Chapter 6: Hero-Worship
To the present Editor, not less than to Bobus, a Government of
the Wisest, what Bobus calls an Aristocracy of Talent, seems the
one healing remedy: but he is not so sanguine as Bobus with
respect to the means of realizing it. He thinks that we have at
once missed realising it, and come to need it so pressingly, by departing far from the inner eternal Laws and taking up with the temporary outer semblances of Laws. He thinks that 'enlightened Egoism,' never so luminous, is not the rule by which man's life can be led. That 'Laissez-faire,' 'Supply-and- demand,' 'Cash-payment for the sole nexus,' and so forth, were not, are not, and will never be, a practicable Law of Union for a Society of Men. That Poor and Rich, that Governed and Governing, cannot long live together on any such Law of Union. Alas, he thinks that man has a soul in him, _different_ from the stomach in any sense of this word; that if said soul be asphyxied, and lie quietly forgotten, the man and his affairs are in a bad way. He thinks that said soul will have to be resuscitated from its asphyxia; that if it prove irresuscitable, the man is not long for this world. In brief, that Midas-eared Mammonism, double- barreled Dilettantism, and their thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are not the Law by which God Almighty has appointed this his Universe to go. That, once for all, these are not the Law: and then farther that we shall have to return to what is the Law,--not by smooth flowery paths, it is like, and with 'tremendous cheers' in our throat; but over steep untrodden places, through stormclad chasms, waste oceans, and the bosom of tornadoes; thank Heaven, if not through very Chaos and the Abyss! The resuscitating of a soul that has gone to asphyxia is no momentary or pleasant process, but a long and terrible one.
To the present Editor 'Hero-worship,' as he has elsewhere named
it, means much more than an elected Parliament, or stated
Aristocracy, of the Wisest; for, in his dialect, it is the
summary, ultimate essence, and supreme practical perfection of
all manner of 'worship,' and true worships and noblenesses
whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and, were it once in
perfection, blessed Aristocracy of the Wisest, god-honoured and
man-honoured, he does look for, more and more perfected,--as the
topmost blessed practical apex of a whole world reformed from
sham-worship, informed anew with worship, with truth and
blessedness! He thinks that Hero-worship, done differently in
every different epoch of the world, is the soul of all social
business among men; that the doing of it well, or the doing of
it ill, measures accurately what degree of well-being or of ill-
being there is in the world's affairs. He thinks that we, on the
whole, do our Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world
ever did it before: that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a
Literary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser
and falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a Prophet
of God. It is this Editor's clear opinion, accordingly, that we
must learn to do our Hero-worship better; that to do it better
and better, means the awakening of the Nation's soul from its
asphyxia, and the return of blessed life to us,--Heaven's blessed
life, not Mammon's galvanic accursed one. To resuscitate the
Asphyxied, apparently now moribund, and in the last agony if not
resuscitated: such and no other seems the consummation.
'Hero-worship,' if you will,--yes, friends; but, first of all, by being ourselves of heroic mind. A whole world of Heroes; a world not of Flunkeys, where no Hero-King _can_ reign: that is what we aim at! We, for our share, will put away all Flunkeyism, Baseness, Unveracity from us; we shall then hope to have Noblenesses and Veracities set over us; never till then. Let Bobus and Company sneer, "That is your Reform!" Yes, Bobus, that is our Reform; and except in that, and what will follow out of that, we have no hope at all. Reform, like Charity, O Bobus, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work; kindling ever new light, by incalculable contagion, spreading in geometric ratio, far and wide,--doing good only, wheresoever it spreads, and not evil.