te than
to wear. Carlyle saw in this much more than an industrial change. He
maintained that the love and pride of thorough work had long been a
pre-eminently English quality, that it was the very tap-root of the
moral worth of the English character, and that anything that tended to
weaken it was a grave moral evil.

It is worth while trying to understand what truth underlay those parts
of his teaching which seem most repulsive. The worship of force, which
is so apparent in many of his writings, is a striking example. He was
often accused of teaching that might is right. He always answered that
he had not done so--that what he taught was that right is might; that
by the providential constitution of the Universe truth in the long run
is sure to be stronger than falsehood; that good will prevail over
evil, and that right and might, though they differ widely in short
periods of time, would in long spaces prove to be identical. Nothing,
he was accustomed to say, seemed weaker than the Christian religion
when the disciples assembled in the upper room; yet it was in truth
the strongest thing in the world, and it accordingly prevailed. It was
one of his favourite sayings 'that the soul of the Universe is just,'
and he believed therefore that the ultimate fate of nations, whether
it be good or bad, was very much what they deserved. It is curious to
observe the analogy between this teaching and the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest, which a very different teacher--Charles
Darwin--has made so conspicuous.

He scandalised--and I think with a good deal of reason--most of his
contemporaries by the ridicule which he threw upon the career of
Howard, and upon the great movement for prison reform which was so
actively pursued in his time. Much of what he wrote on this subject
is, to me at least, very repulsive; but you will generally find in the
most extravagant utterances of Carlyle that there is some true meaning
at bottom. He maintained that the passion for reforming and improving
prisons and prison-life had been carried in England to such a point
that the lot of a convicted criminal was often much better than that
of an honest and struggling artisan. He believed that a just and wise
distribution of compassion is a most important element of national
well-being, and that the English people are very apt to be indifferent
to great masses of unobtrusive, struggling, honourable, unsensational
poverty at their very doors, while the