it was once a reality. We must understand that this apparent realm of clouds was indeed once a reality, not only poetic allegory, and, in any case, not charlatanism and deceit gave birth to it.

People, I say, never believed in idle songs, never risked the life of their souls for a mere allegory. People at all times, and especially in the serious initial era, have had some instinct to guess charlatans and have abhorred them.

Leaving aside both the theory of quackery and the theory of allegory, let us try to listen attentively and with sympathy to the distant, obscure rumble that reaches us from centuries of paganism. Shall we not at least be able to convince ourselves that they are based on a certain kind of fact, that even the pagan ages were not ages of lies and madness, but that they, in their own, albeit pitiful, way, were also distinguished by truthfulness and sanity!

You remember one of Plato's fantasies about a man who lived to adulthood in a dark cave and was then suddenly taken out into the open air to watch the sunrise. What, presumably, was his astonishment, ecstatic astonishment at the sight of the spectacle, daily contemplated by us with complete indifference! With the open, free feeling of a child, and at the same time with the mature mind of a mature man, he looked at this spectacle, and it inflamed his heart. He recognized in him the divine nature, and his soul fell before him in deep reverence. Yes, primitive peoples were distinguished by such childish grandeur. First

a pagan thinker among savage people, the first person who began to think, represented just such a mature child of Plato: simple-hearted and open, like a child, but at the same time, the strength and depth of a mature person are already felt in him. He has not yet given a name to nature, he has not combined in one word all this endless variety of visual impressions, sounds, forms, movements, which we now call by a common name - "universe", "nature" or in any other way, and, thus, get rid of them, in a word.

For a wild, deeply feeling person, everything was still new, not covered by words and formulas. Everything stood naked before him, blinding him with its light, beautiful, formidable, inexpressible. Nature was for him what it always remains for the thinker and prophet - supernatural.

This rocky land, green and blooming, these trees, mountains, rivers, seas with their eternal voice; this boundless, deep sea of ​​azure, hovering over the head of a man; the wind blowing above; black clouds, piled one on top of the other, constantly changing their forms and breaking out now with fire, then hail and rain - what is all this? Yes, what? In fact, we still do not know this and will never be able to find out. We avoid embarrassment by no means because we have greater insight, but because of our easy attitude, our inattention, lack of depth in our view of nature. We stop being surprised by all this just because we stop thinking about it. A thick, hardened shell of traditions, current phrases, mere words, has formed around our being, densely and on all sides enveloping any concept that we may form for ourselves. We call this fire, which cuts through a black, menacing cloud, "electricity," we study it scientifically, and by rubbing silk and glass we bring about something similar to it; but what is it? What produces it? Where does it come from? Where does it disappear? Science has done a lot for us. But pitiful is the science that would want to hide from us all the vastness, depth, sanctity of the endless ignorance, where we can never penetrate and on the surface of which all our knowledge floats like a light raid. This world, despite all our knowledge and all our sciences, still remains a miracle, amazing, inscrutable, magical for anyone who thinks about it.

And the great mystery of time, is it not another miracle? Boundless, silent, never resting, this is the so-called time. Rolling, rushing, fast, silent, like the tide of the ocean that carries everything away, in which we and the whole universe flicker, like vapors, shadows, appearing and disappearing - it will forever remain literally a miracle. It strikes us, and we are silent, because we lack the words to talk about it. This universe, alas, what could a wild man know about it? What can even we know? That she is a force, a combination of forces combined in a thousand ways. A force that is not us, that's all. She is not us, she is something completely different from us.

Power, power, power everywhere; we ourselves are the mysterious force at the center of it all. “There is no rotting leaf on the road that does not contain strength: otherwise how could it rot?” Yes, indeed, even for an atheist thinker, if such is possible at all, this must also be a miracle. This vast, boundless whirlwind of power that envelops us here; a whirlwind that never stops, rising as high as immensity itself, as eternal as eternity itself. What is he? The creation of God, religious people answer, the creation of the almighty God! Atheistic knowledge, with its scientific list of names, with its answers and all sorts of things, babbles its pitiful speeches about it, as if it were a matter of an insignificant, dead substance that can be poured into Leiden jars 3 and sold from the counter. But the natural common sense of man at all times, if only a man honestly addresses it, proclaims that it is something alive. Oh yes, something inexpressible, divine, in relation to which, no matter how great our knowledge, we most of all befits reverence, reverence and humility, silent worship, if there are no words.

