THOMAS CAELYLE. 387 



if we had their thought, all that they could have articu- 

 lately spoken to us, how insignificant a fraction were 

 that of the Thing which realised itself, which decreed 

 itself, on signal given by them ! ' Thus, a howling 

 Marat, or a sea-green Robespierre was able to unlock 

 forces infinitely in excess of his own. 



It was not the absence of scientific power and pre- 

 cision, so much as the overwhelming importance which 

 Carlyle ascribed to ethical considerations and influences, 

 that determined his attitude towards natural science. 

 The fear that moral strength might be diminished by 

 Darwin's doctrine accounts for such hostility as he 

 showed to the ' Origin of Species.' We had many calm 

 and reasonable conversations on this and kindred sub- 

 jects ; and I could see that his real protest was against 

 being hemmed in. He demanded a larger area than 

 that offered by science for speculative action and its 

 associated emotion. ' Yes, Friends,' he says in ' Sartor,' 

 * not our Logical Mensurative faculty, but our Imagi- 

 native one is King over us.' l Worship he denned as 

 6 transcendent wonder ' ; and the lifting of the heart by 

 worship was a safeguard against moral putrefaction. 

 Science, he feared, tended to destroy this sentiment. 

 I may remark here that, as a corrective of super- 

 stition, science, even when it acts thus, is altogether 

 salutary. But preoccupation alone could close the eyes 

 of the student of natural science to the fact that the 

 long line of his researches is, in reality, a line of 

 wonders. There are freethinkers who imagine them- 

 selves able to sound with their penny twine-balls the 

 ocean of immensity. With such Carlyle had little 

 sympathy. He was a freethinker of wiser and nobler 

 mould. The miracles of orthodoxy were to him, as to 



Book III., Symbols. 



