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Past and Present

Not who you're looking for? Others named Past and Present: 1972 film by Manoel de Oliveira · series of three paintings by Augustus Egg in 1858

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Overview

Past and Present is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. He was inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close of the 12th century. This account of a medieval monastery had taken Carlyle's fancy, and he drew upon it in order to contrast the monks' reverence for work and heroism with the sham leadership of his own day. Composition Carlyle wrote on 27 October 1841 that he had thought of editing a journal, asking James Garth Marshall,Is it not now that we are to sing and act the great new Epic, not "Arms and the Man," but "Tools and the Man";—to preach and prophesy in all ways that Labor is honorable, that Labor alone is honorable; that Idleness shall and must move out of its way, or be frightfully thrown into the howling dog-kennel?Having borrowed and read George Calvert Holland's The Millocrat and Marshall's address to the Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association denigrating the "corn-law of aristocracy" while praising industry and industrialists, Carlyle became convinced that "we must have industrial barons, of a quite new suitable sort; workers loyally related to their taskmasters,—related in God (as we may well say); not related in Mammon alone! This will be the real aristocracy, in place of the sham one". The idea of a journal was soon discarded as he turned to writing Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. Carlyle grew increasingly concerned with the state of England, as he observed widespread hunger and riots in the spring and summer of 1842. In August he wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson expressing how it distracted him from the writing of Cromwell:One of my grand difficulties I suspect to be that I cannot write two Books at once; cannot be in the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth at one and the same moment . . .

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.”
— The life of Friedrich Schiller: Comprehending an examination of his works (1825).
“I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.”
— Letter to Goethe, (1828).
“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”
— Article on Biography.
“Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real.”
— Bk. III, ch. 8.
“O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!”
— Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
“It is really, as Coleridge I think said of something else, like reading a story by flashes of lightning!”
— Francis Jeffrey, letter to Carlyle (30 May 1837) on The French Revolution. This is often repeated as stating that Carlyle's style is “like reading history by flashes of lightning”.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

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Not who you're looking for? Others named Past and Present: 1972 film by Manoel de Oliveira · series of three paintings by Augustus Egg in 1858

Overview

Past and Present is a book by the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle. It was published in April 1843 in England and the following month in the United States. It combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society. Carlyle wrote it in seven weeks as a respite from the harassing labor of writing Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. He was inspired by the recently published Chronicles of the Abbey of Saint Edmund's Bury, which had been written by Jocelin of Brakelond at the close of the 12th century. This account of a medieval monastery had taken Carlyle's fancy, and he drew upon it in order to contrast the monks' reverence for work and heroism with the sham leadership of his own day. Composition Carlyle wrote on 27 October 1841 that he had thought of editing a journal, asking James Garth Marshall,Is it not now that we are to sing and act the great new Epic, not "Arms and the Man," but "Tools and the Man";—to preach and prophesy in all ways that Labor is honorable, that Labor alone is honorable; that Idleness shall and must move out of its way, or be frightfully thrown into the howling dog-kennel?Having borrowed and read George Calvert Holland's The Millocrat and Marshall's address to the Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association denigrating the "corn-law of aristocracy" while praising industry and industrialists, Carlyle became convinced that "we must have industrial barons, of a quite new suitable sort; workers loyally related to their taskmasters,—related in God (as we may well say); not related in Mammon alone! This will be the real aristocracy, in place of the sham one". The idea of a journal was soon discarded as he turned to writing Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. Carlyle grew increasingly concerned with the state of England, as he observed widespread hunger and riots in the spring and summer of 1842. In August he wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson expressing how it distracted him from the writing of Cromwell:One of my grand difficulties I suspect to be that I cannot write two Books at once; cannot be in the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth at one and the same moment . . .

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.”
— The life of Friedrich Schiller: Comprehending an examination of his works (1825).
“I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.”
— Letter to Goethe, (1828).
“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.”
— Article on Biography.
“Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real.”
— Bk. III, ch. 8.
“O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!”
— Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
“It is really, as Coleridge I think said of something else, like reading a story by flashes of lightning!”
— Francis Jeffrey, letter to Carlyle (30 May 1837) on The French Revolution. This is often repeated as stating that Carlyle's style is “like reading history by flashes of lightning”.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.