Aristocracies
To predict the Future, to manage the Present, would not be so
impossible, had not the Past been so sacrilegiously mishandled;
effaced, and what is worse, defaced! The Past cannot be seen;
the Past, looked at through the medium of 'Philosophical History'
in these times, cannot even be _not_ seen: it is misseen;
affirmed to have existed,--and to have been a godless
Impossibility. Your Norman Conquerors, true royal souls, crowned
kings as such, were vulturous irrational tyrants: your Becket
was a noisy egoist and hypocrite; getting his brains spilt on
the floor of Canterbury Cathedral, to secure the main chance,--
somewhat uncertain how! "Enthusiasm," and even "honest
Enthusiasm,"--yes, of course:
'The Dog, to gain his private ends,
_Went_ mad, and bit the Man!'--
For in truth, the eye sees in all things 'what it brought with it
the means of seeing.' A godless century, looking back on
centuries that were godly, produces portraitures more miraculous
than any other. All was inane discord in the Past; brute Force
bore rule everywhere; Stupidity, savage Unreason, fitter for
Bedlam than for a human World! Whereby indeed it becomes
sufficiently natural that the like qualities, in new sleeker
habiliments, should continue in our time to rule. Millions
enchanted in Bastille Workhouses; Irish Widows proving their
relationship by typhus-fever: what would you have? It was ever
so, or worse. Man's History, was it not always even this: The
cookery and eating up of imbecile Dupedom by successful
Quackhood; the battle, with various weapons, of vulturous Quack
and Tyrant against vulturous Tyrant and Quack? No God was in the
Past Time; nothing but. Mechanisms and Chaotic Brute-gods:--how
shall the poor 'Philosophic Historian,' to whom his own century
is all godless, see any God in other centuries?
Men believe in Bibles, and disbelieve in them: but of all Bibles
the frightfulest to disbelieve in is this 'Bible of Universal
History.' This is the Eternal Bible and God's-Book, 'which every
born man,' till once the soul and eyesight are distinguished in
him, 'can and must, with his own eyes, see the God's-Finger
writing!' To discredit this, is an _infidelity_ like no other.
Such infidelity you would punish, if not by fire and faggot,
which are difficult to manage in our times, yet by the most
peremptory order, To hold its peace till it got something wiser
to say. Why should the blessed Silence be broken into noises, to
communicate only the like of this? If the Past have no God's-
Reason in it, nothing but Devil's-Unreason, let the Past be
eternally forgotten: mention it no more;--we whose ancestors
were all hanged, why should we talk of ropes!
It is, in brief, not true that men ever lived by Delirium,
Hypocrisy, Injustice, or any form of Unreason, since they came to
inhabit this Planet. It is not true that they ever did, or ever
will, live except by the reverse of these. Men will again be
taught this. Their acted History will then again be a Heroism;
their written History, what it once was, an Epic. Nay, forever
it is either such; or else it virtually is--Nothing. Were it
written in a thousand volumes, the Unheroic of such volumes
hastens incessantly to be forgotten; the net content of an
Alexandrian Library of Unheroics is, and will ultimately shew
itself to be, _zero._ What man is interested to remember _it,_
have not all men, at all times, the liveliest interest to forget
it?--'Revelations,' if not celestial, then infernal, will teach
us that God is; we shall then, if needful, discern without
difficulty that He has always been! The Dryasdust Philosophisms
and enlightened Scepticisms of the Eighteenth Century, historical
and other, will have to survive for a while with the
Physiologists, as a memorable _Nightmare-Dream._ All this
haggard epoch, with its ghastly Doctrines, and death's-head
Philosophies 'teaching by example' or otherwise, will one day
have become, what to our Moslem friends their godless ages are,
'the Period of Ignorance.
