{"id":56507,"date":"2016-05-14T15:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T20:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=56507"},"modified":"2021-06-02T21:49:18","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:49:18","slug":"manvotional-a-mans-religion-is-the-chief-fact-about-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/character\/manhood\/manvotional-a-mans-religion-is-the-chief-fact-about-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Manvotional: A Man’s Religion Is the Chief Fact About Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vintage<\/a><\/p>\n

From On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in Society<\/em>, 1840<\/strong>
\nBy Thomas <\/strong>Carlyle<\/b><\/p>\n

It is well said, in <\/span>every sense, that a man’s religion is the <\/span>chief fact with regard to him. A man’s, or a nation of men’s.<\/p>\n

By religion I do not mean here the <\/span>church-creed which he professes, the <\/span>articles of faith which he will sign and, in <\/span>words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in <\/span>many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and <\/span>assertion; which is often only a profession and <\/span>assertion from the <\/span>outworks of the <\/span>man, from the <\/span>mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that.<\/p>\n

But the <\/span>thing a man does practically believe (and <\/span>this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the <\/span>thing a man does practically lay to heart, and <\/span>know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and <\/span>his duty and <\/span>destiny there, that is in <\/span>all cases the <\/span>primary thing for him, and <\/span>creatively determines all the <\/span>rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere skepticism and no<\/em><\/span>-religion<\/em>: the <\/span>manner it is in <\/span>which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the <\/span>Unseen World or No-World; and <\/span>I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the <\/span>man is, what the <\/span>kind of things he will do is.<\/p>\n

Of a man or of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they had? Was it Heathenism,\u2014plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of this Mystery of Life, and <\/span>for chief recognized element therein Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in <\/span>an Invisible, not as real only, but as the <\/span>only reality; Time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on <\/span>Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Skepticism, uncertainty and <\/span>inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad one;\u2014doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and <\/span>flat denial?<\/p>\n

Answering of this question is giving us the <\/span>soul of the history <\/span>of the <\/span>man or nation. The <\/span>thoughts they had were the <\/span>parents of the <\/span>actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the <\/span>unseen and <\/span>spiritual in <\/span>them that determined the <\/span>outward and <\/span>actual;\u2014their religion, as I say, was the <\/span>great fact about them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in Society, 1840 By Thomas Carlyle It is well said, in every sense, that a man’s religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man’s, or a nation of men’s. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56511,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,42272],"tags":[42295],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-56507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-manhood","tag-manvotionals"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2016\/05\/pray3-538x280.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2016\/05\/pray3-320x229.jpg","rpwe-thumbnail":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2016\/05\/pray3-45x45.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56507"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121048,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56507\/revisions\/121048"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56507"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=56507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}