Latter-Day Pamphlets

by Thomas Carlyle

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Essays, Ebooks

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1850

About the author

Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian, critic, and sociological writer. was born in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, eldest child of James Carlyle, stonemason, and Margaret (Aitken) Carlyle. The father was stern, irascible, a puritan of the puritans, but withal a man of rigid probity and strength of character. The mother, too, was of the Scottish earth, and Thomas' education was begun at home by both the parents. From the age of five to nine he was at the village school; from nine to fourteen at Annan Grammar School. where he showed proficiency in mathematics and was well grounded in French and Latin. In November 1809 he walked to Edinburgh, and attended courses at the University till 1814, with the ultimate aim of becoming a minister. He left without a degree, became a mathematical tutor at Annan Academy in 1814, and three years later abandoned all thoughts of entering the Kirk, having reached a theological position incompatible with its teachings. He had begun to learn German in Edinburgh, and had done much independent reading outside the regular curriculum. Late in 1816 he moved to a school in Kirkcaldy, where he became the intimate associate of Edward Irving, an old boy of Annan School, and now also a schoolmaster. This contact was Carlyle's first experience of true intellectual companionship, and the two men became lifelong friends. He remained there two years, was attracted by Margaret Gordon, a lady of good family (whose friends vetoed an engagement), and in October 1818 gave up schoolmastering and went to Edinburgh, where he took mathematical pupils and made some show of reading law.

During this period in the Scottish capital he began to suffer agonies from a gastric complaint which continued to torment him all his life, and may well have played a large part in shaping the rugged, rude fabric of his philosophy. In literature he had at first little success, a series of articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia bringing in little money and no special credit. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Irving in Glasgow and made long stays at his father's new farm, Mainhill; and in June 1821, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, he experienced a striking spiritual rebirth which is related in Sartor Resartus. Put briefly and prosaically, it consisted in a sudden clearing away of doubts as to the beneficent organization of the universe; a semi-mystical conviction that he was free to think and work, and that honest effort and striving would not be thwarted by what he called the "Everlasting No."

For about a year, from the spring of 1823, Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld. Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller, which was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-24 and issued as a separate volume in 1825. A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.

In 1821 Irving had gone to London, and in June 1821 Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris. March 1825 saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.

Before leaving for London Irving had introduced Carlyle to Jane Baillie Welsh daughter of the surgeon, John Welsh, and descended from John Knox. She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Among her numerous suitors, the rough, uncouth

Reviews

[Thomas Ray · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. I, The Present Time (Feb. 1, 1850)

Writing in 1850, at a time when monarchs throughout Europe had recently been deposed as worthless parasites; the Irish potato famine left millions starving while Irish food was shipped to England; London was full of poor people, dying from starvation and overwork; wages were below subsistence level; the air and water were being fouled. Carlyle’s solution in Pamphlet I is to enslave the unfortunates who had been incarcerated in “workhouses:” he would force them to hard labor, and flog or kill them if they didn’t work. In Carlyle’s opinion, the “captains of industry” were the people who should be in charge of society. Carlyle blames the poor for their poverty, and would deny the vote to all but the well-off. Carlyle would enshrine the very “consecration of cupidity” he purports to decry.

Unfortunately, “captains of industry” are now indeed in charge of society, these 164 years later. They are increasingly the worthless parasites their monarchial predecessors were. They still live for greed, eagerly enslaving workers, destroying the environment, corrupting the political process.

[Jared Tobin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the best Carlyle that I've yet read, handily beating out Chartism in particular amongst the longer works.

The first 'pamphlet', The Present Time, is probably the most enjoyable of the bunch. It is full of prescient insight and literary flourish (Stump-Orator stands out in my memory as well). But I enjoyed the entire text, throughout which Carlyle rails against the central problem of 'these latter days' in Victorian England: what is democracy, and why in the world should one want it?

Going on two centuries after its initial publication, much of Carlyle's thought around the failings of democracy and the principles of good governance now seems obviously correct. And even the parts that seem obviously false reflect a worldview that one would be remiss to ignore. Highly recommended.

[Edward]

From the first of Carlyle’s brilliant Latter-Day Pamphlets:

What is Democracy; this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies, which is everywhere the portion of our Europe in these latter days? There lies the question for us. Whence comes it, this universal big black Democracy; whither tends it; what is the meaning of it? A meaning it must have, or it would not be here. If we can find the right meaning of it, we may, wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling, still hope to live in the midst of it; if we cannot find the right meaning, if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not be possible!

