s later mannerism--written in English, and
not in Carlylese--his sense of spirit is always more lively than
his sense of form. He finally became so impatient of art as to
maintain--half-seriously--the paradox that Shakspere would have
done better to write in prose. In three of these early essays--on
the _Signs of the Times_, 1829; on _History_, 1830; and on
_Characteristics_, 1831--are to be found the germs of all his later
writings. The first of these was an arraignment of the mechanical
spirit of the age. In every province of thought he discovered too
great a reliance upon systems, institutions, machinery, instead of upon
men. Thus, in religion, we have Bible Societies, "machines for
converting the heathen." "In defect of Raphaels and Angelos and
Mozarts, we have royal {285} academies of painting, sculpture, music."
In like manner, he complains, government is a machine. "Its duties and
faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable."
Against the "police theory," as distinguished from the "paternal"
theory of government, Carlyle protested with ever-shriller iteration.
In _Chartism_, 1839; _Past and Present_, 1843; and _Latter-day
Pamphlets_, 1850, he denounced this _laissez faire_ idea. The business
of government, he repeated, is to govern; but this view makes it its
business to refrain from governing. He fought most fiercely against
the conclusions of political economy, "the dismal science," which, he
said, affirmed that men were guided exclusively by their stomachs. He
protested, too, against the Utilitarians, followers of Bentham and
Mill, with their "greatest happiness principle," which reduced virtue
to a profit-and-loss account. Carlyle took issue with modern
liberalism; he ridiculed the self-gratulation of the time, all the talk
about progress of the species, unexampled prosperity, etc. But he was
reactionary without being conservative. He had studied the French
Revolution, and he saw the fateful, irresistible approach of democracy.
He had no faith in government "by counting noses," and he hated talking
parliaments; but neither did he put trust in an aristocracy that spent
its time in "preserving the game." What he wanted was a great
individual ruler, a real king or hero; and this doctrine he set forth
afterward most fully in _Hero Worship_, 1841, and {286} illustrated in
his lives of representative heroes, such as his _Cromwell's Letters and
Speeches_, 1845, and his great _Hist