THOMAS CARLYLE. 355 



seeking, among other things, to remove all prejudice 

 by making clear to him the spirit in which the highest 

 scientific minds pursued their work. They could not 

 detach themselves from their fellow-men, but history 

 showed that they thought less of worldly profit and 

 applause, and practised more of self-denial than any 

 other class of intellectual workers. Carlyle had been 

 to the Royal Society, but found the meetings he at- 

 tended flat, stale, and unprofitable. Not knowing how 

 the communications were related to the general body 

 of research, they, of course, lacked the sap which their 

 roots might have supplied to them. He was surprised to 

 find me fairly well acquainted with ' Wilhelm Meister's 

 Wanderjahre,' declaring that, as far as his knowledge 

 went, the persons were few and far between who showed 

 the least acquaintance with Goethe's 'Three Reve- 

 rences ' reverence for what is above us, reverence for 

 what is around us, reverence for what is beneath us. 

 To this feature of Goethe's ethics Carlyle always at- 

 tached great importance. Among the spoken and 

 written words of our age the utterances of Goethe were, 

 in his estimation, the highest and weightiest. Of 

 Fichte and Schiller he sometimes spoke with qualified 

 admiration of Goethe never. He may have been 

 indebted to the great German for a portion of his 

 spiritual freedom, and such indebtedness men do not 

 readily forget. Unswerving in his loyalty, Carlyle, 

 towards the end of his life, would have ratified by 

 re-subscription the ardent outburst of 1831. ' And 

 knowest thou no prophet, even in the vesture, environ- 

 ment, and dialect of this age ? None to whom the 

 Godlike has revealed itself, 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 but afar off, to be divine ? 



