fference between the evolution of Spencer and of Hegel is that the
one puts matter, the other mind, first. For all practical purposes, it
signifies little whether mind is the temporary embodiment of an idea, or
the temporary product of a highly specialised form of matter. In either
case, man has no more freedom than the bubble upon the surface of the
stream. We may discourse of the bubble as poetically or as practically
as we please, the result is the same--absorption in the universal.
Hegelianism as much as Naturalism leaves man a prisoner in the hands of
Fate. The only difference is, that while Naturalism puts round the
prisoner's neck a plain, unpretentious noose, Hegelianism adds fringes
and embroidery. If there is no appeal from Nature's dread sentence, the
less poetry and embroidery there is about the doleful business the
better.

In _Sartor Resartus_, Carlyle talks finely but vaguely, of the peace
which came over his soul when he discovered that the universe was not
mechanical but Divine. The peace was not of long duration. What
consolation Carlyle derived from Idealism did not appear in his life.
What a contrast between the poetic optimism of _Sartor_ and the
heavily-charged pessimism of old age, when Carlyle, with wailing pathos,
exclaims that God does nothing. Carlyle's life abundantly illustrates
the fact that whenever it leaves cloudland, Idealism sinks into
scepticism more bitter and gloomy than the unbelief of Naturalism.
Carlyle approached the question of the Ultimate Reality from the wrong
standpoint. He had no reasoned philosophic creed. A poet, he had the
poetic dread of analysis, and his spirit revolted at the spectacle of
Nature on the dissecting-table. He waged a life-long warfare against
science. As the present writer has elsewhere remarked:--'Carlyle never
could tolerate the evolution theory. He always spoke with the utmost
contempt of Darwin, and everything pertaining to the development
doctrines. It is somewhat startling to find that Carlyle was an
evolutionist without knowing it. The antagonism between Carlyle and
Spencer disappears on closer inspection. When Carlyle speaks of the
universe as in very truth the star-domed city of God, and reminds us
that through every crystal and through every grass blade, but most
through every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams, he is
simply saying in the language of poetry what Spencer says in the
language of science, that the world of phenom