Then I will remark further: that work, for which, in a time like ours, a prophet or poet is needed to teach and free people from this impious cover, list of names, current scientific phrases, in former times every serious mind did for itself, not still cluttered with similar notions. The world, which is now divine only in the eyes of the elect, was then so for everyone who turned their open gaze to it. The man then stood naked before him, face to face. "Everything was divine or God" - Jean Paul 4 finds that the world is like that. The giant Jean Paul, who had enough strength not to succumb to walking phrases; but then there were no walking phrases. Canopus 5, shining high above the desert with a blue diamond brilliance, this wild blue, as it were, spiritual brilliance, much brighter than what we know in our countries. He penetrated into the very heart of the wild Ishmaelite, served as a guiding star in the boundless desert. To his wild heart, which contained all feelings, but did not yet know a single word to express them, this Canopus must have seemed like a small eye, looking from the depths of eternity itself and revealing an inner brilliance. Can we not understand how these people revered Canopus, how they became the so-called Sabeites, worshipers of the stars? Such, in my opinion, is the secret of all kinds of pagan religions. Worship is the highest degree of wonder; wonder, knowing no boundaries and no measure, is worship. For primitive people, all objects and every object that exists next to them seemed to be the emblem of the divine, the emblem of some God.

And notice what a thread of truth that never breaks through here. Does not the divinity also speak to our mind in every star, in every blade of grass, if only we open our eyes and our soul? Our reverence no longer has this character. But isn’t it still considered a special gift, a sign of what we call “poetic nature”, the ability to see in each object its divine beauty, to see how each object really represents until now “a window through which we can look into the very infinity"? A person who is able to notice in every object what deserves love, we call a poet, an artist, a genius, a gifted, loving person. These poor Sabeites did in their own way what such a great man does. Whatever way they did it, in any case, the very fact that they did speaks in their favor. They stood higher than a completely stupid person, than a horse or a camel, who do not think of anything like that!

But now, if everything that we turn our eyes to is for us the emblem of the Most High God, then, I add, to an even greater extent than any external thing, man himself represents such an emblem. You have heard the famous words of St. John Chrysostom, spoken by him regarding the shekinah, or the tabernacle of the covenant, the visible revelation of God given to the Jews: “The true shekinah is a man!” 6 Yes, that's right: this is not an empty phrase at all, it really is. The essence of our being, that mysterious thing that calls itself I- alas, what words do we have to designate all this - there is the breath of heaven. The highest being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours - does not all this constitute, as it were, the outer cover of an entity that has no name? “There is only one temple in the universe,” says Novalis 7 with reverence, “and this temple is the human body. There is no shrine greater than this exalted form. To bow the head before the people is to pay due respect to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on the body of a man!” From all this, it strongly smacks of empty rhetoric, but in reality it is far from rhetoric. If you think about it well, it will turn out that we are dealing with a scientific fact, that this is a real truth, expressed in the words that we can have. We are a miracle of miracles, the great, inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand it; we don't know how to talk about it. But we can feel and know that it is so.

There is no doubt that this truth was once felt more vividly than it is now. The early generations of mankind retained the freshness of a youth. At the same time, they were distinguished by the depth of a serious person, not thinking that they had already done away with everything heavenly and earthly, giving scientific names to everything, but looking directly at the world of God with reverence and wonder, they felt more strongly that there is divine in man and nature. They could, without being mad, revere nature, man and the latter more than anything else in this nature. To honor, as I said above, is to wonder without limit, and they could do this with all the fullness of their abilities, with all the sincerity of their hearts. I regard the veneration of heroes as a great hallmark in the systems of ancient thought. What I call the thicket of paganism grew out of many roots. All admiration, all worship of any star or any object was the root or one of the threads of the root, but the veneration of heroes is the deepest root of all, the main, pivotal root, which to a large extent nourishes and grows everything else.

