Ig^jvv AS : CaJ|I^J.^^^ 
 
 D 
 
 EVELOPy^ENT 
 
 EWALD FlUGEL 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 ®^li. fquirisijll^a- 
 
 Shelf -'Sl-F^'!^ 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
\ 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
THOMAS GARLYLE'S 
 
 Moral and Religious Development 
 
 1- 
 
 A STUDY: By EWALD FLUGEL. 
 
 From the German, by 
 
 cJESSIGA GILBERT TYLER. 
 
 WITH A PORTRAIT. 
 
 ^13) ft iV' 
 
 New York : 
 
 M. L. HOLBROOK & CO. 
 
 1891. 
 
r^< 
 
 v^^^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 M. L. HOLBROOK, 
 
 1891. 
 
 ^^''3Z2JX 
 
 \ 
 
N 
 
 TO 
 
 MY FATHER, 
 
 WITH 
 
 Love and Gratitude. 
 
" Indisputably enough, what notion each forms 
 of the Universe is the all-regulating fact with 
 regard to him." 
 
 LaTTER-DaY PAMrHLETS, p. 253. 
 
 " Do you ask why misery abounds among us ? 
 I bid you look into the notion we have formed for 
 ourselves of the Universe, and of our duties and 
 destinies there. If it is a true notion, we shall 
 strenuously reduce it to practice, — for who dare 
 and can contradict his faith, whatever it may be, 
 in the Eternal Fact that is around him? and 
 thereby blessings and success will attend us in 
 said Universe, or Eternal Fact we live amidst : 
 of that surely there is no doubt." 
 
 Ebenda, p. 252. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Frontispiece. - Portrait of Thomas Carlyle 
 
 Translator's Preface 11 
 
 Author's Preface 15 
 
 Author's Introduction 17 
 
 CH.\PTER I. 
 
 Cablyle's Belief, 
 
 The Mystery of the World and Life 23 
 
 Wonder and Astonishment 2-t 
 
 Natural Supernaturalism 29 
 
 The Laws of Nature 30 
 
 The Book of Nature 31 
 
 Space and Time 32 
 
 The Infinite Unfathomahle 33 
 
 The Kernel of Carlyle's Religious Belief .... 38 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 The Mechanical Age. 
 
 Inexorable Antagonism to Mechanical Things ... 40 
 
 Machines for Education 41 
 
 Philosophy, Science, Art — all depend on Machinery . . 48 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Cablyle's Relation to Christianity. 
 
 I. —His Position with Reference to the Personality of 
 
 Christ 45 
 
 n.— His Perception of the Meaning of Christianity in the 
 
 World's History 46 
 
 ni. - His View of the Nature of Christianity ... 48 
 
Till CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 His View of the Doctrine of Predestination ... 53 
 
 The Eeligion of Suffering 55 
 
 Goethe's Joyous Contemplation of the World ... 57 
 
 CHAPTER rV. 
 
 Cakltle and the Various Phases of Christianitt : The 
 Chubch and Theological Learning. 
 
 The Bible 65 
 
 The Church 67 
 
 The Metaphysical and Philosophical Treatment of KeUgious 
 
 Questions 71 
 
 Jesuits 73 
 
 Religion takes refuge in the Stomach ! . . . , 74 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 God. 
 
 The " New Religion " 77 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Carlyle's Position with Reference to Science, and especial- 
 ly TO Philosophy. 
 
 The Limits of Philosophy 82 
 
 English and Freuch Philosophy 83 
 
 Locke, Reid, Hume, Hartley, etc 85 
 
 Cabanis 86 
 
 German Philosophy 87 
 
 Kant . , 90 
 
 Fichte 94 
 
 Schelling and Hegel 96 
 
 The Disease of Metaphysics 98 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 CHAPTER MI. 
 
 Carltle's Position with Eeference to Poetry and Aet in 
 
 General. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The Object of Poetry 100 
 
 Milton's Ideal as a Poet 104 
 
 Carlyle's Ideal as a Poet 105^' 
 
 Prophet and Poet 109 
 
 Penetration HI 
 
 Music. Song 113 
 
 Small Interest in the Plastic Arts 118 
 
 Portraiture 120 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. 
 
 Cablylb's Attitude towards History. 
 
 Man, a Divine Creation . . . • . . .122 
 
 Artist and Mechanic 12G 
 
 The True Poetry 129 
 
 Carlyle's Heroism 130 " 
 
 The Lesson's of the World's History . . . .131 
 
 Carlyle and Aristotle 132 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Carlyle's Ethics: "The Gospel of Work.'' 
 
 The Unity of Mind and Morals I35 
 
 Renunciation jgy 
 
 The Ideal of Higher Morality I33 
 
 His Mission jgg 
 
 The Lessons of His Life l_l(j 
 
TKANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 " It is well said, in every sense, that a man's 
 religion is the chief fact with regard to him." 
 
 "By religion," Carlyle says, "I do not mean 
 here the church creed which he professes, the arti- 
 cles of faith which he will sign and, in words or 
 other^\ise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases 
 not this at aU. We see men of all kinds of pro- 
 fessed 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 as- 
 sertion, which is often only a profession and asser- 
 tion from the outworks of the man, from the mere 
 argumentative region of him, if even so deep as 
 that. But the thing a man does practically be- 
 lieve (and this is often enough without asserting it 
 even to himself, much less to others) ; the thing a 
 man does practically lay to heart, and know for 
 certain, concerning his vital relations to this mys- 
 terious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, 
 that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and 
 creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
 religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and 
 
xii translator's preface. 
 
 no-religion : the manner it is in whicli lie feels 
 himself to be spirituallj related to the unseen 
 world or no-world ; and I say, if you tell me what 
 that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the 
 man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of 
 a man or a nation we inquire, therefore, first of 
 all, What religion they had ? Was it heathen- 
 ism, — pluraHty of gods, mere sensuous representa- 
 tion of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recog- 
 nised element therein Physical Force ? Was it 
 Christianism ; faith in an Invisible, not as real 
 only, but as the onl}' reaUty ; Time, through every 
 meanest moment of it, resting on Eternity ; Pagan 
 empu-e of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, 
 that of Holiness ? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty 
 and inquiry whether there was an unseen world, 
 any mystery of Hf e except a mad one ; — doubt as 
 to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial ? 
 Answering of this question is giving us the soul of 
 the history of the man or nation. The thoughts 
 they had were the parents of the actions they did ; 
 their feelings were parents of their thoughts : it 
 was the unseen and spiritual in them that deter- 
 mined the outward and actual ; — their religion, as 
 I say, was the gi-eat fact about them." 
 
 These few words of Carlyle's, taken fi'om his 
 lecture on " Heroes and Hero-Worshiii," crowd 
 "nto a nutshell the substance of his beUef. It was 
 
translator's preface. xiii 
 
 a belief of actions, not of words. He cared little 
 or nothing for what a man professed, unless what 
 he said was corroborated by what he did. The 
 performing of one's duty was the chief, the ^dtal 
 thing in this life. " Too much thinking and not 
 enough doing " was a favourite saying of his. 
 
 In a letter to Dr. Fliigel from Mr. Froude, 
 he says : " Your admirable little book is the first 
 sign I have seen of an independent and clear 
 insight into Carlyle's life, work and character, 
 as it will one day be universally recognised by 
 all mankind. Leaving out Goethe, Carlyle was 
 indisputably the greatest man (if you measure 
 gi-eatness by the permanent effect he has and will 
 produce on the mind of mankind) who has ap- 
 peared in Europe for centuries. You have seen 
 into this and know to appreciate it. His charac- 
 ter was as remarkable as his intellect. There has 
 been no man at all, not Goethe himself, who in 
 thought and action was so consistently true to his 
 noblest instincts." 
 
 A word is needed with reference to the transla- 
 tion of this book, and certain alterations and 
 omissions which have been made. 
 
 It was thought best to omit Part I, the Appen- 
 dix, and most of the Notes, which deal almost 
 exclusively with facts in Carlyle's life so familiar 
 from an American point of view, and, moreover 
 
xiv translator's preface. 
 
 so tliorouglily well treated by Froucle, Norton, 
 Eichard Garnett and others, that it would be like 
 offering coals to Newcastle to offer them to an 
 American reading public. 
 
 The translation has also been carefully examined 
 by the Author, thus removing, in a measure, much 
 responsibility in regard to it ; but the final de- 
 cision as to a choice of English expressions, rest- 
 ed with the translator, who has to thank, as well 
 as the Author, Mr. Albert Miller, of Detroit, 
 Michigan, for kind assistance. 
 
 J. G. T. 
 Ithaca, N. Y., 
 
 Jan. 2Qth, 1891. 
 
AUTHOK'S PKEFACE. 
 
 "From the 'silence of the eternities,' of which he so often 
 spoke, there still sound, and will long sound, the tones of that 
 marvellous voice."— Dean Stanleys sermon on the occasion of 
 the Death of Mr. Carlyle. 
 
 " Suffer me, then, to say a few words on the 
 good seed which he has sown in our hearts " were 
 the words of Dean Stanley in his impressive 
 funeral sermon on Carlyle, which was deUvercd 
 on the 6th of February, 1881, in Westminster 
 Abbey — and these words express the feeling which 
 has actuated the undertaking of the present work. 
 
 In England, Carlyle's views of hfo have often 
 been made the subject of inquiry, but they have 
 either been scattered in periodical publications, 
 or have been partially colored, or could hold 
 no claim of having been scientifically treated, 
 which means nothing more, in biography, at least, 
 than a clear and conscientious arrangement of 
 matter. In Germany, Carlyle's views of Hfe have 
 generally been Uttle considered. We AvilHngly 
 praised him, and praise him now, as the friend 
 of our nation, the admii'er of our distinguished 
 men, but with that the whole matter ended, with 
 but few exceptions. 
 
XVI AUTHOR S PREFACE. 
 
 Since the appearance of Fronde's great biog- 
 raphy, and since the Carlyle archives have re- 
 vealed their treasures, it has become our duty 
 to gather together in part the results of these in- 
 vestigations ; and to accomplish this in the de- 
 partment in which Carlyle's principal work is of 
 importance for his people and literatiu'e in gen- 
 eral was the serious endeavor of the Author. 
 
 He has first to express his thanks to Llr. 
 Froude, who, through his great Life of Carlyle, 
 was the incentive to the present work, also to the 
 estimable friend of Carlyle, Professor David Mas- 
 son, and lastly, and above all, for her wiUinguess 
 to render assistance and information, to the niece 
 of Carlyle, who, in truest solicitude, made the 
 last years of the great man's hfe easier and more 
 beautiful. 
 
 Before concluding these remarks, the name of 
 Eichard Garnett, which is familiar to all who have 
 worked in the British Museum, calls to mind a 
 small work on Carlyle, which gives in its conclud- 
 ing chapter a short but excellent pictui'e of Car- 
 lyle's views. I should like to recommend the 
 reading of this chapter, as well as of the whole 
 work, where the bibliogiaphy of Carlyle has been 
 arranged in its best form. 
 
 TTei^enhaus, Baschwitz, near Leipzig, 
 November, 1887. 
 
AUTHOK'S INTEODUCTION. 
 
 Near the Scotch country town, Ayr, about an 
 hour from the sea shore, stands a poor little hut, 
 which one hundred and fifty years ago received 
 its light through a single window that was not 
 much larger than a quaiier of a sheet of paper, 
 when " Genius " made an entrance into it, and 
 Robert Burns was born. What the interior of 
 the peasant's hut could not offer, the blossom- 
 ing son of the poet found in the charming sur- 
 roundings of the paternal home. 
 
 One can indeed feel, when one stands upon the 
 Auld Brig o' Doon and looks back to the old 
 times, how the boy's di-eamy and poetical nature 
 was inspired ; and if one approaches the ivy- 
 covered ruins of Alloway Kirk and the old ceme- 
 tery, the wanderer is filled with awe, as was once 
 the good Tam o' Shanter. 
 
 Much more rugged are the surroundings of 
 another Scotch hamlet, situated several miles 
 southward. A single country road guides the 
 traveller — and hundreds make pilgrimages yearly 
 to this Httle village — to a very poor-looking house. 
 
XVm AUTHORS INTRODUCTION. 
 
 into which, five years before the expiration of the 
 eighteenth century, another " Genius " made en- 
 trance, and Thomas Carlyle was born. 
 
 One is invohmtarily compelled to compare the 
 straightened circumstances in which both men 
 were born, and from which one of them was never 
 permitted for long to raise himself, but from which 
 the other became brilliantly transformed through 
 unheard-of strength of will and unceasing indus- 
 try — through a strength of will which the other, 
 unfortunately, lacked. 
 
 The career of both men was a tragedy. If we 
 approach in spirit the death-bed of Burns in the 
 forlorn house at Dumfries, and reflect upon what 
 more this genius might have done for the world 
 and himself ; what he, indeed, owed the world 
 and himself ; what divine power in him still wait- 
 ed for full maturity, — or, if we enter the death - 
 chamber in Chejne Row, where the heart of a 
 hero burst with a sigh — a hero who, to be sure, 
 accompHshed everything which in a long and 
 checkered life he had been able to accomplish 
 before God and man ; we stand by the bier of a 
 man who, with the greatest warmth of heart, with 
 the greatest strength of intellect, although his life 
 was spent in the most assiduous labor, was never 
 long happy. 
 
 But, as with Burns, in the termination of Car- 
 
AUTHOR S INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 lyle's powerful life, there is no discord. Earnest 
 regrets till the heart, but they bring their ovm 
 reconciliation, as true tragedy always does. I 
 hope to be able in what follows to point out the 
 subUmity of Carlyle's spiritual life — a sublimity 
 from which, as from a lofty mountain, the eye 
 discerns far and near numberless beautiful val- 
 leys — a sublimity from which the soul itself feels 
 freer and larger. 
 
 Goethe recognized clearly the characteristic of 
 Carlyle's aspirations when he uttered on July 
 25th, 1827, the following words : " It is especially 
 admirable in Carlyle, that in his criticism of our 
 German wi'iters he recognises the spiritual and 
 moral kernel as the most efficacious. He is, in- 
 deed, a moral force of great significance. There 
 is a great future awaiting him, and it is not at all 
 possible to predict what ho will be able to accom- 
 pUsh." 
 
 And to consider Carlyle as a " moral force " is 
 the object of this book. Before we turn our atten- 
 tion, however, to an explanation of his moral and 
 religious views, it seems to me appropriate to con- 
 sider for a moment the history of his inner life, 
 especially with reference to its moral and religious 
 side. 
 
 The inner life of Carlyle divides itself into three 
 great epochs : first, his youth, which embraced 
 
XX author's introduction. 
 
 the years spent in the paternal home and in Edin- 
 burgh (to the year 1816) ; second, those years 
 which might properly be called his apprentice- 
 ship, when he began to fight the battles with his 
 own nature in Kirkcaldy, the chief fruit of which 
 is his acquaintance with the German classics ; and 
 third, the long and important period of his Hfe 
 which begins about the time of his departure to 
 London in 1834, and ends with his death there in 
 1881. 
 
 From 1834 to 1881 are the richest years of liis 
 life, and show to the world how Goethe's pro- 
 phetic word was to be fulfilled. 
 
THOMAS CflRLYLE'S MORAL AND RELIGIOUS 
 DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 CABLYLE'S BELIEF. 
 
 In " Sartor Resartus," Professor Teufelsdi'ockh, 
 of Weissnichtwo, imparts the follo^ving ideas : 
 
 " With men of a speculative turn there come 
 seasons — meditative, sweet, yet awful hours — 
 when, in wonder and fear, you ask yourself that 
 unanswerable question : Who am I ; the thing 
 that can say, I ? 
 
 " The world, with its loud trafficing, retires 
 into the distance, and through the paper-hang- 
 ings and stone walls, and thick-pUed tissue of 
 Commerce and Pohty, and all the li^dng and 
 Hfeless integuments (of Society and a Body) 
 wherewith your existence sits surrounded, — the 
 sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you 
 
24 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 are alone with the Universe, and silently com- 
 mune wdth it, as one mysterious Presence with 
 another. 
 
 ""Who am I? ^Tiat is this Me? A voice, a 
 motion, an appearance, — some embodied, visual- 
 ised Idea in the Eternal Mind ? Cogito, ergo siim. 
 Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little 
 way. Sure enough, I am ; and lately was not ; 
 but "V^Tionce ? How ? Where to ? The answer 
 lies around, written in all colors and motions, 
 uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thou- 
 sand-figured, thousand-voiced harmonious Nature : 
 but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom 
 that God-^\Titten Apocah-jise will yield articulate 
 meaning ? We sit as in a boundless phantasma- 
 goria and dream-grotto ; l)oundless, for the paint- 
 ed star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer 
 the verge thereof : sounds and many-coloured 
 idsions flit around our sense ; but Him, the Un- 
 slumbering, whose work both dream and dreamer 
 are, we see not ; except in half -waking moments, 
 suspect not. 
 
 " Creation, says one, Hes before us, like a glori- 
 ous rainbow ; but the sun that made it, hes be- 
 hind us, hidden from us. Then in that strange 
 dream,- how we clutch at shadows as if they were 
 substance ; and sleep deepest while fancying our- 
 selves most awake ! 
 
caelyle's belief. !25 
 
 " "Wliicli of your philosophical systems is other 
 than a dream-theorem — a net quotient, confi- 
 dently given out, where di\dsor and dividend are 
 both unknown ? " * 
 
 " To the eye of vulgar logic, what is man ? An 
 omnivorous biped that wears breeches. To the 
 eye of pure reason, what is he? A soul, a spirit, 
 a divine apparition. Eound his mysterious Me 
 there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Gar- 
 ment of Flesh (or of Senses) contextured in the 
 Loom of Heaven ; whereby he is revealed to 
 his hke, and dwells with them in Union and 
 Di^-ision ; and sees and fashions for himself a 
 Universe, A\ath azure Starry Spaces, and long 
 Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under 
 that Strange Garment ; amid Sounds and Col- 
 ours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and 
 inextricably over-shrouded : yet it is sky-woven 
 and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby 
 in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of 
 Eternities ? 
 
 " He feels ; the power has been given him to 
 know, to believe ; nay, does not the spirit of love, 
 free in its primeval brightness, even here, though 
 but for garments, look through ? Well said Saint 
 Chrysostom, with his lips of gold : ' the true She- 
 kinah is man.' Where else is the God's Presence 
 
 * Sartor Resartus, p. 35. 
 
26 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 manifested not to oiu' eyes onlv, but to our 
 hearts, as in ovir fellow-man ? " - 
 
 "For the rest," continues Carlyle, "as is natural 
 to a man of this kind. Professor Teufelsdiockh 
 deals much in the feehng of wonder ; insists on 
 the necessity of high worth of universal Won- 
 der ; which he holds to be the only reasonable 
 temper for the denizen of so singular a Planet 
 as ours." t 
 
 " "Wonder," says he, " is the basis of Worship : 
 the reign of Wonder is perennial, indestructible 
 in Man ; only at cei-tain stages (as the present) 
 it is, for some short season, a reign in j)a?'fibus 
 injiddiurn. That progi-ess of science, which is 
 to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute 
 Mensuration and Numeration liuds small favour 
 with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise vener- 
 ates these two latter processes. 
 
 " Shall your Science," exclaims he, " proceed 
 in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, 
 undergiound workshop of Logic alone, and man's 
 mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Mem- 
 ory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Lines and 
 Tangents, Codifications, and Treatises of what you 
 call Political Economy, are the Meal ? And what 
 is that Science, which the scientific head alone, 
 
 * Sartor Resartiis, p. i-i. 
 I Op. cit., p. 45. 
 
CARLYLES BELIEF. 27 
 
 were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the 
 Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, conld 
 proseciite without shadow of a heart, — but one 
 other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, 
 for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in 
 it) is too noble an organ ? 
 
 " I mean that Thought without Reverence is 
 barren, perhaps poisonous ; at best, dies like 
 cookery, with the day that called it forth ; does 
 not hve, like so^^'ing, in successive tilths and 
 wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plen- 
 teous increase to all Time. In such wise does 
 Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or softer, accord- 
 ing to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain per- 
 suade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above 
 all, that class of Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe 
 Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder, who, 
 in these days, so numerously patrol as night 
 constables about the Mechanic's Institute of 
 Science, and cackle, like Old-Roman geese and 
 goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or 
 on none ; nay, who often, as illuminated Sceptics, 
 walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day- 
 light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guid- 
 ing you and guarding you there-vvith, though the 
 Sun is shining, and the street populous with 
 mere justice -lo\ing men : that whole class is in- 
 
28 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 expressiblj wearisome to him. Hear Avitli what 
 uncommon animation he perorates : 
 
 " ' The man who cannot wonder, who does 
 not habitually wonder (and worship), were he 
 President of innumerable Eoval Societies, and 
 carried the whole Mechanique Celeste and HegeVs 
 Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories 
 and Observatories, with their results, in his single 
 liead, — is but a Pau' of Spectacles behind which 
 there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look 
 through him, then he may be useful. Thou wilt 
 have no Mystery or Mysticism ; wilt walk through 
 thv world bv the sunshine of what thou callest 
 Truth, or even by the hand lamp of what I call 
 Attorney -Logic ; and 'explain' all, 'account' for 
 all, or beheve nothing of it ? Nay, thou wilt 
 attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the un- 
 fathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, 
 which is everywhere under our feet and among 
 our hands ; to whom the Universe is an Oracle 
 and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle- 
 stall, — he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him 
 thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusivcly proller 
 thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when 
 he kicks his foot through it? Ainner Teufel! 
 Doth not thy cow calve ? Doth not thy bull 
 gender ? Thou thyself, weii thou not born ; 
 wilt thou not die ? ' Explain ' me all this, or 
 
caelyle's belief. 29 
 
 do one of two things: Retire into private places 
 with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, 
 give it lip and weep, not that the reign of 
 wonder is done, and God's world all disembel- 
 lished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a 
 Dilettante and sand-blind Pedant.' " * 
 
 Carlyle characterizes Teufelsdrcickh's doctrines 
 as " Natural Supernaturalism " which might be 
 said to lie at the foundation of his own views 
 of Ufe, which, however, we prefer to denominate 
 " Religious Ideahsm," for it is an idealism in 
 which a theological and religious principle plays 
 a very important part. 
 
 AVe must cite a few more passages from this 
 chapter on " Natural Supernaturalism " in order 
 to give, as far as is possible in his own words, 
 an accurate idea of the essence of his belief. 
 
 Teufelsdrockh deals severely with these philo- 
 sophical world expounders, and discourses at 
 length on the physical and incomj)rehensiblo 
 " laws " of the universe, attempting to explain 
 what those same unalterable laws — " forming the 
 complete statute-book of nature may possibly be." 
 
 " They stand wiitten in our works of science, 
 say you ; in the accumulated record of man's 
 experience ! Was man with his experience pre- 
 sent at the creation, then, to see how it all 
 
 * Sartor Eesartus, p. -17. 
 
30 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 went on ? Have any deepest scientific iudividnals 
 yet dived down to the foundations of the uni- 
 verse, and gauged ever\ihing there? Did the 
 Maker take them into His counsel ; that they 
 read His grouud-jilan of the incomprehensible 
 All ; and can say, This stands marked therein, 
 and no more than this? Alas, not in anywise! 
 These scientific individuals have been nowhere 
 but where Ave also are ; have seen some hand- 
 breadths deeper than we see into the Deep that 
 is infinite, without bottom as without shore. 
 
 " Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he ex- 
 hiliits that certain Planets, Avith their Satellites, 
 gATate round our Sun, at a rate and in a course, 
 by greatest good fortune, he and the like of him 
 have succeeded in detecting, — is to me as precious 
 as to another. But is this Avhat thou namest 
 ' Mechanism of the Heavens,' and ' Systems of 
 the "World ; ' this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, 
 and all Herschel's fifteen thousand Suns per min- 
 ute, being left out, some paltry handfuls of Moons, 
 and inei-t Balls, had been — looked at, nick-named, 
 and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; so that we 
 can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, 
 their AVhy, their "What being hid from us, as in 
 the signless Inane ? 
 
 " System of Nature ! To the wisest man, wide 
 as is his vision, Nature remains of quite injiidte 
 
caelyle's belief. 31 
 
 depth, of quite infinite expansion ; and all ex- 
 perience thereof limits itself to some few com- 
 puted centuries and mc^asured square miles. 
 . . . . We speak of the Volume of Nature : 
 and truly a Volume it is, — whose author and 
 writer is God. To read it ! Dost thou, does 
 man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? 
 With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive 
 Pages, poetical and philosophical, spread out 
 through Solar Systems, and Thousands of Years, 
 we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written 
 in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred wi'it- 
 ing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they 
 can read here a line and there a Une. As for 
 your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they 
 strive bravely ; and, fi*om amid the thick-crowded, 
 inextricably iutert^\istcd liierogl}'pliic Aniting, 
 pick out by dextrous combination, some Letters 
 in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put to- 
 gether this and the other economic Recipe, of 
 high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than 
 some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, 
 well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic Cookery Book, 
 of which the whole secret mil in this manner 
 one day evolve itself, the fewest dream." * 
 
 Teufelsdrockh-Carlyle then speaks of those " il- 
 lusory appearances, the two grand fundamental 
 
 * Sartor Kesartus, pp. 177-180. 
 
32 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. 
 These, as spun and woven for ns from Birth itself, 
 to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, and 
 yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal 
 canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor 
 Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and 
 paint themselves. In vain, while hc^re on earth, 
 shall you endeavor to strip them oflf; you can, 
 at best, but rend them asunder for moments, 
 and look through." * 
 
 " Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past ; 
 is the Future non-extant, or onlv future ? Those 
 mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, 
 akeady answer : already through those mystic 
 avenues, thou, the Earth-blinded, summonest both 
 Past and Future, and communest with them, 
 though as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. 
 The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the cur- 
 tains of To-morrow roll up ; but Yesterday and 
 To-morrow lioth are. Pierce through the Time- 
 element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what 
 thou tindest written in the sanctuaries of Man's 
 Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have 
 devoutly read it there : that Time and Space are 
 not God, but creations of God ; that with God, 
 as it is a universal Here, so is it an everlasting 
 Kow. 
 
 * Sartor Kesartus, pp. 177-180. 
 
carlyle's belief. 33 
 
 "And seest thou therein any gUmpse of Im- 
 moriality ? O Heaven ! Is the white tomb of 
 our loved one, who died from our arms, and had 
 to be left behind us there, which rises in the 
 distance, Uke a pale, mournfully-receeding Mile- 
 stone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles 
 we have journeyed on alone, — but a pale spectral 
 Illusion ! Is the lost Friend still mysteriously 
 Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with 
 God ! — know of a truth that only the Time-shad- 
 ows have perished, or are perishable ; that the 
 real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and 
 whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, 
 should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest pon- 
 der at thy leisure ; for the next twenty years, or 
 the next twenty centuries : believe it thou must ; 
 
 understand it thou canst not Sweep 
 
 away the Illusion of Time O, could 
 
 I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport 
 thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, 
 how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart 
 set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! 
 Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were 
 it in the meanest province thereof, is in very 
 deed the Star-domed City of God ; that through 
 every star, through every grass-blade, and 
 most through every Living Soul, the glory of a 
 present God still beams. But Nature, which is 
 
34 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to 
 the wase, hides Him from the foohsh." * 
 
 Caiiyle then strolls into the spirit-world and 
 returns with the witty and profound discovery 
 that in order to see a " real ghost," Dr. Johnson 
 did not need to go to the trouble of searching 
 spirit-haunted Cock Lane, to clamber upon church 
 vaults and tap at midnight upon coffins — all with- 
 out result, of course. " Did he never, with the 
 mind's eye, as well as with the body's, look 
 around him into that full tide of human life he so 
 loved ; did he never so much as look into himself ? 
 The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and au- 
 thentic as heart could wish ; well nigh a million 
 Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. 
 Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of 
 Time ; compress the threescore years into three 
 minutes ; what else was he, what else are we ? 
 Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a 
 body, into an Appearance; and that fade away 
 again into air and InvisibiUty ? This is no meta- 
 phor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out 
 of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; 
 round us, as around the veriest spectre, is Eter- 
 nity ; and to Eternity minutes are as years and 
 feons." t 
 
 * Sartor Eesartus, p. 183. 
 I Loc. cit. 
 
carlyle's belief. 35 
 
 " O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to 
 consider that we not only carry each a future 
 Ghost within him ; but are in very deed, Ghosts ! 
 These Umbs, whence had we them ; this stormy 
 Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion ? 
 They are dust and shadow ; a Shadow-system 
 gathered round our Me ; wherein, through some 
 moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be 
 revealed in the Flesh." * 
 
 " Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing, Spirit- 
 host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste storm- 
 fuUy across the astonished Earth ; then plunge 
 again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are lev- 
 elled, and her seas filled vip, in our passage : can 
 the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist 
 Spirits which have reality and are aUve ? On the 
 hardest adamant some foot-print of us is stamped- 
 in ; the last Rear of the host will read traces of 
 the earhest Van. But whence ? O Heaven, 
 whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; 
 only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from 
 God and to God. 
 
 " ' We are suck stufE 
 As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
 Is rounded with a sleep ! ' " f 
 
 " Man begins in darkness, ends in darkness ; 
 mystery is everywhere around us and in us, under 
 
 * Sartor Kesartus, p. 184. 
 t Op. cit. pp. 184-185. 
 
36 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 our feet, among our hands. Nevertheless, so 
 much has become evident to every one, that this 
 wondrous Mankind is advancing somewhither; 
 that at least all human things are, have been, and 
 forever will be, in Movement and Change." " 
 
 " Sad, truly, were our condition did we know 
 but this : that Change is universal and inevitable. 
 Launched into a dark shoreless sea of Pprhon- 
 ism, what would remain for us but to sail aimless, 
 hopeless ; or make madly merry, while the de- 
 vouring Death had not yet ingulfed us ? As, in- 
 deed, we have seen many, and yet see many do. 
 Nevertheless, so stands it not. 
 
 " The venerator of the Past (and to what pure 
 heart is the Past, in that ' moonlight of memory,' 
 other than sad and holy?) sorrows not over its 
 departure, as one utterly bereaved. The true 
 Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in the 
 Past departs ; no Truth or Goodness realised by 
 man ever dies, or can die ; but is all still here, 
 and, recognised or not ; lives and works through 
 endless changes. If all things, to speak in the 
 German dialect, are discerned by us, and exist 
 for us, in an element of Time, and therefore of 
 Mortality and Mutability ; yet Time itself reposes 
 on Eternity : the truly Great and Transcendental 
 
 * Essay on Characteristics, p, 33. 
 
carlyle's belief. 37 
 
 has its basis and substance in Eternity ; stands 
 revealed to us as Eternity in a vesture of Time." * 
 
 " Unhappy he who felt not, at all conjunctures, 
 ineradicably in his heart the knowledge that a 
 God made this Universe, and a Demon not ! And 
 shall Evil always prosper, then ? Out of all Evil 
 comes Good ; and no Good that is possible but 
 shall one day be real. Deep and sad as is our 
 feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful Night ; 
 equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that 
 the Morning also will not fail. Nay, already, as 
 we look round, streaks of a day-spring are in the 
 east ; it is da"s\'ning ; when the time shall be ful- 
 filled, it will be day. The progress of men to- 
 ward higher and nobler developments of whatever 
 is highest and noblest in him, lies not only pro- 
 phecied to Faith, but now written to the eye of 
 Observation, so that he who runs may read." t 
 
 " For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the 
 mystery of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is 
 a mystery which, through all ages, we shall only 
 read here a line of, there another line of. Do we 
 not ah-eady know that the name of the Infinite is 
 Lord, is God ? Here on Earth we are as Soldiers, 
 , fighting in a foreign laud ; that understand not 
 the plan of the campaign, and have no need to 
 
 * Essay on Chai'acteristics, pp. 33-34. 
 fOp. cit., p. 32. 
 
38 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 understand it ; seeing well "svliat is at our hand to 
 be done. Let us do it like Soldiers ; with sub- 
 mission, with courage, with a heroic joy. ' What- 
 soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy 
 might.' Behind us, behind each one of us, lie 
 Six Thousand Years of human effort, human con- 
 quest : before us in the boundless Time, with its, 
 as yet, uncreated and iinconquered Continents 
 and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to con- 
 quer, to create ; and from the bosom of Eternity 
 there shine for us celestial guiding stars. 
 
 ' Mj' inheritance, how wide and fair ! 
 
 Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir.' " * 
 
 These thoughts and many more which might 
 be found in Carlyle's ^\Titings, contain the kernel 
 of his religious belief. 
 
 The Universe, as we see it everywhere, is an 
 infinite and divine mystery — an infinite and divine 
 mystery are we ourselves, as we perceive the 
 world and its phenomena confronting us. The 
 only thing which we — a revelation of God — are 
 able to perceive of the other revelation of God, 
 the universe, is reverence, and worship of the 
 Divine Being. This " "Worship " before the 
 Highest — as it has manifested itself in our souls 
 and everywhere in the world is religion ; rehgion, 
 
 Essay on Characteristics, p. 38. 
 
carlyle's belief. 39 
 
 which not alone fills our souls as a sentiment, but 
 shows itself as well in our life and works, and is 
 inseparably bound with the highest moral beauty 
 which is to have a sequel hereafter. That is the 
 foundation of Carlyle's views, his belief, with 
 which the man and all his works are permeated. 
 From this belief spring all his thoughts and judg- 
 ments ; upon this foundation rests his view of 
 the world, and all questions, solved or unsolved, 
 which are daily agitating men's minds who crave 
 an honest and intelligent answer, and without 
 which, in one way or another, they may be 
 brought to great discontent 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE MECHANICAL AGE. 
 
 Motto: "The marvels of Industry did not awe him, the 
 progress of humanity he did not place in the triumph of matter 
 in his eyes a man -was a man only on condition of being a taber- 
 nacle of the living God." — " Wylie's Carlyle," chap. 24. 
 
 Carlyle's Religious Idealism is now found con- 
 fronted by a " mechanical age ; " an age swayed 
 by a sort of spiritual and physical machine ; an 
 age, which sutlers from the fact that its noble 
 impulses are no longer brought out with freedom, 
 naturally and unconsciously, without regard to 
 consequences and criticism, but rather reach for- 
 ward toward an independent and imagined end ; 
 not to that one end, which for Carlyle is the only 
 one, the kingdom of God on Earth. 
 
 That Carlyle, although perhaps too inexorable 
 in his antagonism to mechanical things, is not 
 blind to the results which the progi'ess in tech- 
 nical and other sciences has wrought for man- 
 kind, cannot be denied ; nevertheless he believed 
 
THE MECHANICAL AGE. 41 
 
 his chief mission to be in mercilessly attacking 
 the experiments of the mechanical mind in dar- 
 ing to interfere with fields with which it has no 
 concern ; viz., the fields of a higher, spiritual and 
 moral life, and, above all, in the field of Ee- 
 
 ligion In theology, philosophy and 
 
 pedagogy, as in all the sciences and arts, he 
 sees the pernicious increase of a mechanical 
 view of life. 
 
 " Thus we have machines for Education ; Lan- 
 castrian machines ; Hamiltonian machines ; mon- 
 itors, etc. Instruction, that mysterious commun- 
 ing of Wisdom with Ignorance, is no longer an 
 indefinable tentative process, requiring a study 
 of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation 
 of means and methods, to attain the same end ; 
 but a secure, universal, straight-forward business, 
 to be conducted in the gross by proper mechan- 
 ism, with such intellect as comes to hand. Then 
 we have Religious machines; of all imaginable 
 varieties; the Bible-Society, professing a far 
 higher and heavenly structure, is found, on in- 
 quiry, to be altogether an earthly contrivance ; 
 supported by collection of moneys, by fomenting 
 of vanities, by puffing, by intrigue and chicane ; 
 a machine for converting the Heathen. It is the 
 same in all other departments. Has any man, or 
 any society of men a truth to speak, a piece of 
 
42 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 spiritual work to do, they can no wise proceed 
 at once and with, the mere natural organs, but 
 must first call a public meeting, appoint com- 
 mittees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner." '^ 
 
 "With individuals, in like manner, natural 
 strength avails little. No individual now hopes 
 to accomplish the poorest enterprise single-handed 
 and without mechanical aids. He must make in- 
 terest with some existing corporation, and till his 
 fields with their oxen. 
 
 " In these days, more emphatically than ever, 
 ' to live, signifies to unite ^\'ith a party, or to 
 make one.' Philosophy, Science, Ai't, Literature, 
 all depend on machinery. No Newton, by silent 
 meditation, now discovers the System of the World 
 from the falling of an apple ; but some quite other 
 than Ne's\'ton stands in his Museum, his Scientific 
 Institution, and behind whole batteries of retorts, 
 digestors and galvanic piles imperatively ' interro- 
 gates Nature,' — who, however, shows no haste to 
 answer. In defect of Raphaels, and Angelos, and 
 Mozarts, we have Royal Academies of Painting, 
 Sculpture, Music ; whereby the languishing Spirit 
 of Art may be strengthened, as by the more gen- 
 erous diet of a Public Kitchen. Literature, too, 
 has its Paternoster-row of mechanism, its Trade 
 
 * Essay on Signs of the Times, p. 234. 
 
THE MECHANICAL AGE. 43 
 
 dinners, its Editorial conclaves, and huge sub- 
 terranean, puffing bellows ; so that books are not 
 only j)rinted, but in a great measure written and 
 
 sold by machinery Men are grown 
 
 mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in 
 hand. They have lost faith in individual endea- 
 vour, and in natural force of any kind. Not for 
 internal perfection, but for external combinations 
 and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, — 
 for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope 
 and struggle." * 
 
 In what follows an attempt will be made to give 
 an idea of Carlyle's position with reference to the 
 several departments of spiritual life, which, under 
 the influence of Mechanism, have more or less 
 suffered. 
 
 * Essay on Signs of the Times, pp. 235-236. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 CABLYLE'S RELATION TO CHEISTI- 
 
 ANITY. 
 
 1. — His Views on the Peesonauty of Christ. 
 2. — His Appeehension of the Significance of CHEisxiANrry 
 in the World's History. 
 3. — His Notion of the Natuee of Chbistianity. 
 
 " To begin mtli our highest Spiritual function, 
 with Eeligion," says Carljle, "we might ask, 
 Whither has EeHgion now tied? Of churches 
 and tlieir estabHshments we here say nothing; 
 nor of the unhappy domains of UnbeUef, and how 
 innumerable men, blinded in their minds, have 
 crown to live without God in the world ; but, 
 taking the fairest side of the matter, we ask. What 
 is the nature of that same Eehgion, which still 
 linirers in the hearts of the few, who are called, 
 and call themselves, specially the Eeligious ? Is 
 it a healthy religion, vital, unconscious of itself ; 
 that shines forth spontaneously in doing of the 
 Work, or even in preaching of the Word ? Un- 
 
CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 45 
 
 happily, No. Instead of heroic martyr Conduct, 
 and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, where- 
 by Religion itself were brought home to our living 
 bosoms, to live and reign there, we have ' Dis- 
 cources on the Evidences,' endeavouring, with 
 small results, to make it probable that such a 
 thing as Eehgion exists. The most enthusiastic 
 Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but keep 
 describing how it should and might be preached. 
 To awaken the sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred 
 contagion, is not their endeavour, but, at most, 
 to describe how Faith shows and acts, and scien- 
 tifically distinguish true Faith from false. Ee- 
 hgion, like all else, is conscious of itself, listens 
 to itself ; it becomes less and less creative, vital ; 
 more and more mechanical. Considered as a 
 whole, the Christian Religion of late years has 
 been continually dissipating itself into Metaphy- 
 sics ; and threatens now to disappear, as some 
 rivers do in deserts of barren sand." * 
 
 The preceding words have already suggested 
 from what quarter Carlyle's position Avith reference 
 to Clu'istianity may be expected. 
 
 We shall next consider his position as to the 
 personality of Christ and the historical signifi- 
 cance of Christianity. 
 
 * Characteristics, p. 20. 
 
46 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 When Goethe on the 11th of March, 1832 
 (Eckerm, iii., 255) gives utterance to the following 
 sentiment : " I consider the Gospels entirely gen- 
 uine, for there is in them an image of a powerful 
 grandeur which proceeds from the person of 
 Christ and in so godUke a manner as only upon 
 earth the Godlike has been revealed. If one 
 asks me whether it may be in my nature to feel 
 reverence and devotion to him, I answer, to be 
 sure. I bow before him as before the highest 
 revelation, the highest principle of morality," and 
 when on the same day he says, "may spiritual 
 culture advance, may the natural sciences grow 
 broader and deeper, and the human spirit expand 
 as it will, it will never be surpassed by the grand- 
 eur and moral development of Christianity as it 
 glistens and sparkles in the Gospels ; " and when 
 Goethe crowns these expressions with the words, 
 " We shall all of us come gradually out of a 
 Christianity of words and belief to a Christianity 
 of principle and action," it is in order that Car- 
 lyle's own conviction of the worth and the sig- 
 nificance of the fixture of Christianity may also 
 find expression. Carlyle's religious feeling be- 
 came completely imbued with the teaching and 
 character of Christ. 
 
 Carlyle never spoke a word which permitted of 
 a double meaning, which did not show the com- 
 
CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 plete conviction of his heart, and in the following 
 plain language he expresses his belief in Christ : 
 " Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the 
 Artist or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men 
 can recognise a present God and worship the 
 same. . . . Various enough have been such 
 religious Symbols, what we call IteUgious ; as men 
 stood in this stage of culture or the other, and 
 could worse or better body-forth the Godlike : 
 some Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; 
 many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what 
 height man has carried it in this manner, look 
 on one divinest Symbol : on Jesus of Nazareth, 
 and his Life, and his Biography, and what fol- 
 lowed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought 
 not yet reached ; This is Christianity and Christ- 
 endom, a Symbol of quite perennial, infinite 
 character ; whose significance will ever demand 
 to be anew inquired into, and anew made mani- 
 fest." * 
 
 " Small it is that thou canst trample the Earth 
 under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee : 
 thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, 
 and even because it injui'es thee ; for this a 
 Greater than Zeno was needed, and he, too, was 
 sent. Knowest thou that ' Worship of Sorrow ? ' 
 
 * Sartor Kesartus, p. 155. 
 
48 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 The Temple thereof, founded some eighteen cen- 
 turies ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with 
 jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures : never- 
 theless, venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched 
 out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar 
 still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially burn- 
 ing."* 
 
 The essence of the Christian doctrine for Car- 
 lyle is raised above all doubt and every logical 
 proof, it is implanted in every human heart, and 
 whether "in the believing or unbelieving mind, 
 must ever be regarded as the crowning glory, or 
 rather the hfe and soul, of our whole modern 
 culture ! " t 
 
 And just for this reason Carlyle never became 
 tired of pointing out the untenableness of even 
 the most earnest essays to defend or assault the 
 Christian doctrine with the help of logic. 
 
 In his Essay on Voltaire we find these words : 
 " That the Christian Religion could have any 
 deeper foundation than Books, could possibly be 
 written in the purest nature of man, in mysteri- 
 ous, inefi'aceable characters, to which Books, and 
 all Revelations and authentic traditions, were but 
 a sul)sidiary matter, were but as the light where- 
 by that divine icriting was to be read ; — nothing 
 
 * Sartor Eesartus, p. 133. 
 t Signs of the Times, p 242. 
 
CAELYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 of tliis seems, even in tlie faintest manner, to 
 have occurred to Voltaire. Yet, herein, as we 
 believe that the whole world has now begun to 
 discover, lies the real essence of the question ; 
 by the negative or affirmative decision of which, 
 the Christian Keligion, anything that is worth 
 caUing by that name, must fall, or endure forever. 
 We believe, also, that the wiser minds of our 
 age have aheady come to agreement in this ques- 
 tion ; or rather never were divided regarding it. 
 Christianity, the * Worship of Sorrow,' has been 
 recognised as divine, on far other grounds than 
 'Essays on Miracles,' and by consideration in- 
 finitely deeper than would avail in any mere 
 'trial by jury.' He who argues against it, or for 
 it, in this manner, may be regarded as mistak- 
 ing its nature, * . . . . Our fathers were 
 wiser than we, when they said, in the deepest 
 seriousness, what we often hear in shallow mock- 
 ery, that Rehgion is ' not of Sense, but of Faith ; ' 
 not of Understanding, but of Reason. He who 
 finds himself without the latter, who by all his 
 studying has failed to unfold it in himself, may 
 have studied to great or little purpose, we say 
 not which ; but of the Christian Rehgion, as of 
 many other things, he has and can have no 
 
 * Essay on Voltaire, p. 172. 
 
50 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 knowledge. The Cliristian Doctrine we often 
 hear likened to the Greek Philosophy, and found, 
 on all hands, some measurable way superior to 
 it : but this also seems a mistake. The Christian 
 Doctrine, that Doctrine of Humanity, in aU senses 
 Godlike, and the parent of all Godlike virtues, 
 is not superior, or inferior, or equal, to any doc- 
 trine of Socrates or Thales ; being of a totally 
 different nature ; differing from these, as a per- 
 fect Ideal Poem does from a coiTect Computation 
 in Arithmetic. He who compares it with such 
 standards may lament that, beyond the mere let- 
 ter, the purport of this divine Humility has 
 never been disclosed to him ; that the loftiest 
 feeling hitherto vouchsafed to mankind is yet 
 hidden from his eyes. * . . . . AVe under- 
 stand ourselves to be risking no new assertion, 
 but simply repeating what is abead}- the convic- 
 tion of the gi-eatest of our age, when we say, — 
 that cheerfully recognising, gratefully appropri- 
 ating whatever Voltaire has proved, or any other 
 man has proved, or shall prove, the Christian 
 Eeligion, once here, cannot again pass away; 
 that in one or the other form, it will endure 
 through all time ; that as in Scripture, so also 
 in the heart of man, is wiitten, ' the Gates of Hell 
 
 * Voltaire, p. 173. 
 
CARLYLE'S relation to CHRISTIANITY. 51 
 
 shall not prevail against it.' Were the meaning 
 of this Faith never so obscured, as, indeed, in 
 all times, the coarse passions and perceptions 
 of the world do all but obHterate it in the hearts 
 of most ; yet in every pure soul, in every Poet 
 and Wise Man, it finds a new Missionary, a new 
 Martyr, tiU the great volume of Universal History 
 is finally closed, and man's destinies are fulfilled 
 in this earth. ' It is a height to which the human 
 species were fated and enabled to attain ; and 
 from which, having once retained it, they can 
 never retrograde." * 
 
 These views of the historical significance of 
 Christianity are almost identical with Goethe's; 
 but as to the nature of Christianity itself, the two 
 men take widely divergent paths. 
 
 " Christianity as * the religion of expiation ' 
 has two poles, between which all Christian life 
 oscillates : the one, negative, is the consciousness 
 of sin, or of a contrast between God and man ; 
 the other, the positive pole, is the conscious- 
 ness of gi'ace, or of the annulling of that con- 
 trast, of the reconcilement of the disunited, 
 and the reunion of God and man. According 
 to the diversity in natures, the attractive power 
 of Christianity rests now upon the side of 
 
 Essay on Voltaire, pp. 172-174. 
 
52 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the negative and now upon that of the positive 
 pole." * 
 
 If we apply this idea to Carlyle, we come to 
 the conclusion that with him, exactly as with 
 Kant, Calvin, Knox, Cromwell, and all other men 
 who have grown up under the influence of de- 
 fined notions of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, 
 sympathy is found to be more on the side of the 
 negative pole — decidedly in contrast to Goethe. 
 
 The extent of the preponderating notions as 
 to sinfulness and the imperfectness of human 
 nature induced Carlyle to take this position — 
 perhaps already well grounded in his nature, 
 at all events, further developed by education. 
 
 Here views inherited from his ancestors sud- 
 denly stand out in rugged contrast to the Reli- 
 gious Idealism of his soul, and here lies darkly 
 and mvstcriously the essence of the contradic- 
 tion of his religious %'iews so enigmatically split 
 asunder. 
 
 Carlyle, whom we even now hear saying : Man 
 is a divine mystery, every man has an immortal 
 soul which is the miiTor and living reflection 
 of God ; Carlyle, whose gentle soul fully coincides 
 with the behef that an infinite and powerful Good 
 
 * These words, taken from a paper of Otto Pfleiderer's on 
 "Goethe's Conception of ReHRion," are to be found in the 
 "Protestantische Kirchenzeitung," April 11, 1883. 
 
CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 53 
 
 exists, a God, to wliom every man's well being 
 and perfection lies near, who, as the " Omnipo- 
 tent" and the "All-Good" is able to find ways 
 and means to advance the perfection of every 
 man, to purify every man ; Carlyle, when he steps 
 forth as " admonisher," and tries to show the 
 absolute necessity of the morality of the world 
 with fire and sword— as he has himself con- 
 fessed — has gone hand in hand with Calvinism 
 in the question of Predestination. 
 
 And though this conviction as to the possi- 
 bility of the complete damnation of mankind — 
 in the Dantean sense— did not cause him to be- 
 come a pessimist (what the logical result of it 
 would have been), as a result of it, his religious 
 views were always tinged with a sort of melan- 
 choly, dejection and sadness which shows a pro- 
 digious digression from Goethe's religious views. 
 " Religion contains an infinite amount of sad- 
 ness,"— this sentence of Novulis' comes du-ectly 
 from his heart. The religion of sadness, the re- 
 ligion of suffering, is his constantly recurring 
 definition of Christianity. Goethe's expression, 
 " the sanctuary of pain " he admitted completely 
 into his realm of ideas and quoted it repeatedly. 
 
 To be sure, we often find in his Journal such 
 expressions as the following: "I say to myself, 
 why shouldst thou not be thankful? God is 
 
54 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 good, all this life is a heavenly miracle, great, 
 though stern and sad." " The universe is full 
 of love, but also of inexorable sternness and 
 severity, and it remains for ever true that God 
 reigns." 
 
 But the grim sternness and the inexorable harsh- 
 ness which the ever insufficient nature of man 
 brings "svith it, appears always like a ghost be- 
 tween him and God, and robs him — at least at 
 times — of the content of his OAvai soul. 
 
 "I, like all mortals, have to feel the inexorable 
 that there is iu life, and to say, as piously as 
 I can : God's wiU, God's will! " \ . . " Sunt 
 lacrimce rerum ! Fracixis hello, fessus annis'' he 
 writes. " The deepest De Profandis was trifling 
 in comparison with the feelings in my heart. 
 There is nothing but wail and lamentation in the 
 heart of all my thoughts." " I am very wae and 
 lonely here," he writes to his wife, " take care, 
 take care of thy poor little self, for truly enough, 
 I have no other ! " "A solemn kind of sadness, 
 a gloom of mind which, though heavy to bear, 
 is not uuallied with sacrodnc^ss and blessedness." 
 " There is nothing of joyful iu my life, nor ever 
 likely to be ; no truly loved or loving soul — or 
 practically as good as none — left to me in the 
 earth any more. The one object that is wholly 
 beautiful and noble, and in any sort helpful to 
 
CAELYLE's KELATION to CHRISTIANITY. 55 
 
 my poor lieart, is she whom I do not name. The 
 thought of her is drowned in sorrow to me, but 
 also in tenderness, in love inexpressible." "'' 
 
 A deep insiglit into his Hfe is given in a letter 
 ■\mtten on June 12, 1847, to the excellent Thomas 
 Erskine, of Linlathen : " One is warned by Nature 
 herself not to ' sit down by the side of sad thoughts,' 
 as my friend OUver has it, and dwell voluntarily 
 with what is son-owful and painful. Yet at the 
 same time one has to say for one's self — at least 
 I have — that all the good I ever got, came to 
 me rather in the shape of sorrow : that there is 
 nothing noble or godhke in the world but has 
 in it something of ' infinite sadness,' very differ- 
 ent indeed from what the current moral philoso- 
 phies represent to us." t 
 
 This shows the seriousness, the sadness and 
 melancholy with which his whole thought is 
 penetrated. It is the rebound of his soul, and 
 of the infinite suffering with which his life is 
 filled. The single hidden reason for all this ap- 
 pears to lie in ihe much too tender nature of 
 his heart, which is always being wounded, even 
 in his love for his wife — and furthermore in 
 the peculiar excitability of his nature. His wife 
 
 * Jonrnal, Sep. 30, 1867. 
 
 t Froude's Lile of Carlyle, Franklin Square Ed., vol. ii., p. 6. 
 
56 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 was once taken when she was very ill to the 
 baths at St. Leonards, while he himself was re- 
 turning to his work in London, and when the 
 sufferer was somewhat better, he writes, on Sep- 
 tember 29th, 1864, in answer to a letter from her : 
 
 " Oh, my suffering little Jeannie ! Not a wink 
 of real sleep again for you. I read (your letter) 
 with that kind of heart you may suppose in the 
 bright beautiful morning. And yet, dearest, there 
 is something in your note that is welcomer to 
 me than anything I have yet had — a sound of 
 piety, of devout humiliation and gentle hope, and 
 submission to the Highest, which affects me much 
 and has been a great comfort for me. Yes, poor 
 darling ! This was wanted. Proud stoicism you 
 never failed in, nor do I want you to abate of 
 it. But there is something l)eyond of which I be- 
 lieve you have had too little. It softens the angry 
 heart and is far from weakening it — nay, is the 
 final strength of it, the fountain and nourish- 
 ment of all real strength. Come home to your 
 
 own poor nest again AVe have had 
 
 a gi'cat deal of hard travelling together, we will 
 not break down yet, please God." 
 
 This letter fits completely into this connection. 
 It shows what his real trouble was ; what op- 
 pressed him ; what made him unhappy ; what 
 filled his whole life with gloom and sadness, and 
 
CARLYLE's relation to CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 what a sombre veil beclouded his religion. All 
 of which, however beautiful the pictiu-e that pro- 
 duces this " ascetic pessimistic " aspect of Chris- 
 tianit}^, actually interfered with his keeping a 
 strong grasp on that joyous, sunny height of 
 Goethe's standpoint, whose " preeminently happy 
 spirit," conscious of moral gi-eatness, willingly ad- 
 mits "man's hereditary shortcomings," but without 
 laying special stress upon this, and being com- 
 pletely lifted above soitow and sin, soars to that 
 " sublime view of the world," where satisfaction, 
 in the bitterest suffering itself, consists in "recog- 
 nising God," no matter how and where He may 
 reveal himself. That is the actual blessedness on 
 Earth. 
 
 " Were not the ej'e so luminous, 
 How could it ever see the sun ? 
 Lived not in us God's influence, 
 How could the divine dehght us ? " * 
 
 This is Goethe's unflinching belief in the divine 
 nature of man, a belief which could never in any 
 way be affected by the gloomy influence of the 
 doctrine of jDredestination. It was this belief 
 in the " natural holiness of human nature " that 
 separated Goethe, once for all, from the followers 
 of the Augustinian doctrines, Luther himself in- 
 
 * Goethe, Spruche in Prosa, p. 120. Ed. Leoper. 
 
58 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 eluded, and led him to the party of Pelagius. It 
 was as he himself called it, " Christianity for his 
 own private use." * 
 
 If with Goethe this free and joyous contempla- 
 tion of Ufe, in strong contrast to the gloomy and 
 untrue teachings of the extreme insufficiency of 
 human nature, was always able to win the vic- 
 tory, it was — however obstructed by gloomy views — 
 fundamentally the same as that of Carlyle. 
 
 The optimistic and rehgious Idealism took pos- 
 session of his soul, just as it does in the case 
 of every healthy man's, and it was constantly 
 brought home to him that " the gate of Hell shall 
 have no strength." 
 
 He cries out : " The Earth is not — in the name 
 of God — a place of bitter hopelessness for any 
 living creature, but it is emphatically the place of 
 hope for all." t 
 
 " One asks, Is man alone born to sorrow that 
 has neither healing nor blessedness in it? All 
 nature, from all corners, answers. No — for all 
 the wise. No. Only Yea for the unwise, who 
 have man's susceptibilities, appetites, capabilities, 
 and not the insights and rugged vii-tues of men." % 
 
 " Yes, the Redeemer Uveth. He is no Jew, or 
 
 * Wahrheit unci Diclaturg, (Hempel) vol. iii, p. 178. 
 t Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. iii., p. 15. 
 tOp. cit., p. 42. 
 
CAKLYLE'S relation to CHRISTIANITY. 59 
 
 image of a man, or surplice, or old creed, but 
 the Unnamable Maker of us, voiceless, formless 
 within our own soul, whose voice is every noble 
 and genuine impulse of our souls. He is yet 
 there, in us and around us, and ice are there. 
 No Eremite or fanatic whatever had more than 
 we have ; how much less had most of them ? " 
 
 Carlyle's Calvinistic views stand not altogether 
 in inexplicable contradiction to this sentiment. 
 AVhat induced him to doubt of the insufficiency 
 of human nature — divine as it is and should be — 
 what led him to a complete and exaggerated 
 contempt for the world, was his unrelenting hate 
 of the evil, and the immoral as it exists, as a 
 rather large factor in the world's history. This 
 is a point which properly belongs to the Chapter 
 on Ethics, but must, nevertheless, be discussed 
 here, where he defines his position as to Predes- 
 tination and Christianity in general. 
 
 The moral duty imposed upon us by God, 
 whose fulfillment — as Carlyle has ah-eady said — 
 is our divine rigid, mil only be recognized by 
 a few, and performed by still fewer. Only the 
 soul of a hero can perform it — a man of extra- 
 ordinary greatness and mellowness — a man chosen 
 by God ; average humanity deprives itself of this 
 heroism ; does not listen to the voice of its heart, 
 which is the command of God ; and so misses 
 
60 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 its divine call. And as the noble man can only 
 hate and despise what is worthless, so does also 
 the righteous God. That the just God judges 
 according to a higher law than that of human 
 morality, that with him it is the law of love 
 which judges, finds in Carlyle no fixed abode. 
 AVhere the question is one of the practical fur- 
 therance of moraUty, Carlyle comes out strongly 
 as " admouisher." Here — and here only — is 
 Carlyle's God found. The Old Testament God, 
 the punishing and revengeful God is his, and his 
 religion might be said to be that of " Job, Isaiah 
 and Ezekiel." His bosom is filled with hatred 
 and revenge toward the unwoiihy. The Christian 
 doctrine of forgiveness and of human love re- 
 cedes, and Hell opens her gates f(n- the wicked 
 who have devoted themselves voluntarily to des- 
 truction, and with whom God and Eternity can 
 have nothing in common. 
 
