e as much as at
Gibeon and Gilboa. I do not mean that they literally said these
particular things: they are what I should have said had I been bribed to
defend their position. But they said things to the same effect: that
what manages finally to happen, happens for a higher purpose. Carlyle
said the French Revolution was a thing settled in the eternal councils
to be; and therefore (and not because it was right) attacking it was
"fighting against God." And Kingsley even carried the principle so far
as to tell a lady she should remain in the Church of England mainly
because God had put her there. But in spite of its superficial
spirituality and encouragement, it is not hard to see how such a
doctrine could be abused. It practically comes to saying that God is on
the side of the big battalions--or at least, of the victorious ones.
Thus a creed which set out to create conquerors would only corrupt
soldiers; corrupt them with a craven and unsoldierly worship of success:
and that which began as the philosophy of courage ends as the philosophy
of cowardice. If, indeed, Carlyle were right in saying that right is
only "rightly articulated" might, men would never articulate or move in
any way. For no act can have might before it is done: if there is no
right, it cannot rationally be done at all. This element, like the
Anti-Utilitarian element, is to be kept in mind in connection with after
developments: for in this Carlyle is the first cry of Imperialism, as
(in the other case) of Socialism: and the two babes unborn who stir at
the trumpet are Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Kipling also
carries on from Carlyle the concentration on the purely Hebraic parts of
the Bible. The fallacy of this whole philosophy is that if God is indeed
present at a modern battle, He may be present not as on Gilboa but
Golgotha.

Carlyle's direct historical worship of strength and the rest of it was
fortunately not very fruitful; and perhaps lingered only in Froude the
historian. Even he is more an interruption than a continuity. Froude
develops rather the harsher and more impatient moral counsels of his
master than like Ruskin the more romantic and sympathetic. He carries on
the tradition of Hero Worship: but carries far beyond Carlyle the
practice of worshipping people who cannot rationally be called heroes.
In this matter that eccentric eye of the seer certainly helped Carlyle:
in Cromwell and Frederick the Great there was at least somethi