316 The Philosophy of Thomas Carlyle . [June, 
Matter, merely because unscientific housewives apply that 
name to certain disagreeable, but necessary, material forms ?* 
To the Pantheist dirt is a manifestation of the Deity, but 
the Deity is not therefore dirt. We again turn to Teufels- 
drockh, who tells us, in an eloquent passage, “The withered 
leaf is not dead and lost ; there are Forces in it and around 
it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot ? 
Despise not the rag from which man makes paper, or the 
litter from which the earth makes corn ” ; or, we might add, 
the brain tissues which produce human thought and direCt 
human aCtion, which fashion the kingdoms of heaven and 
earth, and evolve the forces by which both are overthrown. 
The limitations and impatience of Carlyle’s intellect are 
well exemplified by his total failure to penetrate the Kantian 
philosophy, and his final contempt of its “ transcendental 
moonshine” — a truly ludicrous misnomer if applied to the 
“ Kritik der reinen Vernunft.” Yet here and there 
we find an insight into the subjective character of all 
our experiences, which should at least have kept him 
clear of dogmatic Animism. Many passages might be 
adduced from “ Sartor Resartus,” but it is in his private 
note-book that we find the least ambiguous and most 
authentic record of his intellectual gropings, sometimes 
guided by a sudden gleam of daylight, but always swerving 
sooner or later from the illumined path. ■ Thus he says, in 
1827, “ For the present, I will confess it, I scarce see how 
we can reason with absolute certainty on the nature or fate 
of anything, for it seems to me we only see our perceptions 
and their relations ; that is to say, our soul sees only its 
own partial reflex and manner of existing and conceiving.”t 
Of course this is immediately followed by denunciation of 
“most utilitarians, moralists,” and the whole tribe of 
“materialist metaphysicians.” Again, three years later, he 
thinks he has finally “ got rid of Materialism,” to which his 
intellect must at one time have inclined, though prejudice 
strove successfully against its reception. It is evident that 
he felt the logical force of Hume’s arguments, which at first 
deepened, but afterwards aided to nullify, this tendency. 
The scepticism of the great Scotch philosopher, which really 
denies nothing but the possibility of demonstrating first 
principles, seemed to him a deadly weapon with which he 
might slay the “mud-gods” and annihilate the “frog- 
spawn.” Such German thought as he afterwards imperfectly 
* Lord Palmerston’s genial definition of “dirt” as “ Matter in the wrong 
place ” may be profitably contrasted with the nebulous fanaticism of Carlyle. 
f Life of Carlyle, vol. i., p. 373. 
