SOURCE: "The Preparation: Carlyle," in The Myth of the State, Yale University Press, 1946, pp. 189-223.

In the following essay, Cassirer studies Carlyle's views on hero-worship, noting that Carlyle regarded hero-worship as a means of stabilizing the social and political disorder of his time. Cassirer also reviews the influence of Goethe and Fichte on Carlyle.

Carlyle's Lectures on Hero Worship

When Thomas Carlyle on May 22, 1840, began his lectures On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History he spoke to a large and distinguished audience. A "mob of London society" had assembled to listen to the speaker. The lectures created a sort of sensation; but nobody could have foreseen that this social event was pregnant with great political consequences. Carlyle spoke to Englishmen of the Victorian era. His audience was between two and three hundred in number and "aristocratic in rank and intellect." As Carlyle says in one of...