THOMAS CARLYLE. 3S7 



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 Eobespierre 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 " Sar- 

 tor," " not our Logical Mensurative faculty, but our Im- 

 aginative one is King over us." * Worship he defined 

 as " 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 won- 

 ders. There are freethinkers who imagine themselves- 

 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 his friend 

 Emerson, " Monsters." To both of them " the blowing 

 * Book III., Symbols. 



