Thomas Carlyle On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science,-the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth; which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues are in luded and screened, his whole raculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? For if, now and then, some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure region, the most have soared over it altogether heed Iess; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite natural and Spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a Ulothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks him self in Clothes. Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look be fore and after: the more surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes.