26 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



which I reprobate. Mr. Courtney, writing a few months ago, belongs 

 on the whole to the older level, just as Herbert Spencer, writing 

 thirty years ago belongs on the whole to the later. But in general 

 the distinction will be found to hold good. 



It is seen, again, in what I have called the "altered incidence of 

 the attack." The older critics used to speak much about Carlyle's 

 neglect of science, his a priori assumptions in history, his myth about 

 the "Hero," his rash idolatries and his still more rash depreciations. 

 All these charges can be made good, and they constitute real ground 

 for serious discounting of the prophet's fame. The critics of the 

 present dwell to only a slight extent upon these matters, emphasising 

 instead such points as have no permanent significance, but touch the 

 passing popular mood. They tell us of Carlyle's disbelief in democ- 

 racy, omitting all mention of the qualifications under which this 

 disbelief was expressed, and of the sagacious judgment which embodied 

 itself in his demand for submissiveness to the expert. They make 

 much of his so-called inhumanity, on the basis of a few vitriolic phrases, 

 and in spite of our abundant evidence that he was at heart a lover 

 of all his kind. They exploit his panegyric upon Frederick and the 

 Germans, choosing to forget how prone is every writer to exaggerate 

 the good qualities of those whom he has undertaken to set before us, 

 and how many others — against whom no sort of inhumanity can be 

 pretended — wrote in a very similar strain. They even invoke the 

 enthusiasm of the entente cordiale to cast discredit on one who taught 

 that the work of the Encyclopaedists was inferior to Faust or to the 

 Critique of Pure Reason. 



Thus, while one must admit that many reproaches now being 

 urged against Carlyle are well grounded, it should be acknowledged 

 at the same time that the most serious among them are no new dis- 

 coveries of the present epoch, no evidence of the superiority of the 

 Zeitgeist in our own day as compared with that of thirty or forty 

 years ago, but that contemporary critics in so far as they are right 

 are but reproducing the criticism of the past, and in so far as they seek 

 to improve upon it are showing distinctly less insight both into Car- 

 lyle's merits and into his defects than was shown by those who formed 

 the judgments about him which have come down to us by tradition. 

 The inference is that his fame, in so far as present day causes are leading 

 to its decline, may be expected to make a sharp recovery when those 

 who write of him get back their intellectual balance. 



One thing seems to be certain, that his repute — though in a sense 

 it must be said to have fallen — has at least not fallen far towards 

 oblivion. The very tempest of invective is good proof that he is not 