If the convulsive struggles of the last Half-Century have taught
poor struggling convulsed Europe any truth, it may perhaps be
this as the essence of innumerable others: That Europe requires
a real Aristocracy, a real Priesthood, or it cannot continue to
exist. Huge French Revolutions, Napoleonisms, then Bourbonisms
with their corollary of Three Days, finishing in very unfinal
Louis-Philippisms: all this ought to be didactic! All this may
have taught us, That False Aristocracies are insupportable;
that No-Aristocracies, Liberty-and-Equalities are impossible;
that True Aristocracies are at once indispensable and not
easily attained.
Aristocracy and Priesthood, a Governing Class and a Teaching
Class: these two, sometimes separate, and endeavouring to
harmonise themselves, sometimes conjoined as one, and the King a
Pontiff-King:--there did no Society exist without these two vital
elements, there will none exist. It lies in the very nature of
man: you will visit no remotest village in the most republican
country of the world, where virtually or actually you do not find
these two powers at work. Man, little as he may suppose it, is
necessitated to obey superiors. He is a social being in virtue
of this necessity; nay he could not be gregarious otherwise. He
obeys those whom he esteems better than himself, wiser, braver;
and will forever obey such; and even be ready and delighted to
do it.
The Wiser, Braver: these, a Virtual Aristocracy everywhere and
everywhen, do in all Societies that reach any articulate shape,
develop themselves into a ruling class, an Actual Aristocracy,
with settled modes of operating, what are called laws and even
_private-laws_ or privileges, and so forth; very notable to look
upon in this world.--Aristocracy and Priesthood, we say, are
sometimes united. For indeed the Wiser and the Braver are
properly but one class; no wise man but needed first of all to
be a brave man, or he never had been wise. The noble Priest was
always a noble Aristos to begin with, and something more to end
with. Your Luther, your Knox, your Anselm, Becket, Abbot Samson,
Samuel Johnson, if they had not been brave enough, by what
possibility could they ever have been wise?--If, from accident or
forethought, this your Actual Aristocracy have got discriminated
into Two Classes, there can be no doubt but the Priest Class is
the more dignified; supreme over the other, as governing head is
over active hand. And yet in practice again, it is likeliest the
reverse will be found arranged;--a sign that the arrangement is
already vitiated; that a split is introduced into it, which will
widen and widen till the whole be rent asunder.
In England, in Europe generally, we may say that these two
Virtualities have unfolded themselves into Actualities, in by far
the noblest and richest manner any region of the world ever saw.
A spiritual Guideship, a practical Governorship, fruit of the
grand conscious endeavours, say rather of the immeasurable
unconscious instincts and necessities of men, have established
themselves; very strange to behold. Everywhere, while so much
has been forgotten, you find the King's Palace, and the
Viceking's Castle, Mansion, Manorhouse; till there is not an
inch of ground from sea to sea but has both its King and
Viceking, long due series of Viceking, its Squire, Earl, Duke or
whatever the title of him,--to whom you have given the land that
he may govern you in it.
More touching still, there is not a hamlet where poor peasants
congregate, but by one means and another a Church-Apparatus has
been got together,--roofed edifice, with revenues and belfries;
pulpit, reading-desk, with Books and Methods: possibility, in
short, and strict prescription, That a man stand there and speak
of spiritual things to men. It is beautiful;--even in its great
obscuration and decadence, it is among the beautifulest, most
touching objects one sees on the Earth. This Speaking Man has
indeed, in these times, wandered terribly from the point; has,
alas, as it were totally lost sight of the point: yet, at
bottom, whom have we to compare with him? Of all public
functionaries boarded and lodged on the Industry of Modern
Europe, is there one worthier of the board he has? A man even
professing, and never so languidly making still some endeavour,
to save the souls of men: contrast him with a man professing to
do little but shoot the partridges of men! I wish he could find
the point again, this Speaking One; and stick to it with
tenacity, with deadly energy; for there is need of him yet! The
Speaking Function, this of Truth coming to us with a living
voice, nay in a living shape, and as a concrete practical
exemplar: this, with all our Writing and Printing Functions, has
a perennial place. Could he but find the point again,--take the
old spectacles off his nose, and looking up discover, almost in
contact with him, what the _real_ Satanas, and soul-devouring,
world-devouring _Devil,_ now is! Original Sin and such like are
bad enough, I doubt not: but distilled Gin, dark Ignorance,
Stupidity, dark Corn-Law, Bastille and Company, what are they!