 At this jioint Carlyle returns to the doctrines 
 of the Church, but fails to reach the heights which 
 the Christianity of Goethe and Schiller embraced. 
 Carlyle forgets the words : 
 
 " All sins shall be forgiven, 
 And Hell shall no more be." 
 
 One can see from these views of the justice 
 of the punishing God, how Carlyle clung to the 
 ascetic-pessimistic aspect of Christianity ; how 
 
CARLYLE's EELATION to CHRISTIANITY. 61 
 
 it was that the idea of mercy and of love — which, 
 placed above everything else, even justice itself, 
 and finally carrying victory with it — was always 
 receding with him, and especially when it comes 
 to the point of inciting to morality the degener- 
 ated elements of the world. 
 
 That these gloomy views do not play an im- 
 portant role with Carlyle ; that the " religion of 
 expiation," in its chief significance as a mercy 
 bringer, finds an explanation in him, remains in 
 spite of ever}i;hing, a determined fact, though Car- 
 lyle as a " prophet " and preacher (and that he 
 considered was his mission in life) did not recog- 
 nize the "unrestricted" free and "joyful Godli- 
 ness " acknowledged by Goethe as the final goal. 
 Carlyle had not studied in the school of antiquity 
 as had Goethe. For his ovm. inner experience 
 there was no morality which had not been won 
 by severe battles; no morality which, as a free 
 gift of Nature, is given to man in his cradle. 
 Carlyle's birth, his education, his whole nature 
 had denied him •' the hopeful and happy spirit " — 
 which, however, would not have been necessary 
 to assist him to conquer the passionate battles 
 against immorality. That, however, the " Sinai's 
 thunder " of the punishing God did not indicate 
 his latest views on this subject cannot be too 
 .earnestly emphasized. 
 
62 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " Can tliiinder from all the thirty -two azimuths, 
 repeated daily for centuries of years, make God's 
 Laws more godlike to me ? Brother, No. Per- 
 haps I am grown to be a man now ; and do not 
 need the thunder and the terror any longer ! Per- 
 haps I am above being frightened ; perha]>s it is 
 not Fear, but Reverence alone, that shall now 
 lead me ! Revelations, Inspirations ? Yes ; and 
 thy own god-created Soul ; dost thou not call 
 that a ' revelation ? ' AVho made Thee ? AVhere 
 didst Thou come from? The voice of Etcrnit}', 
 if thou be not a blasphemer and poor asphyxiated 
 mute, speaks with that tongue of thine ! Thou 
 art the latest Birth of Nature ; it is ' the Inspira- 
 tion of the Almighty ' tliat giveth th^e understand- 
 ing ! My brother, my brother ! " * 
 
 * Past ftnd Present, p. 108. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CARLYLE AND THE VARIOUS PHASES 
 
 OF CHRISTIANITY : THE CHURCH 
 
 AND THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 Motto: " IntoJerance, animosity can forward no cause, and 
 least of all becomes the cause of moral and religious truth. A 
 wise man has well reminded us ' that in any controversy the 
 moment we feel angrj- we have already ceased btrivinji; for Truth, 
 and begun striving for ourselves.'" — Carlyle's E.ssay on Vol- 
 taire, p. 181. 
 
 Ou October llth, 1841, Carlyle writfd to the 
 excellent and great Scotch divine, Chalmers : 
 " that you, with your generous, hopeful heart, 
 believe that there may still exist in our actual 
 churches enough of divine fire to awaken the 
 supine rich and the degraded poor, and act vic- 
 toriously against such a mass of pressing and 
 ever-accumulating evils — alas ! what worse could 
 be said of this by the bitterest ojiponent of it, 
 than that it is a noble hoping against hope, a 
 noble strenuous determination to gather from the 
 
64 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 dry deciduous tree wliat the green alone could 
 yield." * 
 
 Carlyle was not a bitter enemy to " tlie church" 
 as he has frequently been represented in Enjj^land. 
 He was of the deepest conviction that all man- 
 kind belong to one universal divine fellowship, 
 which, independent of churches, ceremonies and 
 liturgies, rests only and solely in the heart of 
 man. He was an enemy to falsehood and to 
 hypocritical intolerance ; and where, indeed, is 
 this more to be found in the world's history than 
 in priestcraft ? 
 
 His relation to the Church again is not essen- 
 tially different from Goethe's. 
 
 In his youth he attended the Scotch Presby- 
 terian Church, but later in life his experience 
 was similar to Goethe's. The mere externali- 
 ties of the Church, its accepted dogmas re- 
 pelled him. Carlyle was all his life of a pious 
 frame of mind, and was able to enter into the 
 feelings of the pious reverence of tlie savage 
 before his fetish, and of the heathen before his 
 idol. The sight of a fervently praying woman 
 in the cathedral at Briigge tilled him with melan- 
 choly — " a more beautiful ])icture than all the 
 pictures of Eubens and Rembrandt." He could 
 
 * Life of Chalmers (Hannn) p. 109. 
 
VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 65 
 
 tliorougLly imdcrstand that inner need — what it 
 is that impels a devout Catholic to long for the 
 mediation of a saint ; but all forms and empty 
 creeds, or creeds whose meaning he — after sin- 
 cere trial — could not comprehend, filled him with 
 the same feehng as the dull belief of a sceptic 
 did — with hoiTor and compassion. Like Goethe, he 
 remained true to the Bible during his whole life : 
 in Craigenputtock he read aloud from it for morn- 
 ing prayers. " In the poorest cottage," he says 
 in 1832, " is one Book, wherein for several thou- 
 sands of years, the spirit of man has found light, 
 and nourishment, and an interpreting response 
 to whatever is Deepest in him ; wherein still, to 
 this day, for the eye that will look well, the 
 mystery of Existence reflects itself, if nc^t re- 
 solved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed," 
 and again in 1867 he calls the Bible " the truest 
 of all books," * as earlier, in 1850, he had alluded 
 to it as " the most earnest of books," t and it 
 was to the end of his life — as well as Goethe and 
 Shakespeare — his faithful companion. X That he 
 recognized, as Goethe did, that there were other 
 revelations, we see from the following : " One 
 
 * Shooting Niagara, p. 221. 
 
 t Latter-Daj' Pamphlets, p. 274. 
 
 X Froude'a Life of Carlyle, vol. iv., chap. 24. 
 
66 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Bible I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration clonbt 
 is not so mucli as possible ; nay, witli my own 
 eyes I saw the Gocl's-Hand writing it ; thereof 
 all other Bibles are but Leaves, — say, in Picture- 
 AVriting to assist the weaker faculty." * 
 
 Goethe writes to Lavater, August 0th, 1782, 
 " You consider the Gospel as it stands divine 
 Truth. A distinct voice fi-om Heaven would not 
 con^'ince me that water burns and fire quenches, 
 that birth may be miraculous, and that a dead 
 person is raised to life ; far more do I consider 
 all this blasphemy against the gi-eat God and his 
 revelations in Nature. You find nothing more 
 beautiful than the Gospi-ls ; I find a thousand 
 written pages by ancients and moderns just as 
 beautiful and useful and iudispensible to human- 
 
 These words describe Carlyle's position per- 
 fectly. " x\.rt thou a giown baby, then, to fancy 
 that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in 
 pounds of avoirdupois; and not to see tliat 
 the true inexplicable God-revealing miracle lies 
 in this, that I can stretch fortli my hand at 
 all ; that I have free Force 1 1 chitch auglit 
 therewith ? " t Man'is a gi-eat miracle, sufficient- 
 
 * Sartor Kesartus, p. IM. 
 fOp. cit, p. 182. 
 
VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 
 
 ly inexplicable, so that others are entirely super- 
 fluous. Things were regarded by many men as 
 miracles which were simply incredible, and which 
 could not be supported or made credible by logic 
 or '* metaphysical hocus-pocus " or " theosophical 
 moonshine." 
 
 When such ceremonies as baptism throw Goethe 
 so out of tune that he cannot be present at them ; 
 when in Meiuingen he is displeased because his 
 residence is opposite a church, and he writes on 
 May 12th, 1782, to Frau von Stein: "Here I 
 live opposite a church, which is a terrible situa- 
 tion for one who neither prays upon this or that 
 mountain, and has no prescribed hours to wor- 
 ship God ; " and when Schiller frankly declares 
 that " no sermon precisely pleases him," it is 
 exactly what we often meet with in Carlyle's Jour- 
 nal and works. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the beginning of his London 
 life, he made an attempt to identify himself with 
 some church, but in vain. " I tried various chap- 
 els ; I found in each some vulgar, illiterate man 
 declaiming about matters of which he knew noth- 
 ing. I tried the Church of England. I found 
 there a decent educated gentleman reading out 
 of a book words very beautiful, which had ex- 
 pressed once the serious thoughts of pious, ad- 
 mirable souls. I decidedly preferred the Church 
 
68 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of England man ; but I luul to say to liim : * I 
 perceive, sir, that at the bottom you know as little 
 about the matter as the other fellow.' " - 
 
 " It is every way strange to consider," be once 
 ■s\Tote, " what Christianity, so-called, has grown 
 to within these two centuries — on the Howard 
 and Fry side as on every other — a paltry, mealy- 
 mouthed ' religion of cowards,' which also, as I 
 believe, awaits its * abolition ' from the avenging 
 power. If men will turn away their faces from 
 God and set up idols, temporary phantasms, in- 
 stead of the Eternal One — alas ! the consequences 
 are from of old well known." t 
 
 Carlyle's position as to the Church on the one 
 hand, and dogmatic theological science on the 
 other, finds an explanation in his comprehension 
 of the idea of God. 
 
 When Sterling took exception to Professor 
 Teufelsdrockh's God because it a])peared to be 
 " no personal God," Carlyle replied : " A grave 
 charge, nevertheless — an awful charge — to which, 
 if I mistake not, the Professor, laying his hand 
 on his heart, will reply with some gesture ex- 
 pressing the solemnest denittl. In gesture rather 
 than in speech, for the Iliyheat cannot be spoken 
 
 * Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. iii., p. 10. 
 t Op. cit., vol. iv., p. 6. 
 
VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 
 
 in words. Personal ! Impersonal ! Me ! Thou ! 
 What meaning can any mortal (after all) attach 
 to tliem in reference to such an object ? Wer 
 darf Ihii nennen f I dare not and do not. That 
 you dare and do (to some gi-eater extent) is a 
 matter I am far from taking offence at. Nay, 
 with all sincerity, I can rejoice that you have 
 a creed of that kind which gives you happy 
 thoughts, nerves you for good actions, brings 
 you into readier communion with many good 
 men. My true wish is, that such a creed may 
 long hold compactly together in you, and be * a 
 covert from the heat, a shelter from the storm, 
 as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' 
 Well is it, if we have a printed litany to pray 
 fi'om ; and yet not ill if we can pray in silence ; 
 for silence, too, is audible there. Finally, assume 
 yourself that I am neither Pagan nor Turk, nor 
 circumcised Jew, but an unfortunate Christian 
 individual resident at Chelsea in this year of 
 gi'ace, neither Pantheist, nor Pot-theist, nor any 
 Theist or 1st whatsoever, having the most de- 
 cided contempt for all such manner of system- 
 builders or sect-founders — as far as contempt 
 may be compatible with so mild a nature — feel- 
 ing well beforehand (taught by long experience) 
 that all such are and ever must be wrong. By 
 God's blessing, one has got two eyes to look 
 
70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 with, alco a mind capable of knowing, of believ- 
 ing. This is all the creed I Anil at this time in- 
 sist on. And now may I beg one thing, that 
 whenever in my thoughts or your own, you fall 
 on any dogma that tends to estrange you from me, 
 pray believe that to be false, false as Beelzebub, 
 till you get clearer evidence." * 
 
 The preceding words clearly show the bent of 
 Carlyle's mind towards religious matters. As he 
 himself was continually saying with severeness, 
 " creeils the recital of certain ceremonies," 
 " the thirty-nine articles," rituals and liturgies, 
 hierarchies, and catechisms have nothing whatever 
 to dc with the nature of lielief itself, with religion 
 itself, for " religion is no mere external append- 
 age ; " those things are only the outer husk, those 
 same church clothes " have gone son'owfully out- 
 at-elbows ; " first must the dead letter of religion 
 own itself d(>ad, if the living spirit of religion is 
 to arise on us, " newborn of Heaven." t 
 
 Religion is the heavenly light which slumbers 
 in the soul of man. % It is the great, heavenly 
 di^'ine truth which has been left to us as a joy, a 
 comfort, and a protection in the midst of the 
 
 * Froude's Life of Carlyle, vol. iii., p. 10. 
 f Sartor Resartns, hk. ii., chap. 3. 
 X Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 195. 
 
VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 
 
 changeful cycles of the world ; it is an eternal 
 truth whicli we can never question, " it does not 
 consist in the many things which man is in doubt 
 of and tries to beUeve, but of the few he is assured 
 of, and has no need of effort for believing." 
 
 Therefore it is vain, impossible, and for the 
 weak mind it is even dangerous and injurious to 
 attempt to prove the necessity, the possibility of 
 religion according to a metaphysical method ; it 
 is impossible, because rehgion is not a thing of 
 logical or mathematical understanding, but of the 
 human, feeling heart, of living belief. " An amal- 
 gam of Christian verities " and modern critical 
 philosophy was and could bo nothing else but 
 " poisonous insincerity." "" But this subject is 
 well treated in Carlyle's Life of Sterling. 
 
 There is found a delicately executed picture of •" 
 the earnest and true endeavour of John Sterling 
 to bring theology into harmony and relation with 
 the critical philosophy of Kant — according to 
 Coleridge's example — and of the disastrous effect 
 of this endeavour upon a true and frank nature. 
 
 " No man of Sterling's veracity, had he clearly 
 consulted his own heart, or had his own heart 
 been capable of clearly responding, and not been 
 dazzled and bewildered by transient phantasies 
 
 * Froude's Life of Carlj'le, vol. iii., chap. 2. 
 
72 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 and tlieosopliic nloonshme— could have imder- 
 takeu this function. His heaii would have an- 
 swered : 'No, thou canst not.' 'What is in- 
 crediV)le to thee, thou shalt not, at thy soul's 
 peril, attempt to believe!' Else whither for a 
 refuge, or die here. Go to Perdition if thou 
 must,— but not with a lie in thy mouth ; by 
 the Eternal Maker, no ! " * 
 
 " Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to tind 
 sanctuary in the old Church, and desperately 
 gi-asp the hem of her garment in such manner, 
 there will at present be many opinions : and mine 
 must be recorded here in tlat reproval of it, in 
 mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, 
 
 unwise and unpermitted step Alas, 
 
 if we did remember the divine and awful nature 
 of God's Trutli, and had not so forgotten it as 
 poor doomed creatures never did before, — should 
 we, durst we, in our most audacious moments, 
 think of wedding it to the world's Untruth, which 
 is also, hke all untruths, the Devil's? Only in 
 in the world's last lethargy can such things be 
 done, and accounted safe and pious ! Fools ! 
 ' Do you think the living God is a buzzard idol,' 
 sternly asks Milton, ' that you dare adthess Him 
 in this manner ? ' Such darkness, thick sluggish 
 
 * Carlyle's Life of Sterling, chap. 2, 
 
VARIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 clouds of cowardice and oblivious baseness, have 
 accumulated on us : thickening as if towards the 
 eternal sleep! It is not now known, Avhat never 
 needed proof or statement before, that Religion 
 is not a doubt ; that it is a certainty, — or else a 
 mockery and hoiTor. That none or all of the 
 many things we are in doubt about, and need to 
 have demonstrated and rendered probable, can, 
 by any alchymy be made a * Religion ' for us • 
 but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or 
 unquiet Hypocrisy for us; and bring — salvation, 
 do we fancy ? I think, it is another thing they 
 will bring, and are on all hands, visibly bringing, 
 this good while ! " " 
 
 In the same text is found Carlyle's terrible cas- 
 tigatory sermon against the Jesuits : 
 
 " Man's reUgion, whatever it may be, is a dis- 
 cerned fact, and coherent system of discerned 
 facts ; he stands fronting the worlds and eterni- 
 ties upon it . to douht of it is not permissible at 
 all ! He must verify or expel his doubts, convert 
 them into certainty of Yes or No ; or they will 
 be the death of his religion. But, on the other 
 hand, convert tliem into certainty of Yes an^No; 
 or even of Yes though No, as the Ignatian method 
 is, what mil become of your religion ? . . . . 
 
 * Carlyle's Life of Sterling, Part I., chai. 15. 
 
74 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Tlie religion of a man in these strange circum- 
 stances, what living conviction he has about his 
 Destiny in this Universe, falls into a most strange 
 condition ; — and, in truth, I have observed, is 
 apt to take refuge in the stomach mainly. The 
 man goes through his prescribed fugle-motions 
 at church and elsewhere, keeping his conscience 
 and sense of decency at ease thereby ; and in 
 some empty part of his brain, if he have fancy 
 left, or brain other than a beaver's, there goes 
 on occasionally some dance of dreamy hypotheses, 
 sentimental echoes, shadows, and other inane 
 make-believes, — which I think are quite the con- 
 trary of a possession to him ; leading to no clear 
 Faith, or divine life-and-death Certainty of any 
 kind ; but to a torpid species of delirium soin- 
 nians and delirium stertens rather. In his head 
 or in his heart this man has of available religion 
 none. 
 
 The Pig Philosophy is the result of such 
 manceuATing. 
 
 If Carlyle ever touches upon this subject, he 
 takes especial pains to censure Coleridge's course, 
 in which more or less successful and excellent 
 men, such as Maurice, Kingsley, Hare and Ster- 
 ling, have sought their happiness ; but the true 
 
 * Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 267. 
 
VAEIOUS PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 75 
 
 kernel, Coleridge's honest effort, he by no means 
 misconceived. 
 
 " Let me not be unjust to this memorable man," 
 he says. " Surely there was here, in his pious, 
 ever-labouring, subtle mind, a precious truth, or 
 prefigurement of truth ; and yet a fatal delusion 
 withal. Prefigurement that, in spite of beaver 
 sciences and temporary spiritual hebetude and 
 cecity, man and his Universe were eternally di- 
 vine ; and that no past nobleness, or revelation 
 of the divine, could or would ever be lost to him. 
 Most true, surely, and worthy of all acceptance. 
 Good also to do what you can with old Churches 
 and practical Symbols of the Noble : nay, quit 
 not the burnt ruins of them while you find there 
 is still gold to be dug there. But, on the whole, 
 do not think you can, by logical alchymy, distil 
 astral spii-its from them ; or, if you could, that 
 said astral spirits, or defunct logical phantasms, 
 could serve you in anything. What the light of 
 your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the 
 Almighty, pronounces incredible, — that, in God's 
 name, leave uncredited ; at your peril do not try 
 behaving that. No subtlest hocus-pocus of ' rea- 
 son ' versus ' understanding ' will avail for that 
 feat, — and it is terribly perilous to try it in these 
 provinces ! " * 
 
 * Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 53. 
 