The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned, in the name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear to itself, and lay deeply to heart with an eye to strenuous valiant practice and effort, what the meaning of this universal revolt of the European populations, which calls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, may be.

Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come.

Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty — O Heaven! one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody, from the universal foolish human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same.

Moldbug wrote:

To join the Froude Society - actually, to become a deacon of the Froude Society - all you need to do is read three works of High Victorian political and historical criticism. I recommend this order: The Bow of Ulysses, by James Anthony Froude; Popular Government, by Henry Sumner Maine; and Latter-Day Pamphlets, by Thomas Carlyle. These books will change your life, or at least your mind.

There are more books, more authors, where these came from. Without blinking we could add Lecky, Stephen and Austin to this pantheon, for instance; nor are Ruskin, Arnold, and Kingsley to be sneered at. And the remaining oeuvre of Froude, Maine and Carlyle is no less vast. And this is not a random sample of Victorian thought, but the cream of a coherent tradition. And anyone can read it. It's free - thanks to Google. Now and for the foreseeable future, Froude is more accessible than Stephen King.

The task of the Froude Society is to restore High Victorian thought in the 21st century. And when I say restore, I mean restore to life - not study. The Society traffics not in critical formaldehyde.

[Vladivostok · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If you could not get it spoken, if you could still constrain it into silence, so much the richer are you. Better keep your idea while you can: let it still circulate in your blood, and there fructify; inarticulately inciting you to good activities; giving to your whole spiritual life a ruddier health. When the time does come for speaking it, you will speak it all the more concisely, the more expressively, appropriately; and if such a time should never come, have you not already acted it, and uttered it as no words can? Think of this, my young friend; for there is nothing truer, nothing more forgotten in these shabby gold-laced days. Incontinence is half of all the sins of man. And among the many kinds of that base vice, I know none baser, or at present half so fell and fatal, as that same Incontinence of Tongue. 'Public speaking,' 'parliamentary eloquence:' it is a Moloch, before whom young souls are made to pass through the fire. They enter, weeping or rejoicing, fond parents consecrating them to the red-hot Idol, as to the Highest God: and they come out spiritually dead. Dead enough; to live thenceforth a galvanic life of mere Stump-Oratory; screeching and gibbering, words without wisdom, without veracity, without conviction more than skin-deep. A divine gift, that? It is a thing admired by the vulgar, and rewarded with seats in the Cabinet and other preciosities; but to the wise, it is a thing not admirable, not adorable; unmelodious rather, and ghastly and bodeful, as the speech of sheeted spectres in the streets at midnight!"

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a prostigiously entertaining work of pamphlets by Thomas Carlyle, famous as the historian of the great man theory of history. Although this might make you expect something turgid or heady, this is exactly like Shakespeare would write if he wrote pamphlets. There are enough rhetorical figures and neologisms to make your head spin, and when Carlyle gets worked up boy can he rhapsodize.

These the points of his eight pamphlets:
1. Democracy is a bad idea.
2. Don't try to reform murders: execute them because they deserve it.
3. The only way to get the empire in order is to have someone at the top pick wise men as magistrates.
4. The anarchy of the world can only be solved by appointing wise men.
5. The parliamentary system incentivizes sophistry, not capability.
6. The parliamentary system does not work because too many chefs spoil the stew, especially with a newspaper telling them what to do.
7. Let’s not become worshippers of mammon and mediocrity, but worship heroes and the great men.
8. Jesuitism is the source of all modern mediocrity and evil.

He is full of lots of insights and has a ball tearing democracy to pieces, because as he puts it some men must tell the others what to do. And it would be best if those men were wise men. Obviously, our current elites are not those wise men, but still I see no reason to think that at any time in history the few will not rule over the many. The questions is the process of selection.

Carlyle's best insighs come when he observes how democracies work. Democracy selects, inevitably for eloquence, not wisdom:
"Can it be doubtful that this is still the rule of human education; that the human creature needs first of all to be educated not that he may speak, but that he may have something weighty and valuable to say! If speech is the bank-note of an inward capital of culture, of insight and noble human worth, then speech is precious, and the art of speech shall be honored. But if there is no inward capital; if speech represent no real culture of the mind, but an imaginary culture; no bullion, but the fatal and now almost hopeless deficit of such? Alas, alas, said bank-note is then a forged one; passing freely current in the market; but bringing damages to the receiver, to the payer, and to all the world."

Or this: "In short: "Truly, it is little known at present, and ought forthwith to become better known, what ruin to all nobleness and fruitfulness and blessedness in the genius of a poor mortal you generally bring about, by ordering him to speak, to do all things with a view to their being seen!" Social media does this all the time.