_Will_ he discover our new real Satan, whom he has to fight; or
go on droning through his old nose-spectacles about old extinct
Satans; and never see the real one, till he _feel_ him at his
own throat and ours? That is a question, for the world! Let us
not intermeddle with it here.
Sorrowful, phantasmal as this same Double Aristocracy of Teachers
and Governors now looks, it is worth all men's while to know that
the purport of it is and remains noble and most real. Dryasdust,
looking merely at the surface, is greatly in error as to those
ancient Kings. William Conqueror, William Rufus or Redbeard,
Stephen Curthose himself, much more Henry Beauclerc and our brave
Plantagenet Henry: the life of these men was not a vulturous
Fighting; it was a valorous Governing,--to which occasionally
Fighting did, and alas must yet, though far seldomer now,
superadd itself as an accident, a distressing impedimental
adjunct. The fighting too was indispensable, for ascertaining
who had the might over whom, the right over whom. By much hard
fighting, as we once said, 'the unrealities, beaten into dust,
flew gradually off;' and left the plain reality and fact, "Thou
stronger than I; thou wiser than I; thou king, and subject I,"
in a somewhat clearer condition.
Truly we cannot enough admire, in those Abbot-Samson and William-
Conqueror times, the arrangement they had made of their Governing
Classes. Highly interesting to observe how the sincere insight,
on their part, into what did, of primary necessity, behove to be
accomplished, had led them to the way of accomplishing it, and in
the course of time to get it accomplished! No imaginary
Aristocracy would serve their turn; and accordingly they
attained a real one. The Bravest men, who, it is ever to be
repeated and remembered, are also on the whole the Wisest,
Strongest, every way Best, had here, with a respectable degree of
accuracy, been got selected; seated each on his piece of
territory, which was lent him, then gradually given him, that
he might govern it. These Vicekings, each on his portion of
the common soil of England, with a Head King over all, were
a 'Virtuality perfected into an Actuality' really to an
astonishing extent.
For those were rugged stalwart ages; full of earnestness, of a
rude God's-truth:--nay, at any rate, their _quilting_ was so
unspeakably _thinner_ than ours; Fact came swiftly on them, if
at any time they had yielded to Phantasm! 'The Knaves and
Dastards' had to be 'arrested' in some measure; or the world,
almost within year and day, found that it could not live. The
Knaves and Dastards accordingly were got arrested. Dastards upon
the very throne had to be got arrested, and taken off the
throne,--by such methods as there were; by the roughest method,
if there chanced to be no smoother one! Doubtless there was much
harshness of operation, much severity; as indeed government and
surgery are often somewhat severe. Gurth born thrall of Cedric,
it is like; got cuffs as often as pork-parings, if he
misdemeaned himself; but Gurth did belong to Cedric: no human
creature then went about connected with nobody; left to go his
ways into Bastilles or worse, under _Laissez-faire;_ reduced to
prove his relationship by dying of typhus-fever!--Days come when
there is no King in Israel, but every man is his own king, doing
that which is right in his own eyes;--and tarbarrels are burnt to
'Liberty,' 'Tenpound Franchise' and the like, with considerable
effect in various ways!--
That Feudal Aristocracy, I say, was no imaginary one. To a
respectable degree, its _Jarls,_ what we now call Earls, were
_Strong-Ones_ in fact as well as etymology; its Dukes _Leaders,_
its Lords _Law-wards._ They did all the Soldiering and Police of