And now, if even the veneration of the star had its certain significance, how much more could the veneration of the hero have! Worshiping a hero is transcendent wonder at a great man. I say great people are amazing people so far; I say that, in fact, there is nothing else surprising! There is no nobler feeling in the breast of a man than this surprise before someone who is higher than him. And at the present moment, as in general at all moments, it produces a life-giving influence on a person's life. Religion, I say, rests on it; not only pagan, but much higher and truer religions, all religions known so far. Reverence for a hero, surprise that comes from the very heart and plunges a person to the ground, ardent, boundless humility before an ideally noble, god-like person - is this not precisely the grain of Christianity itself? The greatest of all heroes is He Whom we will not name here! Meditate upon this shrine in holy silence. You will find that it is the last incarnation of a principle that runs like a "red thread" through the entire earthly history of man.

Or, turning to lower, less inexpressible phenomena, do we not see that all loyalty (fidelity, devotion) is also akin to religious faith? Faith is loyalty to some inspired teacher, some exalted hero. And what, therefore, is loyalty itself, the breath of life of any society, if not the result of the veneration of heroes, if not a humble astonishment before true greatness? Society is based on the veneration of heroes.

All sorts of titles and ranks, on which human unity rests, represent what we might call a geroarchy (the rule of heroes) or a hierarchy, since this geroarchy also contains enough of the “holy”! Duke ("duke") means Dux, "leader"; Kцnning, Canning - “a person who knows or can” 8 . Every society is an expression of the veneration of heroes in their gradual gradation, and it cannot be said that this gradualness is completely untrue, there is respect and obedience rendered to truly great and wise people.

Graduality, I repeat, cannot be said to be completely untrue! All of them, these public dignitaries, represent gold like banknotes, but, alas, there are always many counterfeit banknotes among them. We can carry out our operations with a certain number of counterfeit, counterfeit banknotes, even with a significant amount of them; but this becomes decidedly impossible when they are all fake, or when most of them are! No, then a revolution must come, then the cries of democracy rise, freedom and equality are proclaimed, and I don't know what else. Then all tickets are considered fake; they cannot be exchanged for gold, and the people in despair begin to shout that there is no gold at all and never was! "Gold", hero worship, nevertheless exists, as it has always existed and everywhere, and it cannot disappear as long as man exists.

I know very well that at present the veneration of heroes is recognized as an obsolete cult, which has finally ceased to exist. Our age, for reasons that would once be a worthy subject of study, is an age that denies, so to speak, the very existence of great men, their very desirability. Show our critics a great man, such as Luther 9 , and they will begin with what they call "explanation." They will not bow before him, but will begin to measure him and find that he belongs to people of a small breed! He was "a product of his time," they would say. Time called him, time did everything, but he did not do anything that we, little critics, could not do as well! A miserable job, in my opinion, is such a criticism. Time caused? Alas, we have known times that rather loudly called their great man, but did not find him! It didn't show up. Providence did not send him. Time, calling him with all its might, was to sink into oblivion, since he did not come when he was called.

For if we think carefully, we shall be convinced that no time would be in danger of perishing if it could find a great enough man. Wise to correctly determine the needs of the time; brave, to lead him on a straight path to the goal; this is the salvation of all time. But I compare the vulgar and lifeless times with their unbelief, disasters, confusions, doubting and indecisive character, difficult circumstances. Times helplessly exchanging for worse and worse disasters, leading them to final destruction - I compare all this to a dry, dead forest, waiting only for lightning from the sky to ignite it. The great man, with his free power coming straight from the hands of God, is lightning. His word is a wise, saving word; everyone can believe in it. Everything around this person then ignites, since he strikes with his word, and everything burns with a fire similar to his own. It is thought that these dry, dust-turning branches called him into existence. Of course, it was extremely necessary for them, but as for the fact that they called! ..

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