This is one of the most insightful lines, which applies to what we might call consent-of-the-governed libertarianism:
"To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; it imperatively requires to be amended; and the remedy is, Abolish it, let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the "Sacrament of Marriage" downwards, human beings used to be manifoldly related, one to another, and each to all; and there was no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances and difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all that, by favor of Heaven: "the voluntary principle" has come up, which will itself do the business for us; and now let a new Sacrament, that of Divorce, which we call emancipation, and spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of the day!—Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation which has anywhere grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition of nomadic:—in other words, loosen by assiduous wedges in every joint, the whole fabric of social existence, stone from stone: till at last, all now being loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of revolutionary rage; and, lying as mere mountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c., over it, and to rejoice in the new remarkable era of human progress we have arrived at."

Now Carlyle does have one gap in his argument, one which I need to hear a good argument about: what about when your elites are wrong and your governors corrupt? Carlyle observes that parliaments almost never work because the men cannot lead the country in a concerted fashion, and when you add the free press to the mix, basically the members of parliament do what the press tells them to do and merely repeat its opinions in their speeches. This means that nobody gets anything done, and Carlyle hates not getting anything done.

But still, it leaves questions unanswered. This is not because Carlyle disagrees with the principle of subsidiarity: at one point in the sixth pamphlet he says that parliaments are a legitimate representative government when they serve as advisors to the king: however, sometimes people are wrong and no matter how many people vote for it, Carlyle says, it's still wrong and doesn't change the law: “My friend, do you think, had the united Posterity of Adam voted, and since the Creation done nothing but vote, that three and three were seven—would this have altered the laws of Arithmetic?”

Interestingly, Carlyle says that voting could be good in performing the function of letting the king know his subject's opinions, especially compared to riots. He warns that the common people often have very good instincts, but if asked to give an explanation for their instinct will give a stupid answer. That definitely resonates with me.

Two other issues that Carlyle discusses are capital punishment and great men.

Carlyle's essay on capital punishment is one of the most politically incorrect things I have ever read. But still quite fun. For instance, this is a great put down of liberalism:
"O Heavens, from the Christianity of Oliver Cromwell, wrestling in grim fight with Satan and his incarnate Blackguardisms, Hypocrisies, Injustices, and legion of human and infernal angels, to that of eloquent Mr. Hesperus Fiddlestring denouncing capital punishments, and inculcating the benevolence on platforms, what a road have we travelled!"

Carlyle even says capital punishment is great for society:
"Alas, alas, to see once the 'prince of scoundrels,' the Supreme Scoundrel, him whom of all men the gods liked worst, solemnly laid hold of, and hung upon the gallows in sight of the people; what a lesson to all the people! Sermons might be preached; the Son of Thunder and the Mouth of Gold might turn their periods now with some hope; for here, in the most impressive way, is a divine sermon acted. Didactic as no spoken sermon could be. Didactic, devotional too;—in awed solemnity, a recognition that Eternal Justice rules the world; that at the call of this, human pity shall fall silent, and man be stern as his Master and Mandatory is!"

What becomes clear in the last two pamphlets is that the reason Carlyle is Mr. Law-and-Order is because what he loves is greatness and he hates the mediocrity that a society of buyers and sellers was creating. It was really weird, because right now this dovetails neatly with what people are saying was Nietzsche's great critique of the modern world: it incentivized bugmen and got rid of the great men. From this comes Carlyle's hatred of liberal sentiment and his love of order, rule, and concerted action. As he puts it, “England once was a Hierarchy.”

I really cannot get behind Carlyle's adoration of the great man. I do think that we need to have a greater value of it than we do now (whether in Christian or secular contexts), but Carlyle basically worships it.

Carlyle, for some reason that his final pamphlet did not really make clear to me, attributed the rise of mediocrity and money-grubbing to the Jesuits, perhaps because it infiltrated the English crown in the Restoration. But still, I am not sure about the connection between the two. He says that the true religion of our day is money and eloquence and so this destroys the fine arts: he wishes for the blood and screams of Homer and the Hebrew Bible.

So in short, this was a thoughtful read, and definitely applicable. I wish that it had somehow grappled with the questions of evil in governments and how to restrain errant governments (though maybe there is an answer out there), but still lots of things got destroyed. Well worth one's time.