the country, all the judging, Law-making, even the Church-
Extension; whatsoever in the way of Governing, of Guiding and
Protecting could be done. It was a Land Aristocracy; it managed
the Governing of this English People, and had the reaping of the
Soil of England in return. It is, in many senses, the Law of
Nature, this same Law of Feudalism;--no right Aristocracy but a
Land one! The curious are invited to meditate upon it in these
days. Soldiering, Police and Judging, Church-Extension, nay real
Government and Guidance, all this was actually _done_ by the
Holders of the Land in return for their Land. How much of it is
now done by them; done by anybody? Good Heavens, "Laissez-
faire, Do ye nothing, eat your wages and sleep," is everywhere
the passionate half-wise cry of this time; and they will not so
much as do nothing, but must do mere Corn-Laws! We raise Fifty-
two millions, from the general mass of us, to get our Governing
done,--or, alas, to get ourselves persuaded that it is done: and
the 'peculiar burden of the Land' is to pay, not all this, but to
pay, as I learn, one twenty-fourth part of all this. Our first
Chartist Parliament, or Oliver _Redivivus,_ you would say, will
know where to lay the new taxes of England!--Or, alas, taxes? If
we made the Holders of the Land pay every shilling still of the
expense of Governing the Land, what were all that? The Land, by
mere hired Governors, cannot be got governed. You cannot hire
men to govern the Land: it is by a mission not contracted for in
the Stock-Exchange, but felt in their own hearts as coming out of
Heaven, that men can govern a Land. The mission of a Land
Aristocracy is a sacred one, in both the senses of that old word.
The footing it stands on, at present, might give rise to thoughts
other than of Corn-Laws!--
But truly a 'Splendour of God,' as in William Conqueror's rough
oath, did dwell in those old rude veracious ages; did inform,
more and more, with a heavenly nobleness, all departments of
their work and life. Phantasms could not yet walk abroad in mere
Cloth Tailorage; they were at least Phantasms 'on the rim of the
horizon,' pencilled there by an eternal Light-beam from within.
A most 'practical' Hero-worship went on, unconsciously or half-
consciously, everywhere. A Monk Samson, with a maximum of two
shillings in his pocket, could, without ballot-box, be made a
Viceking of, being seen to be worthy. The difference between a
good man and a bad man was as yet felt to be, what it forever is,
an immeasurable one. Who _durst_ have elected a Pandarus Dog-
draught, in those days, to any office, Carlton Club, Senatorship,
or place whatsoever? It was felt that the arch Satanas and no
other had a clear right of property in Pandarus; that it were
better for you to have no hand in Pandarus, to keep out of
Pandarus his neighbourhood! Which is, to this hour, the mere
fact; though for the present, alas, the forgotten fact. I think
they were comparatively blessed times those, in their way!
'Violence,' 'war,' 'disorder:' well, what is war, and death
itself, to such a perpetual life-in-death, and 'peace and peace
where there is no peace!' Unless some Hero-worship, in its new
appropriate form, can return, this world does not promise to be
very habitable long.
Old Anselm, exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the purest-
minded 'men of genius,' was traveling to make his appeal to Rome
against King Rufus,--a man of rough ways, in whom the 'inner
Light-beam' shone very fitfully. It is beautiful to read, in
Monk Eadmer, how the Continental populations welcomed and
venerated this Anselm, as no French population now venerates
Jean-Jacques or giant-killing Voltaire; as not even an American
population now venerates a Schnuspel the distinguished Novelist!