76 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The same tlioiiglit is expressed in a letter writ- 
 ten to Sterling on June 7tli, 1837 : 
 
 " You announce that j^ou are rather quitting 
 philosophy and theology — I predict that you will 
 quit them more and more. I give it you as my 
 decided prognosis that the two provinces in ques- 
 tion are become theorem, brain-web and shadow, 
 wherein no earnest soul can find solidity for it- 
 self. Shadow, I say ; yet the shadow projected 
 from an everlasting reality that is within our- 
 selves. Quit the shadow. Seek the reality." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 GOD. 
 
 It may now be stated in a very few words wliat 
 Carlyle regarded as the " truth." 
 
 No " new religion " need be looked for. " Sim- 
 ple souls still clamour occasionally for what they 
 call a 'new religion.' My friends, you will not 
 get this new religion of yours; — I perceive you 
 ah-eady have it, always had it ! All that is true 
 is your 'religion,' — is it not? Commanded by 
 the Eternal God to be j?d;/or?Met?, I should think, 
 
 if it is true ! 
 
 "Your way of looking at life has been at aU 
 times a mirror picture of mankind, and ' if you 
 have now no Heaven to look to; if you now 
 sprawl, lamed and lost, sunk to the chin in the 
 pathless sloughs of this lower world without guid- 
 ance fi'om above, know that the fault is not 
 Heaven's at all, but your own ! . . . . Arise, 
 make this thing more divine, and that thing,^ 
 and thyself, of all things; and work, and sleep 
 
78 THOMAS CARLYLE, 
 
 not; for the niglit cometli, wherem no man can 
 work ! " * 
 
 " This new religion is no pill to be swallowed 
 down — it is l^ut a reawakening of thy own Self 
 from within." t It must exert itself to obtain a 
 true and warm belief in God and to reach moral 
 activity. This new reUgion consists in the re- 
 conquered and resuoitated religious feeling of a 
 change of heart. Therein lies the real salvation 
 of the world. 
 
 " The Maker's Laws, whether they are promul- 
 gated in Sinai Thunder, to the ear or imagina- 
 tion, or quite otherwise promulgated, are the 
 Laws of God ; transcendant, everlasting, impera- 
 tively demanding obedience from all men. The 
 Universe is made by Law ; the great Soul of the 
 World is just and not unjust. Look then, if thou 
 have eyes or soid k'ft, into this shoreless Incom- 
 prehensible : into the heart of its tumultuous 
 Appearances, Embroilments, and mad Time-Vor- 
 texes, is there not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an 
 All-beautiful ; sole Ecality and ultimate control- 
 ling power of the whole ? This is not a figure 
 of speech ; this is a fact. The fact of Gravita- 
 tion, known to all animals, is not surer than this 
 
 * Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 285. 
 t Past and Present, p. 199. 
 
GOD. 79 
 
 inner Fact, which may be known to all men. He 
 who knows this, it will sink, silent, awful, un- 
 speakable into his heart. He will say with 
 Faust : ' Who dare name Him ? ' Most rituals or 
 ' namings ' he will fall in with at present, are 
 like to bo ' namings ' — which shall be nameless ! 
 In silence, in the Eternal Temple, let him wor- 
 ship, if there be no tit word. Such knowledge, 
 the crown of his whole spiritual being, the life 
 of his hfe, let him keep and sacredly walk by. 
 He has a rehgion. Hourly and daih^ for him- 
 self and for the whole world, a faithful, un- 
 spoken, but not ineflectual prayer rises, ' Thy 
 will be done.' His whole work on Eaiih is an 
 emblematic spoken or acted prayer. Be the will 
 of God done on Earth, — not the Devil's will, 
 or any of the Devil's servant's wills ! He has 
 a religion, this man ; an everlasting Load-star 
 that beams the brighter in the Heavens, the 
 darker here on Earth grows the night around 
 him." * 
 
 To perform God's will, to live a pious life, that 
 is Carlyle's simple doctrine — whether the heart 
 feels happy in it or not, is not taken into con- 
 sideration at all : man must keep God's com- 
 mandments, must be moral. And only so far as 
 
 * Carlyle's Past and Present, p. 107. 
 
80 THOMAS CALLYLE. 
 
 Christianity teaches this, oulj so far as the Chris- 
 tian is the most perfect ideal of a " moral Re- 
 ligion," does Carlyle feel respect for it. He has 
 nothing whatever to do %\'ith " forms, rituals, 
 creeds and ceremonies," as he himself always 
 Bays. To use Fichte's words : " his religious ideas 
 are not concerned ■vs'ith imputing qualities to 
 God which are acknowledged, or should be ac- 
 knowledged, as having no reference to our moral 
 destiny.'* 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CABLYLE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SCI- 
 ENCE, AND ESPECIALLY TO- 
 WARD PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 C'est d' Allemagne que Carlyle a tir^ ees plus grand idc'es. 
 
 n y a Otudie De 1780 fi 1830 TAllemagne a produit 
 
 toutes les idees de notre age historique, et pendant un demi — 
 siCcle encore, pendant un siCcle pent-etre, notre grandes affaire 
 sera de les repcnser. — Taine, IdCjilisme Anglais p. 72 ; also in 
 bis Lit. Hist., 5, 4, §2 1, p. C38. [English Translation.] 
 
 An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge. — Carlyle's Essay 
 on Chartism, p. 178. 
 
 From Carlyle's deepest conviction that the — 
 unconsciously living — religious feeling of vener- 
 ation for the divine which is everywhere present, 
 not only satisfies the highest moral needs, but 
 actually constitutes the only highest development 
 of mankind — is shown his attitude towards science 
 in general, and philosophy in particular. 
 
 If the *' philosophical-scientific tendency " of 
 the times (as Fichte expresses it) is inclined 
 " to grant nothing but what is comprehensible," 
 and nothing but what the " carpenter's rule " can 
 establish ; if merely sensuous empiricism relies 
 
82 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 on Science whose foundations are merely based 
 upon logical conclusions and deductions; if it 
 attempts to ignore or suppress the incomprehen- 
 sible, the mysterious, the transcendental and the 
 metaphysical which represents the element of 
 rehgiou ; * or if it shows it to be absurd fanati- 
 cism or mysticism, with such a state of things 
 which Carlyle finds too widely spread throughout 
 the whole of English and French philosophy up 
 to his own time, he has absolutely no sympathy. 
 
 But he joyfully recognized the results and 
 ideals of the " real " philosophy which he be- 
 lieyed was found in the efibrts of the German 
 thinkers — whose early dawn for England he saw 
 coming from Dugald Steward. 
 
 According to Carlyle's couyiction, an accurate 
 knowledge of the nature of philosophy and its 
 problems was first made possible in Germany by 
 the critical philosophy of Kant ; its problems 
 which (according to Carlyle's comprehension), in 
 order that the inner eye of truth might be opened, 
 rested upon an indubitable principle, and the 
 acceptance of "the absolutely and prmiitiyely 
 True ; " f rested upon the " i)rimitively True " 
 which, as the beginning of all philosophy, is 
 
 * Fichte, 7, 241. 
 
 t Essay, State of General Literature. 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 83 
 
 written in the soul of man ; rested upon that 
 truth which can never be uttered by philosophy 
 alone, whose existence philosophy herself will 
 never be able to prove, even with the help of logic 
 and science. 
 
 Carlyle awards to philosophy only a limited 
 province : he regards it only as a high and noble 
 means to a higher and nobler end ; to that higher 
 end which increases the view that " the belief in 
 Religion " for all men, as well as for thinkers 
 and philosophers, is the greatest gift that can 
 be bestowed — a gift which (according to his no- 
 tion) is even again only a means to an end — that 
 of some living achievement. 
 
 To have raised this idea to a scientific fact was 
 the service which the Germans — in his eyes — 
 had rendered to mankind, and his attitude toward 
 philosophy is found everywhere in his judgments 
 of the several directions which the history of 
 philosophy has taken. 
 
 'In most of the European nations there is no 
 such thing as a Science of Mind ; only more or 
 less advancement in the general sciences or the 
 
 special sciences of matter So it is 
 
 in France and in England, only the Germans 
 have made any decisive effoi-t in * psychological 
 science ; ' the science of the age, in short, is 
 physical, chemical, physiological ; in all shapes 
 
84 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 meclianical. Our fayourite matliematics, tlie high- 
 ly prized exponent of all these sciences, has also 
 become more and more mechanical. Excellence 
 in the higher branches of mathematics depends 
 less on the natural genius than on acquired ex- 
 jiertness in -wielding its machinery. AVithout nn- 
 deryaluiug the ^vonderfnl results Avhich a Lo- 
 gi'auge or a Laplace educes by means of it, we 
 may remark, that their calculus, dill'erential and 
 integral, is little else than a more cunningly con- 
 structed arithmetical mill ; when the faetor« being 
 put in, are, as it were, ground into the true 
 product, under coyer, and without ()th(U- eft'ort on 
 our part than a steady turning of the handles. 
 We haye more Mathematics than eyer ; but less 
 Mathesis, Archimedes and Plato could not have 
 read the Mechaniqiie Celede ; liut neither would 
 the whole French Institute see aught in the say- 
 ing, ' God geometrises ! ' but a sentimental rodo- 
 montrade." * 
 
 Since Locke's time our whole metaphysics has 
 not been spiritual, but physical and material. 
 The unusual respect with which his Essay has 
 always been held (a respect founded upon the 
 excellent character of the man), is an extraordi- 
 nary sign of the times. Its whole teaching, in 
 
 * Signs of the Times, pp. 23G 2:^7. 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 85 
 
 its methods and its results, is meelianical accord- 
 ing to its aim and origin. It is no philosophy of 
 the mind, only an examination of the origin of 
 consciousness, of our ideas — or, as we might say, 
 a history of their origin ; what we may be able 
 to see with the mind and in the mind ; of the 
 great mystery of our moral obligation and of 
 our moral freedom ; that restricted or unrestricted 
 dependence of matter on mind ; our mysterious 
 conceptions of Time and Space ; of God and the 
 Universe never once are touched upon in all 
 these examinations, and do not appear to have 
 the least connection with the purport of the 
 
 The earliest form of Scotch metaphysics had 
 an indistinct conception that this was false, but 
 they did not, however, attempt to correct it. 
 Reid's school had from the start taken a mechan- 
 ical trend, as no other seemed to appear to them ; 
 the wonderful conclusions which Hume reached — 
 starting from facts which had been accepted by 
 Eeid's School were founded by this same Scotch 
 School. They let " instinct " loose, like a mas- 
 tiff, in order to render their own position secure 
 from the adversaries. They i)ull themselves 
 merrily along — by the logical chains which Hume 
 threw out to them and to the whole world — into 
 the boundless abysses of Atheism and Fatalism. 
 
86 THOMAS CAliLYLE. 
 
 But in some way the chain broke between them, 
 and the end of the whole matter was that neither 
 one grieved for the other — even as httle as for 
 the contemporary philosophical movement in Eng- 
 land which was kept together by such men as 
 Hartley, Darwin and Priestley. Hartley's "vibra- 
 tions" and " vibratiuncles" were, one could easily 
 beheve, mechanical and material enough, but our 
 neighbours on the Continent could go still farther. 
 
 One of her philosophers has made the extra- 
 ordinary discovery that as the livor produces bile 
 so the brain secretes thoughts ; an astounding 
 fact this, which Dr. Cabanis recently in hi* Unp- 
 ■ports dn Physique ct da Moral de Vhomine has 
 followed to its extreme ends. Tlie metaphysics 
 of this searcher is, nevertheless, not shadowless 
 and unsubstantial ! AVith his operating knife 
 and his " psychological soumling leads " he dis- 
 sects the whole ethical structure of mankind, and 
 then ofl'ers it to the tliinking judgment of the 
 world under a microscope, blowing it loud through 
 his anatomical tube. Thought — he admits — is 
 still secreted in the brain ; but then, to be sure, 
 one could consistently conclude — an interesting 
 fact — that poetry and religion are both " product 
 of the smaller intestines ! " 
 
 "NVe cherish the greatest admiration for this 
 learned man ; with what scientitic Stoicism does he 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 87 
 
 not stride through the world of miracles without 
 being amazed ; like a philosopher through an enor- 
 mous Yauxhall, whose fireworks and Avater-falls 
 and dashing music is the joy and delight of the 
 crowd, but for him nothing more than " saltpetre, 
 pasteboard and catgut." - 
 
 We conclude here Carlyle's animadversions on 
 the mechanical aspects of English and French 
 philosophers, and turn our attention to his judg- 
 ment of those philosophies — especially the Ger- 
 man critical philosophy — which makes an end 
 of " perversion of all i)hilosophies." 
 
 " The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke 
 and all his followers, both of the French and 
 Euglish or Scotch Schools, commences from with- 
 in, and proceeds outwards ; instead of commenc- 
 ing from without, and, with various precautions 
 and hesitations, endeavouring to proceed inwards. 
 The ultimate aim of all Philosophy must be to 
 interpret appearances, — from the given symbol 
 to ascertain the thing. Now the first step to- 
 wards this, the aim of what may be called Pri-. 
 mary or Critical Philosophy, must be to find 
 some indubitable principle ; to fix ourselves on 
 some unchangeable basis ; to discover what the 
 Germans call the UncaJir, the Primitive Truth, 
 
 Essays, vol. ii., p, 238. 
 
88 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 tlie necessarily, absolutely aucl eterually True. 
 This necessarily True, this al)solute basis of 
 Truth, Locke silently, and Reid and his follo^yers 
 "Nvith more tumult, tiud in a certain modified Ex- 
 j)erience, and eyidence of Sense, in the uuiyersal 
 and natural persuasion of all men. Not so the 
 Germans : they deny that there is here any ab- 
 solute Truth, or that any Philosophy Avhateyer 
 can be built on such a basis ; nay, they go to 
 the length of asserting, that such an appeal eyen 
 to the uniyersal persuasions of mankind, gather 
 them with "svhat precautions you may, amounts 
 to a total abdication of Philosophy, strictly so 
 called, and renders not only its farther progi-ess, 
 but its very existence, impossible. What, they 
 would say, haye the persuasions, or instinctiyo 
 beliefs, or whatever they are called, of men, to 
 do in this matti-r '? Is it not the object of 
 Philosophy to enlighten, and rectify, and many 
 times directly contradict these very beliefs. . , . 
 The Germans take up this matter difi'erently, 
 and would assail Hume, not in his outworks, 
 l)ut in the centre of his citadel. They deny his 
 first principle, that Sense is the only inlet of 
 Knowledge, that Experience is the primary gi'ound 
 of Belief. Their Primitive Truth, however, they 
 seek, not historically and by experiment, in the 
 imiveral persuasions of men, but by intuition, 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 89 
 
 iu the deepest and purest nature of Man. In- 
 stead of attempting, wliicli they consider vain, 
 to prove the existence of God, Virtue, an im- 
 material Soul, by inferences drawn, as the con- 
 clusion of all Philosophy, torn the world of 
 Sense, they find these things written as the be- 
 ginning of all Philosophy, in obscured but iu- 
 eflaceable charactei-s, within our inmost being ; 
 and themselves first affording any certainty and 
 clear meaning to that very world of Sense, by 
 which we endeavour to demonstrate them. 
 
 " God ?Vs', nay, alone vV, for with like em]>hasis 
 we cannot say that anything else is. This is the 
 Absolute, the Primitively True, which the philo- 
 sopher seeks. Endeavoming, by logical argu- 
 ment, to prove the existence of God, a Kantist 
 might say, would be taking out a candle to look 
 for the sun ; nay, gaze steadily into your candle- 
 light, and the sun himself may be invisible. To 
 open the inward eye to the sight of this Prim- 
 itively True ; or rather we might call it, to clear 
 off the Obscurations of Sense, which eclipse this 
 truth within us, so that we may see it, and be- 
 lieve it not only to be true, but the foundation 
 and essence of all other truth, — mav, in such 
 language as we are hero using, be said to be the 
 problem of Critical Philosophy." * 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on The State of German Literatm-e, pp.,G7-69. 
 
90 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 " In this point of view, Kant's system may be 
 thouglit to have a remote affinity to those of 
 Malebranche and Descartes. But if they in some 
 measure agree as to their aim, there is the widest 
 difference as to the means. AVe state what to 
 ourselves has long appeared the grand charac- 
 teristic of Kant's Philosophy, when we mention 
 his distinction, sekloni perhaps expressed so 
 broadlv, but imiformly inipHed, between Under- 
 standing and Reason ( Vt'i\st(tnd and Yernunft). 
 To the Kantists, Understanding and Reason are 
 organs, or rather, we should say, modes of oper- 
 ation, by which the mind discovers Truth ; Imt 
 they think tliat their manner of proceeding 
 is essentially different ; that their provinces are 
 separable and distinguishal)le ; nay, that it is of 
 the last impoi-tance to separate and distinguish 
 them. Reason, the Kantists say, is of a higher 
 nature tlian Understanding; it works by more 
 subtle methods, or higher oV)jects, and requires 
 a far finer culture for its development ; indeed, 
 in many men it is never developed at all : Init 
 its results are no less certain, nay, rather they 
 are much more so ; for Reason discerns Truth 
 itself, the absolutely and primitively True ; while 
 the Understanding discerns only relatione, and 
 cannot decide ^^•ithout //. The proper province 
 of Understanding is all, strictly speaking, real. 
 
carlyle's attitude towakd science. 91 
 
 practical and material knowledge, — Mathematics, 
 Physics, Political Economy — the adaptation of 
 means to ends in the whole business of Hfe. In 
 this province it is the indispensable servant, 
 without which, indeed, existence itself would be 
 impossible. Let it not step beyond this pro\'ince, 
 however ; not usurp the province of Reason, 
 W'hicli it is appointed to obey, and cannot rule 
 over without ruin to the whole spiritual man. 
 Should Understanding attempt to prove the ex- 
 istence of God, it ends, if thorough-going and 
 consistent with itself, in Atheism, or a faint pos- 
 sible Theism, which scarcely diflers from this: 
 should it speculate of Virtue, it ends in Utility, 
 making Prudence and a sufficiently cunning love 
 of Self the highest good. Consult Understanding 
 about the Beauty of Poetry, and it asks. Where 
 is this Beauty ? or discovers it at len<jrth in 
 rhythms and fitnesses, and male and female 
 rhymes. Witness also its everlasting paradoxes 
 on Necessity and the Freedom of the Will ; its 
 ominous silence on the end and meaning of man ; 
 and the enigma which, under such inspection, 
 the w^hole purport of existence becomes." * 
 
 Carlyle's chief interest in the efforts and re- 
 sults of the Kantean Philosophy in particular, 
 
 Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, i>. 67-70. 
 
92 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 and of German Idealism in general, concerns it- 
 self less — as a consequence of the "whole tendency 
 of his religious "vdews — with the " theories of per- 
 ceptions " than with ethical and religious doc- 
 trines. 
 
 We do not wish to say anything of these views 
 which this philosophy reveals of the course and 
 development of the natural sciences, but we can- 
 not refrain from stating that for those who fol- 
 low it, its effects upon Ethics and Religion are 
 incalculable. 
 
