396 ON UNVEILING THE STATUE OF 



castles — on the rock or in the air, as the case may be — 

 in this ultra-scientific region. Certainly the mind of 

 Carlyle could not have been prevented from doing so. 

 Out of pure Unintelligence he held that Intelligence 

 never could have sprung, and so, at the heart of things, 

 he placed an Intelligence — an Energy which, ' to avoid 

 circuitous periphrasis, we call God.' I am here repeat- 

 ing his own words to myself. Every reader of his works 

 will have recognised the burning intensity of his convic- 

 tion that this universe is ruled by veracity and justice, 

 which are sure in the end to scorch and dissipate all 

 falsehood and wrong. 



And now I come to the charge so frequently made 

 against him, that he was the apostle of Might. He felt, 

 perhaps more deeply than his assailants, the radical and 

 ineffaceable difference which often subsists between 

 might and right. But 



His faith was large in time, 

 And that which shapes it to some perfect end, 



His own words, which are to be found in the 8th chapter 

 of ' Chartism,' are these : — ' Might and Eight do differ 

 frightfully from hour to hour ; but give them centuries 

 to try it in, and they are found in the end to be identical.' 

 Viewed in the light of this utterance, the advocacy of 

 Might is not, in the abstract, offensive ; for it meant at 

 bottom the assertion that, in the end, that only is 

 mighty which has the 6 Law of the Universe ' on its 

 side. With Carlyle, as with Empedocles, Lucretius, 

 and Darwin, the Fit survives. His doctrine is the 

 doctrine of science, not ' touched ' but saturated with 

 religious emotion. For the operation of Force — the 

 scientific agent — his deep and yearning soul substituted 

 the operation of the Energy before referred to, which, 

 to avoid periphrasis, we call God. 



The ' Abbey ' would have opened its doors to 



