Carlyle on heroes heroworship Author:Thomas Carlyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE II THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET : ISLAM [Friday, 8th May 1840.] l From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we a... more »dvance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahom- etanism among the Arabs. A great change ; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men ! The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellow-men ; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship: the first or oldest, we 10 may say, has passed away without return; in the history of the world there will not again be any man, never so great, whom his fellow-men will take for a god. Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set of human beings ever really think the man they saw there standing beside them a god, the maker of this world ? Perhaps not: it was usually some man they remembered, or had seen. But neither can this2 any more2 be. The Great Man is not recognised henceforth as a god any more. It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great 20 Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know what he is, or how to account of him and receive him ! The most significant feature in the history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man. l H1 H2 H3 date above title. 2 2 H1 IP H3 this, any more, Ever, to the true instincts of men, there is something godlike in him. Whether they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall take him to be ? that is ever a grand question ; by their way of answering that, we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of these men's spiritual condition. P'or at bottom the Great Man, as he comes from the hand of Nature, is ever the same kind of thing: ...« less