THE ORIGIN OF UNIVERSITIES. THOMAS CARLYLE. UNIVERSITIES are a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence, too, is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of books. Universities arose while there were yet no books procurable; while a man, for a single book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. And now for any other teacher who had also something of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened: so many thousands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came. It only needed now that the king took notice of this new phenomenon ; combined or agglomerated the various schools into one school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and named it universitas, or school of all sciences: the University of Paris, in its essential characters, was there. The model of all subsequent universities; which, down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of universities. From "Heroes and Hero Worship." ATHEISM ABSURD. THOMAS CARLYLE. DIDEROT was an Atheist, then; stranger still, a proselytizing Atheist, who esteemed the creed worth earnest reiterated preaching, and enforcement with all vigor! The unhappy man had "sailed through the Universe of Worlds and found no Maker thereof; had descended to the abysses where Being no longer casts its shadow, and felt only the rain-drops trickle down; and seen only the glimmering rainbow of Creation which originated from no Sun; and heard only the everlasting storm which no one governs; and looked upwards for the DIVINE EYE, and beheld only the black, bottomless, glaring DEATH'S EYE-SOCKET:" such, with all his wide voyages, was the philosophic fortune he had realized. Sad enough, horrible enough: yet, instead of shrieking over it, or howling and Ernulphus'-cursing over it, let us, as the more profitable method, keep our composure, and inquire a little, What possibly it may mean? The whole phenomenon, as seems to us, will explain itself from the fact above insisted on, that Diderot was a Polemic of decided character in the Mechanical Age. With great expenditure of words and froth, in arguments as waste, wild-weltering, delirious-dismal as the chaos they would demonstrate-which arguments one now knows not whether to laugh at or to weep at, and almost does both,-have Diderot and his sect perhaps made this apparent to all who examine it: That in the French System of thought (called also the Scotch, and still familiar enough everywhere, which, for want of a better title, we have named the Mechanical), there is no room for a Divinity; that to him for whom "intellect, or the power of knowing and believing, is still synonymous with logic, or the mere power of arranging and communicating," there is absolutely no proof discoverable of a Divinity; and such a man has nothing for it but either (if he be of half spirit, as is the frequent case) to trim despicably all his days between two opinions; or else (if he be of whole spirit) to anchor on the rock or quagmire of Atheism, and further, should he see fit, proclaim to others that there is good riding there. So much may Diderot have demonstrated: a conclusion at which we nowise turn pale. Was it much to know that Metaphysical Speculation, by nature, whirls round in endless Maelstroms, "both creating and swallowing-itself?" For so wonderful a self-swallowing product of the Spirit of Time, could any result to arrive at be fitter than this of the ETERNAL NO? We thank Heaven that the result is finally arrived at; and so now we can look out for something other and further. But, above all things, proof of a God? A probable God! The smallest of Finites struggling to prove to itself (that is to say, if we consider it, to picture out and arrange as diagram, and include within itself) the Highest Infinite; in which, by hypothesis, it lives, and moves, and has its being! This, we conjecture, will one day seem a much more miraculous miracle than that negative result it has arrived at, or any other result a still absurder chance might have led it to. He who, in some singular Time of the World's History, were reduced to wander about, in stooping posture, with painfully constructed sulphur-match and farthing rushlight (as Gowkthrapple Naigeon), or smoky tar-link (as Denis Diderot), searching for the Sun, and did not find it; were he wonderful and his failure; or the singular Time, and its having put him on that search? - From "Essay on Diderot." THEISM AND ITS TENETS. THOMAS CARLYLE. THE second consequence seems to be that this whole current hypothesis of the Universe being "a Machine," and then of an Architect, who constructed it, sitting, as it were, apart, and guiding it, and seeing it go, may turn out an inanity and nonentity; not much longer tenable with which result likewise we shall, in the quietest manner, reconcile ourselves. "Think ye," says Goethe, "that God made the Universe, and then let it run round his finger (am Fingerlaufen liesse?”) On the whole, that Metaphysical hurly-burly (of our poor, jarring, self-listening Time) ought at length to compose itself: that seeking for a God there, and not here; everywhere outwardly in physical Nature, and not inwardly in our own Soul, where alone he is to be found by us, begins to get wearisome. Above all, that "faint possible Theism" which now forms our common English creed, cannot be too soon swept out of the world. What is the nature of that individual, who, with