th it a
characteristic defiance of untoward outer circumstances which gave him
strength and resolution. "Perhaps," he says, "I directly thereupon began
to be a man."

Carlyle believes that the world and everything in it is the expression
of one great indivisible Force; that nothing is separate, nothing is
dead or lost, but that all "is borne forward on the bottomless shoreless
flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamorphoses." Everything
in the world is an embodiment of this great Force, this "Divine Idea,"
hence everything is important and charged with meaning. "Rightly viewed
no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through
which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself."[50]

The universe is thus the "living visible garment of God," and "matter
exists only spiritually," "to represent some Idea, and _body_ it forth."
We, each of us, are therefore one expression of this central spirit, the
only abiding Reality; and so, in turn, everything we know and see is but
an envelope or clothing encasing something more vital which is invisible
within. Just as books are the most miraculous things men can make,
because a book "is the _purest_ embodiment a Thought of man can have,"
so great men are the highest embodiment of Divine Thought visible to us
here. Great men are, as it were, separate phrases, "inspired texts" of
the great book of revelation, perpetually interpreting and unfolding in
various ways the Godlike to man (_Hero as Man of Letters_, and _Sartor_,
Book ii. chap. viii.).

From this ground-belief spring all Carlyle's views and aims. Hence his
gospel of hero-worship, for the "hero" is the greatest embodied "Idea" a
man can know, he is a "living light fountain," he is "a man sent hither
to make the divine mystery more impressively known to us." Hence it is
clear that the first condition of the great man is that he should be
sincere, that he should _believe_. "The merit of originality is not
novelty: it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man." It is
equally necessary that his admirers should be sincere, they too must
believe, and not only, as Coleridge puts it, "believe that they
believe." No more immoral act can be done by a human creature, says
Carlyle, than to pretend to believe and worship when he does not.

Hence also springs Carlyle's doctrine of work. If man is but the
material embodiment of a spiritual Idea or Force, then his clear duty is
to express that