ll as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour,
and in natural force of any kind.... We may trace this tendency in all
the great manifestations of our time: in its intellectual aspect, the
studies it most favours, and its manner of conducting them; in its
practical aspects, its politics, art, religious work; in the whole
sources, and throughout the whole current of its spiritual, no less than
its material, activity.' With Carlyle the secrets of Nature and Life
were discoverable, not so much by the intellect as by the heart. The man
with the large heart, rather than the clear head, saw furthest into the
nature of things. The history of German thought is strewn with the wreck
of systems based upon the Carlylian doctrine of intuition. Schelling and
Hegel showed the puerility to which great men are driven when they
started to construct science out of their own intuitions, instead of
patiently and humbly sitting down to study Nature. Tyndall has left on
record his gratitude to Carlyle. Tyndall had grip of the scientific
method, and was able to allow Carlyle's inspiration to play upon his
mind without fear of harm; but how many waverers has Carlyle driven from
the path of reason into the bogs of mysticism?

Carlyle's impatience with reasoning and his determination to follow the
promptings of _a priori_ conceptions gave his system of ethics a
one-sided cast, and made him needlessly aggressive towards what in his
day was called Utilitarianism, but what has now come to be known as
Evolutionary Ethics. What is the chief end of man considered as a moral
agent? The answer of the Christian religion is as intelligible as it is
comprehensive. Man's duty consists in obeying the laws of God revealed
in Nature and in the Bible. But apart from revelation, where is the
basis of ethical authority? Debarred from accepting the Christian view,
and instinctively repelled from Utilitarianism, Carlyle found refuge in
the Fichtean and similar systems of ethics. By substituting Blessedness
for Happiness as the aim of ethical endeavour, Carlyle endeavoured to
preserve the heroic attitude which was associated with Supernaturalism.
In his view, it was more consistent with human dignity to trust for
inspiration to a light within than painfully to piece together fragments
of human experience and ponder the inferences to be drawn therefrom.

In his 'Data of Ethics,' Herbert Spencer shows the hollowness of
Carlyle's distinction between Blesse