On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle
page 66 of 251 (26%)
page 66 of 251 (26%)
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Duty than that same. All that is _right_ includes itself in this of
co-operating with the real Tendency of the World: you succeed by this (the World's Tendency will succeed), you are good, and in the right course there. _Homoiousion_, _Homoousion_, vain logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out, and go whither and how it likes: this is the _thing_ it all struggles to mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete Sons of Adam do lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam devoured all these vain jangling Sects; and I think had right to do so. It was a Reality, direct from the great Heart of Nature once more. Arab idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go up in flame,--mere dead _fuel_, in various senses, for this which was _fire_. It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they name _Koran_, or _Reading_, "Thing to be read." This is the Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, Is not that a miracle? The Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence which few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted every where as the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to be gone upon in speculation and life; the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to be read. Their Judges decide by it; all Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light of their life. They have mosques where it is all read daily; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each day. There, for twelve hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men. We hear of |
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