ppy instincts of life had no right to
be so winsome unless they were meant to be obeyed. The beauty of the
world could not be regarded as a mere trap for the tempting of people,
if one were to retain any worthy conception of the Powers that govern
the world. From this point of view the Carlylians appeared to enter into
life maimed. That, indeed, we all must do, as Christ told us; but they
seemed to do it like the beggars of Colombo, with a deliberate and
somewhat indecent exhibition of their wounds.

Carlyle found many men around him pagan, worshipping the earth without
any spiritual light in them. He feared that many others were about to go
in the same direction, so he cried aloud that the earth was too small,
and that they must find a larger object of worship. For the earth he
substituted the universe, and led men's eyes out among the immensities
and eternities. Professor James tells a story of Margaret Fuller, the
American transcendentalist, having said with folded hands, "I accept the
universe," and how Carlyle, hearing this, had answered, "Gad, she'd
better!" It was this insistence upon the universe, as distinguished from
the earth, which was the note of _Sartor Resartus_.

The reactionaries took Carlyle at his word. They said, "Yes, we shall
worship the universe"; but they went on to add that Carlyle's universe
is not universal. It is at once too vague and too austere. There are
other elements in life besides those to which he called
attention--elements very definite and not at all austere--and they too
have a place in the universe and a claim upon our acceptance. Many of
these are in every way more desirable to the type of mind that rebelled
than the aspects of the universe on which Carlyle had insisted, and so
they went out freely among these neglected elements, set them over
against his kind of idealism, and became themselves idealists of other
sorts.

Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture, found his idealism in the purely
mental region. Rossetti was the idealist of the heart, with its whole
world of emotions, and that subtle and far-reaching inter-play between
soul and body for which Carlyle had always made too little allowance.
Mr. H.G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw, proclaiming themselves idealists of
the social order, have been reaching conclusions and teaching doctrines
at which Carlyle would have stood aghast. These are but random examples,
but they are one in this, that each has protested against that
o