They had, by phantasy and true insight, the intensest conviction
that a God's Blessing dwelt in this Anselm,--as is my conviction
too. They crowded round, with bent knees and enkindled hearts,
to receive his blessing, to hear his voice, to see the light of
his face. My blessings on them and on him!--But the notablest
was a certain necessitous or covetous Duke of Burgundy, in
straitened circumstances we shall hope,--who reflected that in
all likelihood this English Archbishop, going towards Rome to
appeal, must have taken store of cash with him to bribe the
Cardinals. Wherefore he of Burgundy, for his part, decided to
lie in wait and rob him. 'In an open space of a wood,' some
'wood' then green and growing, eight centuries ago, in Burgundian
Land,--this fierce Duke, with fierce steel followers, shaggy,
savage, as the Russian Bear, dashes out on the weak old Anselm;
who is riding along there, on his small quiet-going pony;
escorted only by Eadmer and another poor Monk on ponies; and,
except small modicum of roadmoney, not a gold coin in his
possession. The steelclad Russian Bear emerges, glaring: the
old whitebearded man starts not,--paces on unmoved, looking into
him with those clear old earnest eyes, with that venerable
sorrowful time-worn face; of whom no man or thing need be
afraid, and who also is afraid of no created man or thing. The
fire-eyes of his Burgundian Grace meet these clear eye-glances,
convey them swift to his heart: he bethinks him that probably
this feeble, fearless, hoary Figure has in it something of the
Most High God; that probably he shall be damned if he meddle
with it,--that, on the whole, he had better not. He plunges, the
rough savage, from his warhorse, down to his knees; embraces the
feet of old Anselm: he too begs his blessing; orders men to
escort him, guard him from being robbed, and under dread
penalties see him safe on his way. _Per os Dei,_ as his Majesty
was wont to ejaculate!
Neither is this quarrel of Rufus and Anselm, of Henry and Becket,
uninstructive to us. It was, at bottom, a great quarrel. For,
admitting that Anselm was full of divine blessing, he by no means
included in him all forms of divine blessing:--there were far
other forms withal, which he little dreamed of; and William
Redbeard was unconsciously the representative and spokesman of
these. In truth, could your divine Anselm, your divine Pope
Gregory have had their way, the results had been very notable.
Our Western World had all become a European Thibet, with one
Grand Lama sitting at Rome; our one honourable business that of
singing mass, all day and all night. Which would not in the
least have suited us! The Supreme Powers willed it not so.
It was as if King Redbeard unconsciously, addressing Anselm,
Becket and the others, had said: "Right Reverend, your Theory of
the Universe is indisputable by man or devil. To the core of our
heart we feel that this divine thing, which you call Mother
Church, does fill the whole world hitherto known, and is and
shall be all our salvation and all our desire. And yet--and yet
--Behold, though it is an unspoken secret, the world is _wider_
than any of us think, Right Reverend! Behold, there are yet
other immeasurable Sacrednesses in this that you call Heathenism,
Secularity! On the whole I, in an obscure but most rooted
manner, feel that I cannot comply with you. Western Thibet and
perpetual mass-chanting,--No. I am, so to speak, in the family-
way; with child, of I know not what,--certainly of something far
different from this! I have--_Per os Dei,_ I have Manchester
Cotton-trades, Bromwicham Iron-trades, American Commonwealths,
Indian Empires, Steam Mechanisms and Shakspeare Dramas, in my
belly; and cannot do it, Right Reverend!"--So accordingly it was
decided: and Saxon Becket spilt his life in Canterbury Cathedral,
as Scottish Wallace did on Tower-Hill, and as generally a noble
man and martyr has to do,--not for nothing; no, but for a divine
something, other than _he_ had altogether calculated. We will
now quit this of the hard, organic, but limited Feudal Ages; and
glance timidly into the immense Industrial Ages, as yet all
inorganic, and in a quite pulpy condition, requiring desperately
to harden themselves into some organism!
Our Epic having now become _Tools and the Man,_ it is more than
usually impossible to prophesy the Future. The boundless Future
does lie there, predestined, nay already extant though unseen;
hiding, in its Continents of Darkness, 'good hap and sorrow:'
but the supremest intelligence of man cannot prefigure much of
it:--the united intelligence and effort of All Men in all coming
generations, this alone will gradually prefigure it, and figure
and form it into a seen fact! Straining our eyes hitherto, the
utmost effort of intelligence sheds but some most glimmering
dawn, a little way into its dark enormous Deeps: only huge
outlines loom uncertain on the sight; and the ray of prophecy,
at a short distance, expires. But may we not say, here as
always, Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof! To shape the
whole Future is not our problem; but only to shape faithfully a
small part of it, according to rules already known. It is
perhaps possible for each of us, who will with due earnestness
inquire, to ascertain clearly what he, for his own part, ought to
do: this let him, with true heart, do, and continue doing. The
general issue will, as it has always done, rest well with a
Higher Intelligence than ours.