[Random User · Rating 3 out of 5]

This marks my first encounter with Carlyle's work, which did not fail to impress. The utter veracity and passion inscribed with indelible ink leave a mark throughout one's entire system. His writing reminds us of what is often forgotten in today's English literature—that of writing with blood. The rhythm circumscribed on every page makes the subject ever more engaging to the purview of our eyes, leaving one aghast that a soothsayer wrote 175 years ago.

Carlyle begins by identifying the mimetic devices ubiquitous in his time: universal democracy. He professes against this contagion without cure that many of his contemporary peers (Balzac, Nietzsche, Hegel, Dostoevsky) saw as akin to a beast with an insatiable appetite.

Indeed, he carries a chip on his shoulder regarding how universal democracy embraces increasing abstraction that deviates from the "absolute truth" upon which a state must be founded, abandoned instead for a nebulous moral right. He succinctly points out how proponents lack clarity about what this means. As any man of concentration, he draws clear lines where his opponents muddle: if the noblest do not lead, democracy means nothing. In his apt euphemism, he contrasts this to farmers expecting to eat without ploughing, which leads to assertions that still ring true today!

If the noblest do not lead, what occurs? It creates men with neither heroism nor understanding of leadership taking charge of our politics. This fosters a system of captain-less men at the helm. Through this, it paves the way for what he calls "the dismal science" (tantamount to Malthusianism and the invisible hand), whereby increasing entropy creates havoc, as evidenced by the Irish famine, where deregulation forced the subservient to fend for themselves. But note: this does not equate to him purporting anything close to equality!

Indeed, through Britain's penal system, he observes benevolence never dispensing with evil and the arcane prisons where retired officers lack the fibre to fulfil their duty of whipping, and philanthropists with warped notions guiding good without dispelling evil, producing an inversion of man's innate nature. This inversion merely reinterprets Christianity's functions for a modern age, where turning the other cheek becomes the end-all, but what would the great heroes of aeons past make of this crude misinterpretation? Carlyle envisions this as the scarcity of hierarchical functions in society; through egalitarianism, all men are treated as stemming from the same seed of potentiality. I find no falsehood in his assessment.

Here lies the trajectory to the root: government, in which Carlyle sees no positives from his era's state of affairs. His marvellous linguistic skill remains cemented in our vocabulary through the coining of "Red Tape," and I stand in utter disbelief at how prose from yesteryear still affirms truths today. His observation of the administration drowning in regulation, yet seeing no need for action, is poignant. Much of the British system during that era stemmed from the need for separation: domestic affairs were curated by lawmakers while colonial matters pertained to a different class. This decentralisation could only lead Britain to mismanage issues in its colonies, culminating in revolt from the Americas. What does this separation amalgamate to? Inaction.

As mentioned, this inaction by the sovereign merely subcontracts to those captain-less men previously mentioned. Their concern solely for capital sees order as a secondary device, leading to great famine, disintegrating social structures, and resentment boiling inside the stomachs of those wronged by mismanagement. Carlyle's commentary calls upon the need for the ungovernable to step forth—those who need not discuss but lead! He implores the monarch to select these men to stand above and manage how I yearn for his proposals to be taken more seriously!

Carlyle understood his words had little impact on governmental conduct; despite democracy's euphemisms, he saw through these delusions. He recognised how the pretence that "the people govern" leads merely to chattering. This leads to devolution, as the more people believe these hollow lies, the further they diverge from reality and world happenings, creating perverse incentive structures where men are chosen not by competence but by agreement that government functions, truth illuminated from the past through Cummings' criticisms from his time in power.

This aberration of the government's key pillars is squandered through the structures dominating his time. Despite people being closer than ever, competence grows further away! Whitehall trains merely for chatter, distant from the dire issues of his time, creating a feedback loop of ineffectuality. Through this inversion of truth, justice, and duty, he necessitates reevaluation of Parliament's truths, arguing that Parliament's sole task must be to elevate the most efficient men above itself and actualise its plans—something he saw only in the Rump Parliament and the French Revolutionary Parliament. This reverence for the noble in character and forthright in nature is severely lacking due to the absence of monuments to great men who leave indelible marks on history's pages. This reverence for systems has made the lawyer the only figure worthy of worship in modernity.

This returns him to where he began: the new god of universal democracy. He observes how, once a noble culture, Jesuitism became corrupted by institutions using its words to defend their right to govern. He contrasts this with Britain's state of affairs and his proclamation of "pig philosophy" (utilitarianism), breeding weak men for slavish consumption. This new god of democracy and production yields nothing noble—he compares the corrupt sausage maker using a horse instead of the pig as more noble than the pope, merely for earning more. Moreover, he views the advancement of railways and innovation not as worthy of worship, as they render man merely part of a herd: fragmented and alienated, moving forward without purpose.

