aldly mechanical and even cold-hearted, just as Novalis
found Goethe to be in _Meister_. The latter impression is inevitable in
all who, like Goethe and like Mr. Carlyle, make a lofty acquiescence in
the positive course of circumstance a prime condition at once of wise
endeavour and of genuine happiness. The splendid fire and unmeasured
vehemence of Mr. Carlyle's manner partially veil the depth of this
acquiescence, which is really not so far removed from fatalism. The
torrent of his eloquence, bright and rushing as it is, flows between
rigid banks and over hard rocks. Devotion to the heroic does not prevent
the assumption of a tone towards the great mass of the unheroic, which
implies that they are no more than two-legged mill horses, ever treading
a fixed and unalterable round. He practically denies other consolation
to mortals than such as they may be able to get from the final and
conclusive Kismet of the oriental. It is fate. Man is the creature of
his destiny. As for our supposed claims on the heavenly powers: What
right, he asks, hadst thou even to be? Fatalism of this stamp is the
natural and unavoidable issue of a born positivity of spirit, uninformed
by scientific meditation. It exists in its coarsest and most childish
kind in adventurous freebooters of the type of Napoleon, and in a noble
and not egotistic kind in Oliver Cromwell's pious interpretation of the
order of events by the good will and providence of God.

Two conspicuous qualities of Carlylean doctrine flow from this fatalism,
or poetised utilitarianism, or illumined positivity. One of them is a
tolerably constant contempt for excessive nicety in moral distinctions,
and an aversion to the monotonous attitude of praise and blame. In a
country overrun and corroded to the heart, as Great Britain is, with
cant and a foul mechanical hypocrisy, this temper ought to have had its
uses in giving a much-needed robustness to public judgment. One might
suppose, from the tone of opinion among us, not only that the difference
between right and wrong marks the most important aspect of conduct,
which would be true; but that it marks the only aspect of it that
exists, or that is worth considering, which is most profoundly false.
Nowhere has Puritanism done us more harm than in thus leading us to take
all breadth, and colour, and diversity, and fine discrimination, out of
our judgments of men, reducing them to thin, narrow, and superficial
pronouncements upon the lett