One grand 'outline,' or even two, many earnest readers may
perhaps, at this stage of the business, be able to prefigure for
themselves,--and draw some guidance from. One prediction, or
even two, are already possible. For the Life-tree Igdrasil, in
all its new developments, is the selfsame world-old Life-tree:
having found an element or elements there, running from the very
roots of it in Hela's Realms, in the Well of Mimer and of the
Three Nornas or TIMES, up to this present hour of it in our own
hearts, we conclude that such will have to continue. A man has,
in his own soul, an Eternal; can read something of the Eternal
there, if he will look! He already knows what will continue;
what cannot, by any means or appliance whatsoever, be made
to continue!
One wide and widest 'outline' ought really, in all ways, to be
becoming clear to us; this namely: That a 'Splendour of God,'
in one form or other, will have to unfold itself from the heart
of these our Industrial Ages too; or they will never get
themselves 'organised;' but continue chaotic, distressed,
distracted evermore, and have to perish in frantic suicidal
dissolution. A second 'outline' or prophecy, narrower, but also
wide enough, seems not less certain: That there will again _be_
a King in Israel; a system of Order and Government; and every
man shall, in some measure, see himself constrained to do that
which is right in the King's eyes. This too we may call a sure
element of the Future; for this too is of the Eternal;--this too
is of the Present, though hidden from most; and without it no
fibre of the Past ever was. An actual new Sovereignty,
Industrial Aristocracy, real not imaginary Aristocracy, is
indispensable and indubitable for us.
But what an Aristocracy; on what new, far more complex and
cunningly devised conditions than that old Feudal fighting one!
For we are to bethink us that the Epic verily is not _Arms and
the Man,_ but _Tools and the Man,_--an infinitely wider kind of
Epic. And again we are to bethink us that men cannot now be
bound to men by _brass-collars,_--not at all: that this brass-
collar method, in all figures of it, has vanished out of Europe
forevermore! Huge Democracy, walking the streets everywhere in
its Sack Coat, has asserted so much; irrevocably, brooking no
reply! True enough, man _is_ forever the 'born thrall' of
certain men, born master of certain other men, born equal of
certain others, let him acknowledge the fact or not. It is
unblessed for him when he cannot acknowledge this fact; he is in
the chaotic state, ready to perish, till he do get the fact
acknowledged. But no man is, or can henceforth be, the brass-
collar thrall of any man; you will have to bind him by other,
far nobler and cunninger methods. Once for all, he is to be
loose of the brass-collar, to have a scope as wide as his
faculties now are:--will he not be all the usefuler to you, in
that new state? Let him go abroad as a trusted one, as a free
one; and return home to you with rich earnings at night! Gurth
could only tend pigs; this one will build cities, conquer waste
worlds.--How, in conjunction with inevitable Democracy,
indispensable Sovereignty is to exist: certainly it is the
hugest question ever heretofore propounded to Mankind! The
solution of which is work for long years and centuries. Years
and centuries, of one knows not what complexion;--blessed or
unblessed, according as they shall, with earnest valiant effort,
make progress therein, or, in slothful unveracity and
dilettantism, only talk of making progress. For either progress
therein, or swift and ever swifter progress towards dissolution,
is henceforth a necessity.
It is of importance that this grand reformation were begun; that
Corn-Law Debatings and other jargon, little less than delirious
in such a time, had fled far away, and left us room to begin!
For the evil has grown practical, extremely conspicuous; if it
be not seen and provided for, the blindest fool will have to feel
it ere long. There is much that can wait; but there is
something also that cannot wait. With millions of eager Working
Men imprisoned in 'Impossibility' and Poor-Law Bastilles, it is
time that some means of dealing with them were trying to become
'possible!' Of the Government of England, of all articulate-
speaking functionaries, real and imaginary Aristocracies, of me
and of thee, it is imperatively demanded, "How do you mean to
manage these men? Where are they to find a supportable
existence? What is to become of them,--and of you!"