 " The Critical Philosophy has been regarded 
 as the greatest intellectual achievement of the 
 century in which it came to light. August Wil- 
 helm Schlegel, whose opinion has a known value 
 for the English, has stated in plain terms his 
 belief, that in respect of its probable influence 
 on the moral culture of Europe, it stands on a 
 
 line with the Eeformation The noble 
 
 system of morality, the purer theology, the lofty 
 views of man's nature derived from it, nay, per- 
 haps the very discussion of such matters, to which 
 it gave so strong an impetus, have told with re- 
 markable and beneficial influence on the whole 
 spiritual character of Germany. No -wTiter of any 
 importance in that country, be he acquainted or 
 not with the Critical Philosophy, but breathes a 
 spirit of devoutness and elevation more or less 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 93 
 
 clirectlv di'awn from it. Such men as Goetlie and 
 Scliiller cannot exist without effect in any liter- 
 ature or in any century : but if one circumstance 
 more than another has contributed to forward 
 their endeavours, and introduce that higher tone 
 into the literature of Germany, it has been this 
 philosophical system ; to which, in wisely believ- 
 ing its results, or even in wisely denying them, 
 all tliat was lofty and pure in the genius of poetry, 
 or the reason of man,. so readily allied itself. " * 
 
 Thus Carlyle attaches the very highest impor- 
 tance to the Kantean Philosophy. It is now 
 only necessary to show that, in his eyes, Kant's 
 gi'cat successors have no really striking differ- 
 ences. The only thing which in the systems of 
 Fichte, Schelliug and Hegel, Carlyle considered 
 great and remarkable was the Idealism inter- 
 woven in them all ; in other respects he charac- 
 terized them simply as " these Kantean systems." 
 
 He was rather more, however, attached to 
 Fichte, whose manly bearing filled him with the 
 greatest reverence, than to any of the other 
 philosophers. 
 
 " The cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, stand- 
 ing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among 
 degenerate men ; fit to have been the teacher of 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, p. 66. 
 
94 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and 
 Yirtue in the gi-oves of Academe ! We state 
 Fichte's character, as it is known and admitted 
 by men of all parties among the Germans, when 
 we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, 
 so lofty, massive and immovable, has not mingled 
 in philosophical discussion since the time of 
 Luther. We figure his motionless look, had ho 
 heard the charge of mysticism which was made 
 against him in England. For the man rises be- 
 fore us, amid contradiction and debate, like a 
 gi-anite mountain amid clouds and wind. Ridi- 
 cule, of the best that could be commanded, has 
 been already tried against him ; but it could not 
 avail. What was the wit of a thousand Avits to 
 him ? The cry of a thousand choughs a.ssaidting 
 that old cliff of granite : seen from the sunmiit, 
 these, as they winged the midway air, showed 
 scarce so gross as beetles, and their cry was sel- 
 dom even audil)le. Fichte's opinions may be true 
 or false ; but his character, as a thinker, can be 
 slightly valued only by such as know it ill ; and 
 as a man, approved by action and suffering, in 
 his life and in his death, he ranks with a class 
 of men who were common only in better ages 
 than GUI'S."* 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, pp. 65-66. 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 95 
 
 Carlyle's aspirations were akin to Fichte's, 
 and as their sj^iritual development was similar, 
 Fichte miTst have attracted Carlyle, and uncon- 
 sciously exerted a great influence on him. 
 
 "We should be going too far if we attempted to 
 trace back to Fichte certain peculiarities of Car- 
 lyle's phraseology, and many of his important 
 utterances (this was actually done in several in- 
 stances by Novalis' instrumentality), but it is 
 nevertheless worthy of remark that Carlyle's 
 " Natural Superuaturalism " bears the strongest 
 resemblance to Fichte's idealism. 
 
 Similar to Fichte, his doctrine — founded upon 
 the " Divine Idea of the world which lies at the 
 bottom of Appearances " reached its climax in the 
 Ethical and the Religious. 
 
 And when Fichte says : " After all, this accord- 
 ing to my doctrine, is the true character of the 
 truly religious man. There is but one desire that 
 swells his breast and inspires his mind — the hap- 
 piness of all soul-inspired creatures. Thy king- 
 dom come ! is his prayer ; besides this nothing 
 has the least charm for him He has become in- 
 sensible to the possibility of longing for anything 
 else. He recognizes but one way of furthering 
 this ideal, that of following the voice of his con- 
 science in all his actions, unwaveringly, Avithout 
 fear or sophistry. This links him again to the 
 
96 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 world, not as an object of enjoyment, but as a 
 spliere for conscientious living pointed out by his 
 inner voice ; " if Ficlite advances this as his ideal 
 of a morally religious man — an ideal, however, 
 which may be applied to any man — we do nof 
 see how Carlyle's ideal could be better formulated. 
 
 The significance of Schelling's and Hegel's 
 systems for Carlyle retreats to the backgi'ouud. 
 ScheUing's philosophy had fascinated him, to be 
 sure, in those days of bitter doubt, when he was 
 trying to formulate his own ideas of life. In his 
 Journal and Letters we occasionally meet with 
 his name, but Carlyle's opinion in regard to him 
 is generally expressed too vaguely for us to say 
 that Scholling had any permanent influence upon 
 his mind. He said once about him : " He is a 
 man evidently of deep insight into individual 
 things ; speaks wisely and reasons with the nicest 
 accuracy on all matters where we understand 
 his data." '■' 
 
 In England, Schelling's influence was much 
 more important on Coleridge and his followers 
 than on Carlyle. 
 
 In regard to Hegel Carlyle never expressed 
 himself even as clearly, so that his position with 
 reference to him cannot be any more accurately 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on the State of German Literature, p. 65. 
 
caPvLyle's attitude toward science. 97 
 
 defined. " He puts a liigli estimation upon 
 him," ^ as Fronde says, and we shall soon dis- 
 cover that there is one subject on which the two 
 men agree, without daring to draw any inference 
 from it. 
 
 However greatly Carlyle respected the various 
 representatives of German Idealism, and hoAvever 
 deeply he was impressed by them, we must never- 
 theless here, at the conclusion of our reflections 
 on his attitude toward philosophy, again call es- 
 pecial attention to the fact that he acknowledged 
 no ultimate end in the whole of the idealistic 
 systematic speculation. 
 
 In his " Essay on Characteristics," Carlyle 
 speaks of "the disease of metaphysics," and 
 expresses the opinion that " man is sent hither 
 not to question, but to work ; " and he even 
 goes so far as to say that " the mere existence 
 and necessity of a philosophy is an evil ; " that 
 except as Poetry and Religion, it would have no 
 being. 
 
 "Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary evil, 
 is the forerunner of much good .... for of 
 our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not 
 this already be said, that if they have produced 
 no Afiirmation, they have destroyed much Nega- 
 
 * Froude's Carlyle, vol. ii., chap. 2. 
 
98 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 tion ? It is a disease expelliug a disease : the 
 fire of Doubt, consumiug awaj the Doubtful ; 
 that so the Certain come to light, aud again lie 
 visible on the surface. English or French Meta- 
 physics, in reference to this last stage of the 
 Speculative process, are not what we allude to 
 here ; but only the Metaphysics of the Germans. 
 In France or England, since the days of Diderot 
 and Hume, though all thought has been of a 
 sceptico-meta])hysical texture, so far as there 
 was any Thought, we have seen no Metaphysics, 
 but only more or less inefl'ectual questions whether 
 such could be. In the Pyrrhonism of Hume and 
 the Materialism of Didorot, Logic had, as it 
 were, overshot itself, overset itself. Now though 
 the athlete, to use our old figure, cannot, by 
 much lifting, lift up his own body, he may shift 
 it out of a laming posture, aud get to stand in a 
 free one. 
 
 *' Such a service have German Metaphysics 
 done for man's mind. The second sickness of 
 Speculation has abolished both itself and the 
 first. Friedrich Schlegel complains much of the 
 fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency of Ger- 
 man as of all Metaphysics ; and with reason. 
 Yet in that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex 
 of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed into Fichte- 
 ism, Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and 
 
carlyle's attitude toward science. 99 
 
 Coiisinism, perhaps finally evaporated, is not this 
 issue visible enough, that Pyrrhonism and Ma- 
 teriahsm, themselves necessary phenomena in 
 European culture, have disappeared ; and a Faith 
 in Rehgion has again become possible and in- 
 evitable for the scientific mind ; and the word 
 J^ree-thinkcr no longer means the Denier or Cav- 
 iller, but the BeHever, or the Ready to believe ? 
 Nay, in the higher Literature of Germany, there 
 ah-eady hes, for him that can read it, the begin- 
 ning of a new revelation of the GodHke ; as yet 
 unrecognised by the mass of the world; but 
 waiting there for recognition, and sure to find 
 it when the fit hour comes. This age is not 
 wholly ^\ithout its prophets." * 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on Characteristics, pp. 35-3G. 
 
CHAPTER yil. 
 
 CARLYLE'S CONCEPTION OF POETUY 
 AND ART IN GENERAL. 
 
 Literature is but a branch of Religion, and always participates 
 in its character ; however in our time it is the only branch that 
 still shows any greenness ; and as some think must one day be- 
 come the main stem. — Carlyle's Essay on Characteristics, p. 20. 
 
 Poetry is another form of Wisdom.— Carlyle's Essay on Burns, 
 p. 49. 
 
 " And knowest thou no Prophet, even in tho 
 vesture, environmeut, and dialect of this age ? 
 None to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, 
 through all meanest and highest forms of tho 
 Common ; and by him been again prophetically 
 revealed : in whose inspired melody, even in these 
 rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life 
 again begins, were it Ijut afar off, to be divine ? 
 Knowest thou none such ? I know him, and 
 name him — Goethe." * 
 
 And this it is, " in Goethe and more or less 
 in Schiller and tho rest," which gives the most 
 
 * Sartus Resartus, bk. iii., chap. 7. 
 
caklyle's conception of poetry and art. 101 
 
 essential feature of Carlyle's conception of tlio 
 nature of the i^oet. " The coldest sceptic, the 
 most callous worldling, sees not the actual as- 
 pects of life more sharply than they are hero 
 deUneated : the Nineteenth Century stands be- 
 fore us, in all its contradiction and perplexity; 
 barren, mean and baleful, as we have all known 
 it ; yet here no longer mean and barren, but 
 enamelled into beauty in the poet's spirit; for 
 its secret significance is laid open, and thus, as 
 it were, the life-giving fire that slumbers in it 
 is called forth, and flowers and fohage, as of 
 old, are springing on its bleakest wilderness, and 
 overmantling its sternest clifls. For these men 
 have not only the clear eye, but the loving heart. 
 They have penetrated into the mystery of Nature ; 
 after long trial they have been initiated ; and 
 to unwearied endeavour. Art has at last yielded 
 her secret ; and thus can the Spirit of our Age, 
 embodied in fair imaginations, look forth on us, 
 earnest and full of meaning, from their works. 
 As the first and indispensible condition of good 
 poets, they are wise and good men : much they 
 have seen and suft'ered, and they have conquered 
 all this, and made it all their own ; they have 
 known life in its heights and depths, and mas- 
 tered it in both, and can teach others what it 
 is, and how to lead it rightly. Their minds are 
 
102 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 as a mirror to ns, when the perplexed image of 
 our own being is reflected back in soft and clear 
 interpretation. Here mirth and gl•rt^^ty are blend- 
 ed together ; wit rests on deep devout wisdom, 
 as the green-sward with its flowers must rest on 
 the rock, whose foundations reach downward to 
 the centre. In a word, they are believers ; but 
 their faith is no sallow plant of darkness ; it is 
 green and flowery, for it grows in the sunlight. 
 And this faith is the doctrine they have to teach 
 us, the sense which, under every no1)le and grace- 
 ful form, it is their endeavour to set forth : 
 
 "As ftll Nature's thousand chanf^es 
 
 But one changeless God proclaim, 
 So in Art's wide kingdoms ranges 
 
 One solo meaning, still the same : 
 This is Truth, eternal lleason, 
 
 Which from Beauty takes its dress. 
 And, serene through time and season, 
 
 Stands for aye in lovliness. " 
 
 Such, indeed, is the end of Poetry at all times ; 
 yet in no recent literature known to us, except 
 the German, has it been so far attained ; nay, 
 perhajis, so much as consciously and steadfastly 
 attempted." * 
 
 To this conception of the poet's calling which 
 we constantly meet with in his works, Carlyle 
 
 State of German Literature, p. 56. 
 
CARLYLE'S conception of rOETRY AND ART. 103 
 
 raised himself tlirougli tlie fervent stndy of Goethe 
 and Schiller. One can easily picture to one's 
 self how the ^Scotch peasant's son, reared among 
 stern, primitive and very circumscribed notions 
 of things, at first incredulously opposed Goethe's 
 and Schiller's resthetics. Goethe's idea of art, 
 his " almost religious love for it " appears at first 
 to Carlyle to be " odd, inexplicable." He im- 
 agines that in Germany, as well as in other 
 countries, the poet is diflferently regarded. But 
 in the spring of 1830 we find in his Journal — 
 perhaps with direct bearing upon Goethe's gen- 
 tle Xenie — * the following remarkable words : 
 " "Who possesses science and art, has also Reli- 
 gion ; who does not possess either, he must have 
 Religion." 
 
 " What is art and poetry ? Is the beautiful 
 higher than the good ? A higher foi'm thereof ? 
 Thus were a poet not only a priest, but a high- 
 priest." " "NMien Goethe and Schiller say or in- 
 sinuate that art is higher than religion, do they 
 mean perhaps this? That whereas religion re- 
 presents (what is the essence of truth for man) 
 the good is injinitely (the word is emphatic) dif- 
 
 * "Xenie" was ft name given to satirical epigrams used by 
 Goethe and Schiller; but the "gentle Xenie" was used solely 
 by Goethe. 
 
104 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 ferent from the evil, but sets them in a state 
 of hostility (as in heaven and hell), art likewise 
 admits and inculcates this quite infinite difterence, 
 but without hostility, with peacefulness, like the 
 difference of two poles which cannot coalssce 
 yet do not quarrel — nay, should not quarrel, for 
 both are essential to the whole. In this way is 
 Goethe's moraHty to be considered as a higher 
 (apart from its comprehensiveness, nay, univer- 
 saUty) than has hitherto been promidgated ? 
 Sehr einseitig I And yet perhaps there is a 
 glimpse of the truth here." * 
 
 The germ of Goethe's and Schiller's doctrine 
 of the beauty and subUmity of the poet's calling, 
 became still faiiher developed in Carlyle. It re- 
 ceived noiirishment through the study of Mil- 
 ton, to whom at this time he was devoting him- 
 self. In Milton he found — as well as the deepest 
 religious and ]uiritanical sentiments — ideas which 
 he could bring into harmony with those of 
 Goethe's, He was particularly impressed by the 
 pecuUar didactic tendency which Milton dis- 
 played as a poet. The nobleness of the moral 
 claim ennobled the question of the poet's calling 
 in the eyes of the primitive but prejudiced Scotch 
 mind ; the claim that he who expressed the hoj)e 
 
 * Fronde's Life of Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 17. 
 
carlyle's conception of poetry and art. 105 
 
 of becoming a great poet and of wi'iting " pure 
 and sublime thoughts " ought himself to be " a 
 true poem," a pattern of " the best and honour- 
 ablest things." * 
 
 As Milton's ideal for the poet is not realizable 
 in " the heat of youth or the vapours of wine," 
 as his ideal is not supported by the " invocation 
 of dame Memory and her siren daughters " he 
 considers the gift lent him " but by devout prayer 
 to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all 
 utterance and knowledge, and sends out His 
 seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar, to 
 touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." t 
 
 These Miltonic ideals, which in Germany Klop- 
 stock had represented, appear to stand in sharp 
 contrast to Goethe's and Schiller's aesthetic views, 
 and form a very prominent part of Carlyle's. 
 
 He considers the poet to be "an inspired think- 
 er," X a soul who performs heavenly music ; his 
 mission is to sing the glory of God. True poetry 
 is a holy, divine, inspired thing. The essential 
 element of the poet is, according to Carlyle, re- 
 ligion ; and this view at once makes it clear 
 what Carlyle's standpoint is as to the question 
 
 * Milton's Apology for Smectymniis, (ed. Bohn) p. 118. 
 t Second book of Keason of Church Government, (ed. Fletch- 
 er) introductory paragraph, p. 44. 
 X Essay on the Death of Goethe. 
 
lOG THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 of the relation of Poetry to Religion. Car- 
 lyle's idea here exactly coincides with Hegel's, 
 who represents " the Fine Arts only as a degree 
 of freedom, not as the highest freedom itself," 
 and points out to the " Fine Arts " its " future 
 in true religion." And when Schiller, impressed 
 by the feeling of the highest unity of the nnn-al, 
 the religious and the beautiful (in the Ideal), 
 uses the words : " The healthy and beautiful 
 nature needs no morality, no metaphysics," * 
 you could just as well say it needs no divine, 
 no immortality upon which to repose and main- 
 tain itself. 
 
 This form of expression would not have met 
 with favour in Carlvle's eves, for he would have 
 rei)lied that healthy morality and religiousness 
 needs no beauty — it has and comprehends the 
 only true beauty in itself. It was exactly this 
 religious element which was an inner strength 
 to Carlyle, to the poet and to all men, giving 
 solidity without enchaining. And if he beUeved 
 that religion was tlie essence, the unconsciously 
 living element of the poet, he was, nevertheless, 
 far from wishing to make it bend to the yoke 
 of any especial religious views. As the moral 
 law and the moral duty do not cause man to 
 
 ♦ Schiller and Goethe's Correspondence, 
 
carlyle's conception of foetry and art. 107 
 
 deteriorate, but lielp to elevate and give liini 
 freedom, in the same way does the Divine, if 
 it penetrates the poet, not oppress, but gives him 
 its sanction. 
 
 " Ever must the Fine Arts be if not rehgion, 
 yet indissohibly united to it, dependent on it, 
 virtually blended with it, as body is with soul." " 
 
 " Poetry is but another form of "Wisdom, of 
 Religion ; is itself AVisdom and Eeligion," that 
 " unspeakable beauty which in its highest clear- 
 ness is Religion." t 
 
 These utterances, and those which follow, show 
 that Carlyle's views are not materially different 
 fi-om Goethe's : " Art rests upon a sort of re- 
 ligious sense, upon a dt-ep, immutablo earnest- 
 ness, on account of which it so willingly is united 
 to Relif^ion. Religion needs no Art-Sense — it 
 rests upon its own earnestness," but it gives as 
 little as it produces. X And his aphorisms on 
 the History of the Arts, of the year 1808, wo 
 by no means wish to quote as a mere expression 
 of a view : " Art has, properly speaking, origin- 
 ated out of and in Religion." § 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on Jesuitism, p. 271. 
 ■j- Carlyle's Essay on History. 
 I Spruohc in Prosa, (Leoper) p. 690. 
 §0p. cit, p. 147. 
 
108 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 That Carlylc did not at all make the poetical 
 endowment dependent on the reli<:fions feeling, 
 must be explicitly stated, for it is not by any 
 means a gift to clothe the reUgious feeling in 
 verse. 
 
 " Poetry is Inspiration : has in it a certain 
 S])iritualitj — it is no separate faculty, no organ 
 which can bo superadded to the rest, or dis- 
 joined from them ; but rather the result of their 
 general harmony and comjileteuess. The feelings, 
 the gifts that exist in the Poet are those that ex- 
 ist in every human soul. The imagination whicli 
 sluuhhrs at the Hell of Dante, is the same fac- 
 ulty, weaker in degree, which called that picture 
 into being. How does the Poet s})eak to men, 
 with power, but by being still more a man than 
 they ? " * 
 
 Carlyle seems to prefer to designate the poet 
 by one word — Vates — which he again and again 
 uses. Let us try to comprehend his ideal. 
 