hysterical violence, theoretically asserts a God, perhaps a revealed Symbol and Worship of God; and, for the rest, in thought, word, and conduct, meet with him where you will, is found living as if his theory were some polite figure of speech, and his theoretical God a mere distant Simulacrum, with whom he, for his part, had nothing further to do? Fool! The ETERNAL is no Simulacrum; God is not only There, but Here, or nowhere, in that life-breath of thine, in that act and thought of thine,—and thou wert wise to look to it. If there is no God, as the fool hath said in his heart, then live on with thy decencies, and lip-homages, and inward Greed, and falsehood, and all the hollow cunningly-devised halfness that recommends thee to the Mammon of this world: if there is a God, we say, look to it! But, in either case, what art thou? The Atheist is false; yet is there, as we see, a fraction of truth in him he is true compared with thee; thou, unhappy mortal, livest wholly in a lie, art wholly a lie. From "Essay on Diderot." KINGS' DESIRES. LORD BACON. It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear; and yet that commonly is the case with kings, who being at the highest, want matter of desire, which makes their minds more languishing, and have many representations of perils and shadows, which make their minds the less clear: and this is one reason also of that effect which the Scripture speaketh of, "That the king's heart is inscrutable;" for multitude of jealousies, and lack of some predominant desire, that should marshal and put in order all the rest, maketh any man's heart hard to find or sound. Hence it comes likewise, that princes many times make themselves desires, and set their hearts upon toys; sometimes upon a building; sometimes upon erect -as ing of an Order; sometimes upon the advancing of a person; sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art, or feat of the handNero for playing on the harp; Domitian for certainty of the hand with the arrow; Commodus for playing at fence; Caracalla for driving chariots; and the like. This seemeth incredible unto those that know not the principle, that the mind of man is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in small things, than by standing at a stay in great. We see also that kings that have been fortunate conquerors in their first years, it being not possible for them to go forward infinitely, but that they must have some check or arrest in their fortunes, turn in their latter years to be superstitious and melancholy; as did Alexander the Great, Dioclesian, and in our memory Charles V., and others; for he that is used to go forward, and findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favor, and is not the thing he was. From "Essays." STUDIES. LORD BACON. STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness, and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business ; for, expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience-for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need of a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. From "Essays." BEAUTY AND UTILITY. WIELAND. SOCRATES exhorts the painter and the sculptor to unite the beautiful and the agreeable with the useful; as he encourages the pantomimic dancer to ennoble the pleasure that his heart may be capable of giving, and to delight the heart at the same time with the senses. According to the same principle, he must desire every laborer who occupies himself about something necessary, to unite the useful as much as possible with the beautiful. But to allow no value for beauty, except where it is useful, is a confusion of ideas. Beauty and grace are undoubtedly united by nature itself with the useful; but they are not, therefore, desirable because they are useful; but because, from the nature of man, he enjoys a pure pleasure in their contemplation—a pleasure precisely similar to that which the contemplation of virtue gives; a necessity as imperative for man as a reasonable being, as food, clothing, and a habitation are for him as an animal. I say for him as an animal, because he has much in common with all or most other animals. But neither these animal wants, nor the capability and desire to satisfy them, make him a man. While he procures his food, builds himself a nest, takes to himself a mate, leads his young, fights with any other who would deprive him of his food, or take possession of his nest; in all this he acts, so far as it is merely corporal, as an animal. Merely through the skill and manner in which, as a man, he performs all these animal-like acts (where not reduced to and retained in an animal state by external compulsory causes), does he distinguish and elevate himself above all other animals, and evince his human nature. For this animal that calls itself man, and this only, has an inborn feeling for beauty and order, has a heart disposed to social communication, to compassion and sympathy, and to an infinite variety of pleasing and beautiful feelings; has a strong tendency to imitate and create, and labors incessantly to improve whatever it has invented or formed. All these peculiarities together separate him essentially from the other animals, render him their lord and master, place earth and ocean in his power, and lead him step by step so high through the nearly illimitable elevation of his capacity for art, that he is at length in a |