If historically there is, as Thomas Carlyle says, an evolutionary process where the false repeatedly perishes, one must conclude that society is bound to erect and overthrow lies. Otherwise we must ask: why does something equally false always overlap with the overthrown falsehood? Or even: how many more millennia will it take for mankind to get rid of this evil cycle? On a collective level, any outline of a solution seems impossible.
Tag: history
Thomas Carlyle on Mohammed
Thomas Carlyle’s essay on Mohammed is remarkable. First, for the superior prose: how impressive to follow him handling the English language! It is a vivid prose, full of expressive images, intelligent and syntactically varied. Then, for Carlyle’s ability to see what others cannot see, for his courage to confront the current, rejecting blind logic and seeking to understand what lies behind and beyond the lines of Mohammed. Very beautiful, very beautiful… it is a pleasant essay to read. In any case, I think I still prefer to sit at Voltaire’s table.
The Passport to Glory
It is possible to conjecture a formula on how to achieve glory after death. I sum it up in two topics:
I — The more belligerent, aggressive, impetuous and agitated the person is in life, the better will be remembered by the inhabitants of his country, and consequently the greater the glory will be to him.
II — The more judicious, serene, conciliatory, and peaceful the person in life, the greater the chance that his memory will be quickly forgotten, and consequently the lower the glory will be to him.
Observations:
Acts of prudence almost never mark history. Rather, mark the acts of bravery or false bravery.
As for artists and intellectuals, serious study does not usually bear fruit, when it is infinitely easier to stick the name in the pages of history by committing a great transgression rather than the difficult labor of producing works of universal value.
Finally, I dare to develop a roadmap that we believe is the simplest way to achieve glory:
1st — Join any political party of any ideology.
2nd — Achieve the leadership of this party, submitting to all that is necessary for this (history hardly remembers the means by which a leadership position is attained).
3rd — Militate, militate in all environments, shed hatred for the tongue and fingers in order to get as many partisans as possible (buying them also works).
4th — Produce any sort of social rebellion, preferably involving armed conflict and, if possible, deaths (the more deaths, the better; the longer the rebellion sustains itself, also the better).
5th — Disseminate, in the meantime or shortly before, a pamphlet (and better camouflaged in artistic work) containing any sort of political and social ideas.
These steps, I believe, are more than enough to consecrate a memory forever, regardless of its effects, premises, or the character of whom will execute them.
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Endless Injustices
In the study of history, more impressive than the conquests, wars, the development of civilizations and all the rest, is the almost unbelievable succession of injustices committed against great men. Minority are those who, honored, valorous, have earned for themselves a memory worthy of their own work. Worse than the persecutions that some have suffered so much in life, worse than contempt, public spurcation, poverty, life that presented to them as a sequence of frustrations, dislikes, one after the other, piling and swelling like they were trials, worse than all this is, after death, fall into oblivion, if not defamed, when they can no longer respond or, still : to prove how unworthy the human race is to them.
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