Thomas Carlyle from “Labour [Know Thy Self]”

Here we get a great view into Carlyle’s views on what is the purpose of labor. Carlyle writes “blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose, he has found it and he will follow it” (482). It is quite clear that Carlyle believes that people should always strive to be working on some goal. There is an old saying that old people die soon after they retire because they have nothing else to truly live for. For Carlyle this is particularly true. He clearly believes that the truest form of blessedness is to find one’s life calling and to go forth and work on it because “idleness alone is there perpetual despair” (481). If it was not for Carlyle’s harsh words about labor conditions it would almost be easy to assume that Carlyle was supportive of the work environment that factories provided as this would give people work and therefore a life purpose and not have these people live in idleness. This idea of finding work goes along with the idea of industrialization in which h everything was in motion. At this time railroads started to really take off, if I am not mistaken there would be the famous Manchester to Liverpool connection around this time period, as well as several other countries started to industrialize. Everything was in motion and everyone was expected to have a job. No longer was it truly acceptable to just live out your days lazily on a farm. Now everyone moved to the city to find their calling for a job. It is this environment that produced the need for a lack of idleness. It is also this time period that the go west ideal was hitting America and the 49ers were taking off. No longer were people satisfied with their old ways and Carlyle hits upon this issue with the belief that people should go look for their life calling and not to be satisfied with just what they are doing at the time.