 " The true poet is ever, as of old, the Seer ; 
 whoso eye has l)een gifted to discern the godlike 
 mystery of God's Universe, and to deci})lier some 
 new lines of its celestial \\Titing ; we can still call 
 him a Yates and Seer ; for ho sees into this 
 greatest of secrets, ' the open secret ; ' hidden 
 
 * Essay on Buru.s, vol. ii.-, p. 18. 
 
carlyle's conception of poetry and art. 109 
 
 tilings become clear ; how the future (both rest- 
 ing on Eternity) is but another phase of the Pre- 
 sent : thereby are his words in very truth pro- 
 phetic ; what he has spoken shall be done." * 
 
 The gi-eatest gift which can fall to the lot of one 
 man — as Prophet and JSecr — fell to the " Yates : " 
 that of reveahng " Poetic Beauty." t " As the 
 material Seer is the eye and revealer of all things, 
 so is Poetry, so is the "World-Poet, in a spiritual 
 sense." t He, the World-Poet, is the only true 
 iuterpreter of the invisible, the Eternal, as it is 
 revealed in the world. He has not far to seek 
 for material, for the ideal world is not separat- 
 ed from the material world, but permeates and 
 fills it. 
 
 " Wherever there is a sky above him, and a 
 world around him, the poet is in his place ; for 
 here, too, is man's existence, with its infinite 
 longings and small recpiirings ; its ever-thwarted, 
 ever-renewed endeavours, its unsjieakable asi)ira- 
 tions, its fears and hopes that wander through 
 Eternity ; and all the mystery of brightness and 
 of gloom that it was ever made of, in any ago 
 or climate, since man first began to live. Is there 
 
 * Essay on Death of Goethe, p. 44. 
 
 t Biography, p. 59. 
 
 t Essay on Death of Goethe, p. 43. 
 
110 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 not the fifth act of a Tragedy iu eveiy death- 
 bed, though it were a peasant's, and a bed of 
 heath ? And are ^vooiugs and ^veddings obsolete, 
 that there can be Comedy no longir ? Or are 
 men suddenly gi-own wise, that Langhtor must no 
 longer shake his sides, but be cheated of his 
 Farce ? Man's Hfe and nature is, as it was, and 
 as it ever will }n\ But the poet must have an 
 eye to read these things, and a heart to under- 
 stand them ; or they come and pass away Ix'- 
 fore him in vain, H«' is a Vufcs, a seer ; a gift 
 of vision has been given him. Has life no mean- 
 ings for him, which another cannot eiiually de- 
 cii)her ; then he is no poet, and Delphi itself 
 will not make him one." * 
 
 Prophet and Poet are for Carlyle of one stock, 
 and according to his opinion it is only an indi- 
 cation of a ]H'rv('rsely developed epoch which 
 could bo bliinh'd to this unity. 
 
 " They both have penetrated into the sacred 
 mystery of the Universe ; what Goethe calls 
 * the open secret.' * The oj)e?i secret,' open to 
 all, seen by almost none ! That divine mystery, 
 which lies everywhere in all Beings, the * Divine 
 Idea of the World,' that which Hes at the 'bot- 
 tom of appearance,' as Fichte styles it ; of which 
 
 * Essay on Burns, p. 13. 
 
CAELYLE'S CONCErXION OF POETRY A2^D ART. Ill 
 
 all appearances, from the starry sky to the grass 
 of the field, but especially the Appearance of 
 Mail and his work, is but the vesture, the em- 
 bodiment that renders it visible. This mystery 
 is in all times and in all places ; veritably is. 
 In most times and places it is greatly overlooked ; 
 and the Universe, definable always in one or the 
 other dialect, as the realised Thought of God, 
 is considered as a trivial, inert, commonplace 
 matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it wore a dead 
 thing, which some upholsterer had put together ! 
 It could do no good, at present, to speak much 
 about this ; but it is a pit}- for ever}' one of us 
 if we do not know it, live ever in the knowled<;e 
 of it. Really a most mournful pity ; — a failure 
 to live at all, if wo live otherwise! But now, I 
 say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, 
 the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has pene- 
 trated into it ; is a man sent hither to make it 
 more impressively known to us. That always 
 is his message ; he is to reveal that to us, — 
 that sacred mystery which he, more than others, 
 lives ever present with. While others forget it, 
 he knows it ; I might say, he has been driven 
 to know it ; without consent asked of hhn, he 
 finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. 
 Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct 
 Insight and BeUef ; this man, too, could not help 
 
112 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 being a sincere man ! Whoever may live in the 
 shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature 
 to Uve in the very fact of things. A man once 
 more, in earnest with the Universe, though all 
 others were l)ut toying with it. He is a Vates, 
 first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far 
 Poet and Prophet, participators in the * open se- 
 cret,' are one. 
 
 *' With respect to their distinction again : The 
 Vates Prophet, we might s:iy, has siezed that 
 sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good 
 and Evil, Dutv and Proliibition ; the Vates Poet 
 on what the Germans tiiU the a?sthetic side, as 
 Beautiful, and the like. The one we call a re- 
 vealer of what we are to do ; the other of what 
 we are to love. But indeed these two provinces 
 run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. 
 The Prophet, too, has his eye on what we are 
 to love : how else shall ho know what it is we are 
 to do? The highest Voice ever heard on this 
 earth said withal: 'Consider the lilies of the 
 field ; they toil not, neither do they spin : yet 
 Solomon in all his glory was not anayed like 
 one of these ' — a glance, that, into the deepest 
 deep of Beauty. 'The lilies of the field,' — dressed 
 finer than earthly princes, springing up there 
 in the humble furrow-field ; a beautiful eye look- 
 ing-out on you, from the gieat inner Sea of 
 
CARLYLE's conception of rOETRY AND ART. 113 
 
 Beauty ! How could the nide Earth make these, 
 if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, 
 were not inwardly Beauty? In this point of 
 view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has stag- 
 gered several, may have meaning : ' This Beauti- 
 ful,' he intimates, ' is higher than the Good ; 
 the Beautiful includes in it the Good.' The 
 true Beautiful ; which, however, I have said some- 
 where, ' differs from the false as Heaven does 
 from Yauxhall!"* 
 
 This research of Carlyle's apparently only leads 
 to the conclusion that there is no difference be- 
 tween true poetry and " true speech, not poet- 
 ical," but Carlyle does not disappoint us here. 
 
 " On this point many things have been written, 
 especially by the late Gernum Critics, some of 
 which are not very intelligible at first. They say, 
 for example, that the Poet has an infinitude in 
 him ; communicates an UnendlicJikeit, a cei-tain 
 character of ' infinitude,' to whatsoever he de- 
 lineates. This, though not very precise, yet in 
 so vague a matter is worth remembering : if well 
 meditated, some meaning will gi-adually be found 
 in it. For my o\\t\ part, I find considerable 
 meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry 
 being metrical, having music in it, being a Song. 
 
 Carlyle's Lecture on Heroes, pp. 75-76. 
 
114 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might 
 say this as soon as anything else : If your delinea- 
 tion be authentically musical, miisical not in the 
 word only, but in heart and substance, in all 
 the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole 
 conception of it, then it will be poetical ; if not, 
 not. — Musical : how much lies in that ! A 'inusical 
 thought is one spoken by a mind that has pene- 
 trated into the inmost heart of the thing ; de- 
 tected the inmost mystery of it, namely, the 
 inelody that lies hidden in it ; the inward har- 
 mony of coherence jwhich is its soul, whereby it 
 exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. 
 All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; 
 naturally utter themselves in Song. The mean- 
 ing of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in 
 logical words, can express the effect that music 
 has on us ? A kind of inarticulate unfathom- 
 able speech, which leads us to the edge of the 
 Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that! 
 All speech, even the commonest speech, has 
 something of song in it : not a parish in the world 
 but has its parish-accent ; — the rhythm or tune 
 to which the people there sing what they have 
 to say ! Accent is a kind of chanting ; all men 
 have an accent of their own, — though they only 
 notice that of others. . , . . All deep things 
 are Song. It seems somehow the very central 
 
carlyle's conception of poetry and art. 115 
 
 essence of us, Song ; as if the rest were but wi*ap- 
 page and hulls ! The primal element of us ; of 
 us and of all things. The Greeks fabled of 
 Sphere-Harmonies : it was the feeling they had 
 of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul 
 of all her voices and utterances was perfect 
 music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical 
 Thought. The Poet is he who thhiks in that 
 manner. At bottom, it turns still on the power 
 of intellect ; it is a man's sincerity and depth 
 of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep 
 enough, and you see musically ; the heart of 
 Nature heing everywhere music, if you can only 
 reach it." * 
 
 So the poet is, according to Carlyle, naturally 
 the deepest of all thinkers. Poetry is insight, 
 a higher knowledge ; the true thinker alone 
 is the poet, the Seer. Heavenly wisdom pos- 
 sesses his Soul, fills his heart : it is the North 
 Star which guides him through life independent 
 of external success or of external worldly re- 
 sults. 
 
 " "We often hear of this and the other external 
 condition being requisite for the existence of a 
 poet. Sometimes it is a certain sort of training ; 
 
 * On Heroes, p. 78. 
 
116 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 lie must have studied certain tilings, studied, for 
 instance, ' the elder di-amatists,' and so learned 
 a poetic language ; as if poetry lay in the tongue, 
 not in the heart. At other times we are told he 
 must be bred in a certain rank, and must be 
 on a confidential footing with the higher classes ; 
 because, above all things, he must see the world. 
 As to seeing the world, we apprehend this will 
 cause him little difficulty, if he have but eyesight 
 to see it with The mysterious work- 
 manship of man's heart, the true light and the 
 inscrutable darkness of man's destinv, reveal 
 themselves not only in capital cities and crowded 
 saloons, but in every hut and hamkt where men 
 have their abode." * 
 
 It was " not personal enjoyment," freedom 
 from care and a merry, jovial life which made 
 him great, " but a high, heroic idea of lleligion, 
 of Patriotism, of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the 
 other form, in which cause he neither shrank 
 from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness 
 it as something wonderful ; but patiently endured, 
 counting it blessedness enough so to spend and 
 be spent." t 
 
 On this subject Carlylc is continually waging 
 
 * Essay on Burns, pp. 13-1-4. 
 tOp. cit., p. 4H. 
 
CARLYLE'S conception of rOETRY AND ART. 117 
 
 an iuternecme war against those wliom ho calls 
 the " sweet singers." The poet's task is not to 
 oflfer "pleasant singing" and to prepare " de- 
 hghts" for the indolent. When "Fine Litera- 
 ture" concerns itself with "the unspeakable 
 glories and rewards of pleasing its generation," 
 it becomes a degi-adation to Art, and has as little 
 to do with it as where united vrith every pomp 
 of the opera, of the stage and of music, it solely 
 tries to become a slave to the vile amusement of 
 the epoch. 
 
 This explains Carlyle's merciless and often too 
 severe judgment of almost all his contemporaries 
 in English Literature. With the exception of 
 Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning, Arthur Clough and 
 a few others, his judgment is ahnost entirely an 
 unfavourable one. The measure Avhich he used 
 in forming an estimate of his ideal poets, Homer, 
 ^schulus, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, Goethe 
 and Schiller, he applied to all other poets in 
 order to determine their absolute significance in 
 history. Even such men as Bp'on and Burns, 
 the latter especially his favourite, did not escape 
 this tril)unal. 
 
 His judgment of the professional, literary and 
 art critics supplies us mth further information 
 as to his conception of the relation of poetry and 
 art in general. To quibble about a poem or an 
 
118 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 art work was not only distasteful to liim, but ap- 
 peared a manifest liypocrisy and lie. 
 
 " The Fine Arts become a Throne of Hypo- 
 crisy." Falsehood reigns here sovereign, and 
 covers the abyss with sparkling words. " The 
 Fine Arts, wherever they turn up as h ashless, 
 whatever Committee sit upon them, are sure to 
 be parent of much empty talk, labourious hypo- 
 crisy, dillettanteism, futility ; involving huge trou- 
 ble and expense, and babble, which end in no 
 result, if not in worse than none." * 
 
 This single quotation is quite sufficient here. 
 What justifies him in this anger is his own 
 worth. His savage mood knows no boundaries 
 in the attack against this modern " art-lie." The 
 kernel of truth in this warfare is easily recog- 
 nized and will retain its value, for certainly it 
 will forever be better "to perambulate through a 
 picture-gallery with little or no speech ; t but 
 on the otlier hand, however, it must be strong- 
 ly emphasized that Carlyle's understanding of 
 Aii and interest in Aii — so far as the plastic 
 ai-ts are concerned — was neither sufficiently ver- 
 satile nor great to give an independent and 
 worthy judgment. 
 
 * Jesuitism, p. 272. 
 
 f Carlyle's Life of Sterling, cliap. 7. 
 
cablyle's conception of poetry and art. 110 
 
 Schiller was not asliamed to confess (in a letter 
 to Humboldt, written on February ITtli, 1803) 
 that " Italy and Kome are no countries for me ; 
 the mere ' matter ' [das Phj'sische] would oppress 
 me, and the mstJietic would j]jive me no delight, 
 because an interest and feeling for the, plastic 
 arts is wanting in me " — and similar was it with 
 Carlyle, although he did not so openly acknowl- 
 edge it, and would not modify his severe judg- 
 ment of the " Gallery and Cathedral Visitors "■"' in 
 Eome, when his criticism really only touches the 
 fashionable foolery, and cannot at all be applied 
 to such a spirit as Sterling, whose deepest in- 
 terests in life were linked to the plastic arts. * 
 
 The only work of art for which Carlyle really 
 had a most perfect understanding and interest 
 was the pcntrait, his deej) interest in which is 
 proved already by the fact that it was he who 
 first proposed the establishment of a national 
 portrait gallery in Scotland. (He had sorely 
 missed such an one in Berlin, where he had 
 tried to become familiar with the time of Fred- 
 erick the Great.) Further was this shown in a 
 high degree in an Essay on the various portraits 
 of John Knox. We seem too unappreciative of 
 these delicate observations which we are indebted 
 
 * Carlyle's Life of SterUng, pp. H8-154. 
 
120 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 to his pen for. It is sufficieut liere, however, 
 to merely di'aw attention to his words on Cra- 
 nach's portraits of Luther. The walls of his 
 study were completely covered by the best and 
 the most interestiu*^ portraits which he could 
 prociu'e of all his " heroes." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 CARLYLE'S ATTITUDE TOW A ED 
 
 uiSTunr. 
 
 A confession made by Carlyle in his Journal 
 of 1842 — of the publication of which he never 
 dreamed — admits us into the most secret recesses 
 of his thought and feeling : " Of Dramatic Art, 
 though I have eagerly listened to a Goethe speak- 
 ing of it, and to several hundreds of others mum- 
 bling and trying to speak of it, I find that I, 
 practically speaking, know yet almost as good 
 as nothing. Indeed, of Art generally, {Kunst, so 
 called) I can almost know nothing. My first 
 and last secret of Knnst is to get a thorough 
 intelligence oiWiQfdct to be painted, represented, 
 or, in whatever way, set forth — the fact deep as 
 Hades, high as heaven, and written so^ as to the 
 visual face of it upon our poor earth. This once 
 blazing within me, if it will ever get to blaze, 
 and bursting to be out, one has to take the Avhole 
 dexterity of adaptation one is master of, and 
 with tremendous struggling, contrive to exhibit 
 
122 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 it, one -way or the other. This is not Art, I 
 know well." * 
 
 All of Carlvle's natural endowments led him 
 into other channels than those of art in its ordi- 
 nary sense : in histor}', in the study of mankind, 
 he fonnd the aiTaugement of the Eternal most 
 beantifully and divinely revealed. God was to 
 him the only Artist whose works he cared to 
 study with a religious and respectful spirit. 
 Nature was gi-eat and di\'ine, but man seemed 
 to him the divinest creation, and of man's life, 
 his gi-owth and deveh^pment, his struggles and 
 aspirations, his faitliful toil, his good fortune, his 
 misfortune, and his final passing away, as it re- 
 peats itself over and over again in the course of 
 history, in powerful changes and yet in perpet- 
 ual unity, that was to him " the eternal, constant 
 Gospel " which his soul thirsted to understand, 
 which fiHed his heart witli ]ioetrv, which stinni- 
 lated every nerve, and whicli broke forth in all 
 his works, and — althougli written in prose — made 
 genuine poetic creations. 
 
 History and the writing of liistory — considered 
 from Carlyle's point of view — was the proper fiehl 
 of activity for Carlyle's mind. He not only de- 
 voted the gi-eater portion of his life and his best 
 
 * Froudd 8 Life of Carlyle, Franklin Square Ed., vol. iii., p. 40. 
 
CARLYLE's attitude toward niST(3RY. 123 
 
 years to it, but was indebted to it for liis repu- 
 tation. 
 
 The following quotations show liis comprehen- 
 sion of history : " In the one little Letter of 
 ^neas Sylvius there is more of history than in 
 all of Robertson." * " The thing I want to see 
 is not Red Book Lists and Coui-t Calendars, and 
 Parliamentary Registers, but the Life of Man : 
 what men did and thought, suffered, enjoyed ; 
 the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestrial 
 existence, its outward environment, its inward 
 principle ; hoin and what it was ; whence it pro- 
 ceeded, whither it was tending. Mournful, in 
 tnith, is it to behold what the business called 
 * History,' in these so enlightened and illuminat- 
 ed times, still continues to be. Can you gather 
 from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest 
 shadow of an answer to that great qiiestion : 
 How men lived and had their being ; were it but 
 economically, as, what wages they got, and what 
 they bought with these ? " t 
 
 History does not consist in relating coui-t iu' 
 trigues and stories of Piimo Ministers and their 
 countries ; it does not consist in the conscientious 
 binding together of deeds or the best representa- 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on Bos well's Life of Johnson, p. 84. 
 f Loc. cit. 
 
124 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 tiou of the development of the forms of State ; 
 the object of the historian is to represent the 
 inner conditions of life, the conscious and uncon- 
 scious aspirations of mankind, which are never 
 alike in two dissimilar ages. Not alone battles 
 and war tumults, not alone laws and constitutions 
 and their developments, which, nevertheless, " are 
 not our Life, but only the house wherein our Life 
 is led." * To contemplate all the long-forgotten 
 and concealed acts and phenomena of the human 
 species, to penetrate ' reverently ' the spiritual 
 and physical nature, to depict what is of promise, 
 that is task set before the historian. 
 
 The most important part of history is, perhaps, 
 not for one person to relate it in general, " for as 
 all Action is, by its nature, to be figured as ex- 
 tended in breadth and depth, as well as in length ; 
 that is to sav, is based on Passion and M^ sterv, if 
 we investigate its origin ; and spreads abroad on 
 all hands, modif} ing and modified ; as well as 
 advances towards completion, — so all narrative 
 is, bv nattire, of only one dimension ; only travels 
 forward towards us, or towards successive points : 
 Narrative is linear. Action is soUiJ. Also for our 
 * chains,' or chainlets, of ' canvas and effects,' " 
 which we so assiduously track through certain 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on History, p. 255. 
 
