ife
of the Roman Empire as the acceptance of a Messiah; and it was only in
the hands of a great statesman like Gregory VII. that Christianity
became at last an instrument powerful enough to save civilisation. What
the moral renovation of Rousseau did for France we all know. Now
Rousseau's was far more profoundly social than the doctrine of Mr.
Carlyle, which, while in name a renunciation of self, has all its
foundations in the purest individualism. Rousseau, notwithstanding the
method of _Emile_, treats man as a part of a collective whole,
contracting manifold relations and owing manifold duties; and he always
appeals to the love and sympathy which an imaginary God of nature has
implanted in the heart. His aim is unity. Mr. Carlyle, following the
same method of obedience to his own personal emotions, unfortified by
patient reasoning, lands at the other extremity, and lays all his stress
on the separatist instincts. The individual stands alone confronted by
the eternities; between these and his own soul exists the one central
relation. This has all the fundamental egotism of the doctrine of
personal salvation, emancipated from fable, and varnished with an
emotional phrase. The doctrine has been very widely interpreted, and
without any forcing, as a religious expression for the conditions of
commercial success.

If we look among our own countrymen, we find that the apostle of
self-renunciation is nowhere so beloved as by the best of those whom
steady self-reliance and thrifty self-securing and a firm eye to the
main chance have got successfully on in the world. A Carlylean
anthology, or volume of the master's sentences, might easily be
composed, that should contain the highest form of private liturgy
accepted by the best of the industrial classes, masters or men. They
forgive or overlook the writer's denunciations of Beaver Industrialisms,
which they attribute to his caprice or spleen. This is the worst of an
emotional teacher, that people take only so much as they please from
him, while with a reasoner they must either refute by reason, or else
they must accept by reason, and not at simple choice. When trade is
brisk, and England is successfully competing in the foreign markets, the
books that enjoin silence and self-annihilation have a wonderful
popularity in the manufacturing districts. This circumstance is
honourable both to them and to him, as far as it goes, but it furnishes
some reason for suspecting that our most