78 INDOOR STUDIES 



Carlyle's debt to science is much less obvious than 

 that of Emerson. He was not the intellectual miser, 

 the gleaner and hoarder of ideas for their own sake, 

 that Emerson was, but the prophet and spokesman 

 of personal qualities, the creator and celebrator of 

 heroes. So far as science ignored or belittled man 

 or the ethical quality in man, and rested with a mere 

 mechanical conception of the universe, he was its 

 enemy. Individuality alone interested him. Not 

 the descent of the species, but the ascent of personal 

 attributes, was the problem that attracted him. He 

 was unfriendly to the doctrine of physical evolution, 

 yet his conception of natural selection and the sur- 

 vival of the fittest as applied to history is as radical 

 as Darwin's. He had studied astronomy to some 

 purpose. The fragment left among his papers called 

 "Spiritual Optics," and published by Froude in his 

 life of him, shows what a profound interpretation 

 and application he had given to the cardinal astro- 

 nomical facts. His sense of the reign of law, his 

 commanding perception of the justice and rectitude 

 inherent in things, of the reality of the ideal, of 

 the subordination of the lesser to the greater, the 

 tyranny of mass, power, etc. , have evidently all been 

 deepened and intensified by his absorption of the 

 main principles of this department of physical 

 science. What disturbed him especially was any 

 appearance of chaos, anarchy, insubordination; he 

 wanted to see men governed and duly obedient to 

 the stronger force, as if the orbs of heaven were his 

 standard. He seemed always to see man and human 



