1882.] The Philosophy of Thomas Carlyle. 315 
general signification attached by Carlyle to these terms, al- 
though their antithetic use is radically unscientific and inac- 
curate. With him the machine is the antithesis of the 
organism, for he fails to perceive that both organism and 
machine are alike members of the universal Family Auto- 
mata. Broadly speaking, he regards Nature as inspired, 
not impelled, — as a growth, not a contrivance, — his view 
being essentially a protest against the Theism of Butler and 
Paley, which finds its most noteworthy expression in the 
argument from Design. Analogical inferences are discarded 
for an appeal to intuitive sympathy. Man is not bidden to 
compare Nature with Art ; he is exhorted to disregard detail, 
and to recognise in the pervading cosmical vitality a glorified 
prototype of his own higher life. God is no longer without, 
but within ; no longer transcendent, but immanent* “ For 
Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifesta- 
tion of Spirit ; were it never so honourable, can it be 
more ? ”* Earth and Heaven are the “ Time-vesture of the 
Eternal ” — no lifeless textile fabric, but a sentient garment 
of incarnate Deity. The Pantheism thus summarised, if 
lightly held as a sublime hypothesis, need not be inconsistent 
with scientific Materialism. It unifies the psychical and the 
physical, — the Nous and the PXyle,— and all beside is a mere 
question of nomenclature. If the dust of the earth, and 
therefore the body of man, is divine, no separable soul is 
necessary or conceivable. Save to the vulgar Dualist, who 
believes in an external Deity, it can signify little, at least in 
theory, whether we name our “ first cause” Matter or Spirit, 
save that the former is a modest confession of ignorance, the 
latter an arrogant affectation of supreme knowledge. 
But Carlyle’s mental atmosphere was dim, and the objects 
of his thought ill-defined, as though seen through the 
floating clouds of smoke which issued so copiously from his 
pipe. He never gained a clear vision of his own creed. 
“ The theories which dispensed with God and the soul ” — - 
which refused to proffer explanations of what he himself had 
confessed to be inexplicablet — Carlyle utterly abhorred. 
Physical Science, and what he called the “ mud-gods ” of 
the age, he regarded with ignorant disdain ; Materialism was 
to him the “ Gospel of Dirt,” A perplexed disciple might 
well inquire, Must we then take “ dirt ” as the type of 
* Sartor Resartus, Book I., Chapter X, 
f “ This Dreaming, this Somnambulism, is what we on earth call Life, 
wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand 
from left ; yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing.” — Sartor 
Resartus , Book I , Chapter VII. 
