Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

!70 WOTTON REINFREDcozeners have beguiled us of our birthright and soldus into bondage, and we are no longer servants ofgoodness, but slaves of self. My friends !'continuedthe old man, with a singular half-natural, half-preachingtone, * I say to you this is false and poisonousdoctrine, and the heart of every good man feels thatit is false, and well for him if he pluck it out andcast it away for ever ! If not, farewell to all religion,all true virtue, all true feeling of the beautiful andgood, all dignity of life, all grandeur beyond itNature, indeed, is kind, and from under the basestphilosophy some gleams of natural goodness willbreak forth; nay, thank heaven, righteousness andmercy are everlasting inmates of man's spirit, overcloudthem as we may ; but all that any creed can doto banish them, this does.''By day and night ! ' cried Williams.*This iswondrous strange. Must a man become viciousbecause he wishes to be hapj)y ? Because he wishesto be happy ? no ; but because he wishes nothingmore, yes, doubtless. What is virtue ? tell me. Atask to be performed for hire ? This is not virtue,but profit and loss. If ye do these things that goodmay come, what reward have ye ? Do not even thePharisees the same ? ''But is not Heaven promised to the Christian asa recompense ? Of Heaven and the Christian wemight have much to say, but this isnot the time forit. One thing I am sure of : no Christian man was