188a.] The Philosophy of Thomas Carlyle . 319 
truer appreciation of the faCts of life might teach us that 
the supposed vestibule of the temple is really the sanCtuary 
itself, and that all seeming vistas of further glory are only 
reflections of its own lustre by mirrors lining its walls. No 
generous aCtion or lofty principle can be less generous or 
lofty because it is the coinage of a material organism. No 
glorious landscape can be less glorious because the mind 
which informs it with meaning is human, not Divine. That 
Nature is unspeakably wonderful we not only admit, but 
assert, and therefore do not seek to transcend the sphere of 
her wonders. Carlyle characteristically says, “ That the 
Supernatural differs not from the Natural is a great truth, 
which the last century (especially in France) has been en- 
gaged in demonstrating. The Philosophers went far wrong, 
however, in this, that instead of raising the natural to the 
supernatural, they strove to sink the supernatural to the na- 
tural. The gist of my whole way of thought is to do not 
the latter, but the former,”* The fallacy of this mystifica= 
tion lies in the assumption that “ the natural ” requires to 
be “ raised,” and that human thought is capable of such a 
superhuman operation. Since man can know nothing but 
phenomena, his first attempt to realise the noumenal makes 
it phenomenal, and so brings it within the domain of Nature. 
His imaginings may certainly be vague and incoherent ; they 
may ignore the relation of cause and effeCt, and may at 
pleasure conjoin incongruous attributes and functions ; but 
they cannot originate anything not already present in his 
own character and experience. All his ideas of beauty and 
virtue are drawn from mundane models, and gain nothing by 
being transferred to an extra-mundane Divinity. The super- 
natural must therefore “ sink ” to the natural by the mere 
faCt that it is conceived in a human mind. 
In the Address recently delivered by M. Pasteur before the 
French Academy, and cited at the head- of this article, a 
similar error may be detected. He justly asserts that “ the 
idea of God is a form of the idea of the Infinite,” but does 
not perceive that the Infinite — instead of including “ more 
of the Supernatural than is to be found in all the miracles 
of all religions,” is simply a synonym of Nature. It is true 
that we cannot represent to ourselves any “ flaming wall” 
as the boundary of existence ; but although our conceptions 
of the Universe are necessarily indefinite and boundless, that 
is surely no reason why we should prostrate ourselves before 
the fetich of our own ignorance, and give it a local habitation 
and a name. 
Life of Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 330. 