CARLYLE S ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY. 125 
 
 hand-breadths of years and square miles, when 
 the whole is a broad, deep Immensity, and each 
 atom is ' chained ' and complected wdth all ! 
 Truly, if History is Philosophy teaching by ex- 
 perience, the writer fitted to compose History is 
 hitherto an unknown man. The Experience itT 
 self would require All-knowledge to record it, — 
 Avere the All-wisdom needful for such Philoso- 
 phy as would interpret it to be had for ask- 
 ing. Better were it that mere earthly Histori- 
 ans should lower such pretensions, more suitable 
 for Reminiscence than for human science ; and 
 aiming only at some picture of the things acted, 
 which picture itself will at best be a poor approx- 
 imation, leave the inscrutable purport of them 
 an acknowledged secret ; or at most, in reverent 
 Faith, far difierent from that teaching of Philo- 
 sophy, pause over the mysterious vestige of 
 Him, whose path is in the gi-eat deep of Time 
 whom History indeed reveals, but only all His- 
 tory, and in Eternity, will clearly reveal." * 
 
 These opinions do not blunt the ardour of the 
 investigator ; they only inspii-e him wdth a desire 
 to search more and more into the past. " Let all 
 men explore it as the true foiintain of knowledge ; 
 by whose light alone, consciously or unconscious- 
 
 Carlyle's Ejsay on Historj', p. 258. 
 
12G THOMAS CAKLYLE. 
 
 ly employed, can the Present or the Future be 
 interpreted or guessed." * 
 
 This ideal of the science of history admits of a 
 distinction between the Artist and Artisan ; the 
 one ' labours ' mechanically in his department 
 without turning his eye upon the whole, perhaps 
 without feeling that there is a whole ; the other 
 informs and ennobles the humbhst sphere in life 
 with an idea of the whole, and habitually knows 
 tliat only in the whole is the }>artial to be truly 
 discerned. The tasks and the duties of these 
 two are entirely ditierent, and each has his dctin- 
 ite work, '* The simide husbandman can till his 
 Held, and by knowledge he has gained of its soil, 
 sow it with the lit grain, though the deej) rocks 
 and central tires are unknown to him : his little 
 crop hangs under and over the firmament of 
 stars, and sails through untracked celestial 
 spaces, between Aries and Libra ; nevertheless 
 it ripens for him in due season and he gathers 
 it safe into his l)arn. As ;i husbandman ho is 
 blameless in disregarding those higher wonders; 
 but as a tliinker, and faithful impiirer into Nat- 
 lu'e, he were wrong. So, likewise, is it with the 
 Historian, who examines some sjiecial aspect of 
 History ; and from this or that combination of 
 
 * Carlyles Essay on History, p. 258. 
 
carlyle's attitude toward history. 127 
 
 circumstances, — political, moral, economical, — and 
 the issues it has led to, infers that such and such 
 properties belong to human society ; and that 
 the Uke circumstances will produce the like issue ; 
 which inference, if other trials confirm it, must 
 be held true and practically valuable. He is 
 wrong only, and an artisan, when he fancies that 
 these properties, discovered or discoverable, ex- 
 haust the matter ; and sees not at every step, 
 that it is inexhaustible. 
 
 " However, that class of cause-and-efi'ect spec- 
 ulators, mth whom no wonder would remain 
 wonderful, but all things in Heaven and Earth 
 must bo computed and ' accounted for ; ' and 
 even the Unknown, the Infinite in man's Life, 
 had under the words enthusiasm, siqyerstitioriy 
 spirit of the age, and so forth, obtained, as it 
 were, an algebraical symbol and given value, — 
 have now well-nigh played their paii in European 
 culture ; and may be considered, as in most 
 countries, even in England itself, where they 
 linger the latest, verging toward extinction." * 
 
 " The Political Historian, once almost the sole 
 cultivator of History, has now found various 
 associates, who strive to elucidate other phases 
 of liuman Life ; of which, as hinted above, the 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on History, p. 259. 
 
128 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 political conditions it is passed under are but 
 one, and though the primary, perhaps not the 
 most important, of the many outward arrange- 
 ments. Of this Historian himself, moreover, in 
 his own special department, new and higher 
 things are beginning to be expected. From of 
 (jld, it was too often to be reproaclifully observed 
 of him, that he dwelt with disproportionate fond- 
 ness in Senate-houses, in Battle-tields, nay, even 
 in Kings' Antechambers ; forgetting that far 
 awa>' from such scenes, the mighty tide of 
 Thought and Action was still rolling on its won- 
 drous course, in gloom and brightness; and in 
 its thousand remote valleys, a wliolo world of 
 Existence, witli or without an earthl}' sun of Hap- 
 piness to warm it, with or without a heavenly sun 
 of Holiness to ])iirify and sanctify it, was blos- 
 soming and fading, whether the ' famous vic- 
 tory ' were won or lost. The time seems coming 
 when much of this must be amended." * 
 
 "What ennobled liistory for Carlyle was the 
 " Intinite in human Life," the higliest revelation 
 of the diWne Spirit, as it was revealed and was 
 to bo seen in human nature. " Wherever there 
 is a Man, a God also is revealed, and all that 
 is Godlike : a whole epitome of the Intinite with 
 
 ♦ Carlyle's Essay on History, pp. 259-260. 
 
carlyle's attitude toward history. 129 
 its meanings, lies enfolded in the Life of every 
 
 man. * 
 
 To discern truly this revelation, a " seer " was, 
 of course, necessary : and it is just here where, 
 according to Carlyle, the same talent must be- 
 come a part of both the poet and the truly great 
 historian. This is the point at which history 
 becomes true poetry, where true poetry consists 
 in the right interpretation of truth, and of fact, t 
 
 Poetry, in the sense of fiction, of idle " inven- 
 tion," is not comparable with truth ; the poet's 
 invention does not consist in the creation of 
 di'eamy and fanciful forms ; it consists rather in 
 the after-creation, in the new revelation of divine 
 thought, as it lies at the foundation of the ap- 
 pearances of the world and the world's history. 
 "An iEschylus or a Sophocles sang the tintesi 
 (which was also the divinest) they had been 
 privileged to discover here below." X 
 
 According to Carlyle's idea, only a Shakspeare 
 or a Homer can discover the infinite meaning 
 of history, of human life. The true historical 
 writing is that " mighty, world-old Hhupsodia of 
 Existence, the grand, sacred Epos, or Bible of 
 World-History, infinite in meaning as the Divine 
 
 * Essay on Biogiapby, p. 58. 
 
 t Essay on Boswell's Life of Johnson, p. 82. 
 
 X Essay on The Opera, p. 124. 
 
130 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 Mind it Emblems ; wherein be is wise that can 
 read here a line, and there a line." * 
 
 " Great men are the inspired Texts of that 
 divine Book of Eevelatiou." t They, the great 
 men, the " heroes," to use Carlyle's terminology, 
 give their intrinsic worth to the world and the 
 world's histor}' ; they are the heai-t, the kernel 
 around which everything revolves ; they are, in 
 a certain sense, the creators of everything which 
 the mass of people perform ; they give the ideals, 
 and arc the soul of the Avorld's history. X 
 
 Wo pause here where the celebrated and vari- 
 ously maligned /Ave - If cr.s/^//? ofters an explana- 
 tion. 
 
 Carlyle's Hero-Worship rests upon the convic- 
 tion that (if the germ of the Divine is innate in 
 mankind yet) only the chosen, the " Heroes," 
 whose duty it is to bring truth to victory, are 
 sent from heaven to awaken dormant powers, the 
 heroes whose command the world must listen to, 
 for theu' message comes directly from heaven. 
 It is this belief of Carlyle's, finding representa- 
 tives among the leading minds of every ago, 
 which, followed out even in gi-eat ruggeduess, 
 cannot possibly be settled by the once thrown 
 
 * Essay on Count CftRliostro, p. 65. 
 t Sartor Resftrtus, bk. ii., p. 122. 
 X Essay on Heroes, i. 
 
carlyle's attitude toward history. 131 
 
 out vindication of mere strength and force. It 
 is not here the place to examine more critically 
 this charge ; even as little is it the place to ex- 
 plain the difference of Carlyle's principles from 
 those of Buckle. It is sufficient to point out 
 that Carlyle never was a representative of mere 
 " strength and force." He recognizes only one 
 power, and that is truth and morality ; a truth 
 ■whose victory must be won by every sacritice, 
 by life and by blood ; whose victory is the cer- 
 tain hope of all human struggles and battles. 
 " li'xjht is the eternal symbol of mighty Right 
 gives might and power — is his motto, indeed. 
 JkUjlit shall carry ott' the victory which mhjht has 
 won. With this belief in the victory of good over 
 evil in the long nin ; in tlio ^^ctory of good as 
 the hero as])ires to it, and for which tla^ hero 
 sacritices himself, stands or falls his whole view 
 of life. We see that this cheerful and noble recog- 
 nition of " the heroic " in history can frighten 
 only the indolent nature into moral lethargy. 
 
 Considered from Carlyle's standpoint, the les- 
 son which history teaches is unparalleled : the 
 world's history is a message from the past to 
 teach us to understand the present and the fu- 
 ture ; it consists — as Kingsley has expressed it — - 
 
 * And Kingsley's words are, indeed, the formulation of Car- 
 lyle's ideas. 
 
132 THOMAS CAKL\XE. 
 
 " in the overwlielming and yet ennobling knowl- 
 edge that there was such a thing as Duty, tirst 
 taught me to see in history, not the mere farce- 
 tragedy of man's crimes and follit'S, but the deal- 
 ings of a righteous Ruler of the Universe, whose 
 ways are in the great deep, and whom the sin 
 and errors, as well as the virtues and discoveries 
 of man, must obey and justify." 
 
 In this way Aristotle's comparison of the poet 
 and historian linds explanation with Carlyle. 
 If the task is pointed out, then to the histor- 
 ian," TO yevofieva Xt'yeiVy and to the poet to repre- 
 sent ola dv yivoirOy and if Sio koL <pi/.ooo(pu)repov koI 
 n-cv6aiuTEpnv iroiTjni^ larofiia^ lariVy Carlyle, with 
 his immutable views of the invariable govern- 
 ment, according to the moral principles of an 
 always judicial God, would have nothing to say 
 but that, in general, only the " philosopliical and 
 the earnest man " is able to understand the 
 world's historv, that the task to consider Avhat 
 *' might have happened " or " ought to have 
 happened" was far beyond the capacity of any 
 man, but that it belongtul to every man to seri- 
 ously endeavour to und«M-stand the revelation of 
 God and the Universe trs it exiiftn, and historv 
 as it takes place before; our very eyes ; to under- 
 
 * roetics, ix. 
 
caelyle's attitude toward history. 133 
 
 stand that there is no " greater truth " and no 
 smaller truth, but only one truth, and that the 
 one revealed in the world's history, in the history 
 of mankind ; truths, to be sure, only discernable 
 to the wise, to the true poet and the true liis- 
 torian, whose common ideal is the recognition of 
 exactly this thing, which each in his o^^^l way 
 strives to reach and to teach to a struggling 
 world. Thus does Carlyle apprehend the higher, 
 indeed, the highest unity of poet and historian, 
 a unity wliich consists in this common ideal, al- 
 though their ways of expressing it may be differ- 
 ent, a unity that would ehule every eye — but 
 which was seen and felt and expressed by Goethe 
 himself : 
 
 *• Wer in der Weltgeschichte lebt, 
 Dem AuKenblick sollt or sich riclitcn ? 
 Wer in die Zeitcu schnnt uml Ktrebt, 
 Nur der ist weit, zu spreclitu und zu dicbten." 
 
CHAFTEK IX. 
 CARLYLE'S ETHICS. 
 
 " The Gospel of AVork." 
 
 Man must work as well as worship.- Sartor Hesartiis, p. 2.')0. 
 
 With those .... who in true manful endeavour, were 
 it under despotism or under sansculottism, create somewhat, 
 with those alone, in the end, does the hope of the world lie. — 
 Carlyle's Essay on Goethe's Works, p. 182. 
 
 After liavinp; attempted to compreliend the 
 various and important aspects of Carlyle's views, 
 there oulj remains for ns now the task of p*as])- 
 ing, in as few words as possible, his complete 
 moral doctrines which have been expressed by 
 himself in the simplest and best manner : 
 
 " Love not Pleasure, love God ! This is the 
 Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is 
 solved ; wherein whoso walks and works, it is 
 well with him." * 
 
 The duty laid upon us by God to recognize 
 the moral " work " enjoined upon us by heaven, 
 
 * Sartor Eesartus, p. 133. 
 
carlyle's ethics. 135 
 
 and to perform this according to our light, that 
 is the familiar doctrine which Carlyle, with his 
 whole energy, with each page which he wrote, 
 tried to preach afresh to the world. 
 
 The first step to the fulfilment of this duty is 
 the recognition of it. 
 
 " If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I 
 should say superiority of Intellect, and think I 
 
 had included all under that We talk 
 
 of faculties as if they were distinct things separ- 
 able; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, 
 etc., as ho has hands, feet, and arms. That is a 
 capital error. Then, again, we hear of a man's 
 ' intellectual nature,' and of his ' moral nature,' 
 as if these, again, were divisil)le, and existed apart. 
 . . . . We ought to know ^vithal, and to keep 
 forever in mind tli.it these divisions are at bottom 
 but names; that man's spiritual nature, the vital 
 Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and 
 indivisible ; that what we call imagination, fancy, 
 understanding, and so forth, are but difterent fig- 
 ures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolu- 
 bly connected with each other, physiognomically 
 
 related Morality itself, what we call 
 
 the moral quality of a man, what is this but 
 another side of the one vital Force whereby he 
 is and works ? All that a man does is physi- 
 ognomical of him. You may see how a man 
 
136 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 would fight by the way in which he sings ; his 
 courage, or want of courage, is visible in the 
 word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, 
 no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; 
 and preaches the same Self abroad in all these 
 ways. Without hands a man might have feet, 
 and could still walk ; but, consider it, — without 
 morahty, intellect were impossible for him ; a 
 thoroughly immoral man could not know any- 
 thing at all. To know a thing, what we can call 
 knowing, a man must first love the thing, sym- 
 pathise with it : that is, be virtuously related to 
 it. If he have not the justice to put down his 
 own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand 
 by the dangerous — true at every tiu-n, how shall 
 he know ? His 'vdi'tues, all of them, will lie re- 
 corded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, 
 remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusil- 
 lanimous forever a sealed book : what such can 
 know of Nature is mean, superficial, small : for 
 the uses of the day merely." * 
 
 This absolute unity of the moral and the spirit- 
 ual man gives significance to the coiTect view of 
 life ; true recognition of moral duty (which, if 
 unconscious, exists in the soul most beautifully) 
 leads to morality, so that spiritual greatness is 
 
 * Lectures on Heroes, pp. 98-99. 
 
carlyle's ethics. 137 
 
 exceptionally a moral one, and the spiritual rank 
 of a nation brings with it moral greatness as a 
 certam result. 
 
 The first moral act which is obligatory to man, 
 is " Renunciation," " Annihilation of Self," * the 
 giving up of all ideas and hopes which more or 
 less have in view happiness for one's own self. 
 One's first duty is to subordinate one's own pleas- 
 ure, one's own well-being to the great everlast- 
 ing end which heaven has set before us. 
 
 This command appears severe and giim, but is 
 at the same time " beautiful and awful ; " * it de- 
 mands infinite labour, infinite pains ; "a life of 
 ease is not for any man or any God ; " this 
 struggle, this " work " brings blessedness and 
 perfects mankind ; it is the true commandment, 
 the essence of all religion ; it can only be instilled 
 into us when the consciousness of the eternal fills 
 our lives. " For the son of man there is no noble 
 cro^\'n, but is a crown of thorns ! " t 
 
 " Life is earnest," was one of Carlyle's favourite 
 mottoes ; but if the path of duty is rough and 
 stony, and the battles bitter, it is nevertheless 
 destiny divinely imposed upon us, and although 
 annihilation of self, and renunciation binds us 
 
 * Sartor Eesartus, p. 132. 
 
 f Essay on Sir Walter Scott, p. 39. 
 
 X Past and Present, p. 132. 
 
138' THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 
 and our age conditiouiilly, Carlyle declares with 
 reference to what Goethe and Schiller had tanjjrht 
 him that a " higher morahtv " still rests in the 
 lap of time, a morahty which leads all that is 
 painful, troublesome and harsh in humanity to 
 perfectness, and into harmony with the divine 
 and the " eternally beautiful." * 
 
 In the distant future Carlyle hopes that this 
 harmony of the divine and the human will exist 
 upon earth, will be the condition of all men whose 
 first and individual dutv now is, without mur- 
 muring, to strive after the fnltihuent of the di- 
 vine duty of morality, t 
 
 This unconditional belief that harsh and stern 
 duty is " sent by God " gives " a world of 
 strength in return for a world of hard struggle." X 
 
 This is the teaching of Carlyle's life and works. 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on Biography, p. 56. 
 
 t Carlyle's words remind us of the beautiful prophecy with 
 which Enjerson closes his "Address," delivered before the 
 Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, July 15, 1838: "I 
 look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining 
 laws, that he shall see them come full circle ; shall see their 
 rounding complete grace ; shall see the world to be the mirror 
 of the soul ; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with 
 purity of heart ; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is 
 one thing with Science, with Beauty and with Joy." Here is to 
 be found the secret to Emerson's and Carlyh's fiiendship. 
 
 X Carlyle's Essay on Characteristics, p. 25. 
 
carlyle's ethics. 139 
 
 Froude says in his Life of Cailjle : " Carljle 
 believed that every man had a special dnty to 
 do in this world. If he had been asked what 
 especially he conceived his own duty to be, he 
 would have said that it was to force men to 
 realize once more that the world was actually 
 governed by a just God ; that the old familiar 
 story, acknowledged everywhere in words on 
 Sundays, and disregarded or denied openly on 
 week-days, was, after all, true. His writings, 
 every one of them, his essays, his lectures, his 
 "History of the French Revolution," his "Crom- 
 well," even his " Frederick," were to the same 
 purpose and on the same text — that truth must 
 be spoken and justice must be done ; on any other 
 conditions no real commonwealth, no common 
 welfare, is permitted or possible." * 
 
 We shall conclude these remarks on Carlyle 
 with the same words which he uttered upon the 
 occasion of Goethe's death : " Precious is the 
 new light of Knowledge which our Teacher con-, 
 quers for us ; yet small to the new light of Love 
 which also we derive from him : the most im- 
 portant element of any man's performance is the 
 Life he has accomplished. Under the intellect- 
 
 * Froude's Life of Carlyle, Franklin Square Edition, vol. iii., 
 p. 49. 
 
140 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Tial union of man and man, which works by pre- 
 cept, lies a holier union of aftection, ■working by 
 example ; the influence of which latter, mystic, 
 deep-reaching, all-embracing, can still less be 
 computed. For Love is ever the beginning of 
 Knowledge, as fire is of light ; and works also 
 more in the manner of fire. That Goethe was a 
 great Teacher of men means already that he was 
 a good man." * 
 
 According to our innermost conviction, we can 
 and must apply this to Carlyle. His infirmities 
 and deficiencies — which he himself in the last 
 years of his life was inclined to assail too severe- 
 ly, but whicli was natural to a man whose moral 
 claims were of such greatness, and to a man of 
 his excitability of disposition — his faults and his 
 exaggerations, his enigmatic melancholy, which so 
 often embittered the pleasures of life for himself 
 and those about him ; all this, which has been 
 so forcibly and willingly portrayed by his adver- 
 saries, and is so easy to portray ; all this, is not 
 able to cloud a j)icture of this magnificent man 
 which lives in the hearts of his admirers. "When 
 he is fully knowai, he will not be loved or admired 
 the less because he had infirmities like the rest 
 of us." t 
 
 * Carlyle's Essay on the Death of Goethe, p. 48. 
 t Fronde's Life of Carlyle, vol. i , Introduction.