Carlyle is exceptionally complex and utterly frank. Through his long-winded prose and wordplay, I must constantly revisit previous chapters to understand his statements better. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed his writing style and shall certainly train myself to emulate it. Yet much of what he says could be more succinct while retaining the same impact. Moreover, his ideas become so intertwined that I cannot remember everything he says.

[Ancien Parisian]

Every part says the same thing, and a hopeless one at that, basically amounting to "why can't people be earnest". Carlylean cosmology at its explicit: currents of the world, the truth, the spirit that runs through everything — tapped into by earnest searching, soul-rending, soul-rendering action. Go within and under the clothes, the mantle of the earth; then come the eruptions. The great man, the exemplar of his time! The Truth! The functions and relations of our society have become symbolic and there are no leaders who would do real, material work. Too many clothes, whilst the core rots. We need to touch grass.

It's good writing and a useful indicator of the mid nineteenth century, but I think that he should have become a minister instead, then this urging could be taken more seriously. Democracy is ineffective, but although he writes page-long complaints repeating the ship-in-a-disaster-with-no-one-to-steer-it that he's so fond of, he doesn't offer anything to replace it. Be real, be Christian. One clear soul to another etc. One clear leader to us all. But in terms of policy, what does this mean? He really is Trollope's "Pessimist Anticant", and when I go within myself to one clear response undeterred by societal spectacle — I just want to give him a hug. Which was Nietzsche's response too, only he said it by calling all of Carlyle's work "dyspeptic ramblings" and "pessimism as lunch revisited".

[Ben Eaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

"They got Barabbas:—have you well considered what a fund of purblind obduracy, of opaque flunkyism grown truculent and transcendent; what an eye for the phylacteries, and want of eye for the eternal noblenesses; sordid loyalty to the prosperous Semblances, and high-treason against the Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens in these natures?" - Carlyle's crescendo after building up the story of Barabbas as an example of the futility of the democracy.

Marvellous, gratuitous, unfiltered Carlyleism is what the Latter Day Pamphlets provide to the reader willing to ignore their negative reputation. In the book, Carlyle expresses his absolute disgust at the state of 19th Century society in eight essays (or perhaps "sermons" would be more accurate) with all the passion and humour he is renowned for. Despite the variety of subjects, he manages to bring all of them back to his base principles of the necessity of objective, natural, Gods-own Truth and strong leadership capable of thinking in terms of this Truth.

Worth reading if you like Carlyle, or are at least curious enough to sit yourself virtually through the power of the written word before the ranting, gesticulating, fiery-eyed Scotchman as he preaches his judgement on society. Just remember he was more or less "cancelled" for this by the standards of 1850 - do not expect him to adhere to modern sensibilities!

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of a handful of grand thoughts, some of them prophetic, some provocative, some wrong, expressed verbosely in the most beautiful polemic prose the English-speaking world has likely ever produced. I highly recommend reading it for that alone, but for those short on time the main points of this collection of essays are quickly summarized: Doing is better than talking; Democracy manages only to bring the most eloquent people into power, not the most fit for office; the most important trait for a politician is intelligence, which should be cultivated in society; public money should be reserved for those who deserve it, not criminals, who should be executed instead of being housed; capitalism leads to societal and moral decline; Jesuits are bad; liberalism is bad; history is made by great men.

[Duncan Swann · Rating 5 out of 5]

So friggin' good. No one writes like this anymore - no one! Read if you want a fresh perspective on history and want to wrangle with dangerous ideas.

[Cordelia Patterson]

literally the most boring thing ive ever read

[Simon Stegall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bracing stuff.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carlyle seemed to be a man who appreciated quiet. One of my basic takeaways was he really wanted people to shut up.

[Not your bruh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prophet

[Didier "Dirac Ghost" Gaulin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest shit-post of all times. The Stump-Orator chapter alone is worth the price of admission.

[anon anonimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carlyle is massively overrated. He is best viewed as a shitposter, not a polemicist. He makes a fleetingly small number of arguments over the course of the pamphlets, and all of them are drawn by analogy. From a political and societal analysis perspective, I believe he fails to be a Schmitt/true autíst. That said, he does succeed as a shitposter – he is very funny to read, and is guaranteed to bring a few chuckles out from you in each pamphlet. Worth reading, but if you want true, incisive analytical content, it is best found elsewhere.

[Abu Dhabi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of verbiage, relatively low on content. Some insights were OK. Hard to read, overall.