how _far away_
Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid._ 2089-2097.]

So illimitably beyond his strength is such a life, that he finds himself
like the drudging student who

"Trims his lamp,
Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place
Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,
Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'--
Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes
To the old solitary nothingness."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, 2098-2103.]

The moral world with its illimitable horizon had Opened out around him,
the voice of the new commandment bidding him "be perfect as his Father
in heaven is perfect" had destroyed his peace, and made imperative a
well nigh hopeless struggle; and, as he compares himself at his best
with the new ideal, he breaks out into the cry,

"O great, just, good God! Miserable Me!"

This humility and contrition, this discontent verging on hopelessness,
constituted, as we have seen, the characteristic attitude of Carlyle;
and it represents a true and, in fact, an indispensable element of man's
moral life.

But this self-condemnation in the face of the moral law is nothing more
than an element, and must not be taken either for the whole truth or for
the most fundamental one. It is because it is taken as fundamental and
final that the discrepancy between morality and religion is held to be
absolute, and the consciousness of evil is turned against faith in the
Good. It is an abstract way of thinking that makes us deduce, from the
transcendent height of the moral ideal, the impossibility of attaining
goodness, and the failure of God's purpose in man. And this is what
Carlyle did. He stopped short at the consciousness of imperfection, and
he made no attempt to account for it. He took it as a complete fact, and
therefore drew a sharp line of distinction between the human and the
divine. And, so far, he was right; for, if we look no further than this
negative side, it is emphatically absurd to identify man, be he
"philosopher" or not, with the Absolute. "Why callest thou Me good?
there is none good save One, that is God." The "ought" _must_ stand
above _all_ human attainment, and declare that "whatever is, is wrong."
But whence comes the ought itself, the ideal which condemns us? Is it
not also immanent in the fact it condemns?

"Who is not acute enough," asks Hegel, "to see a grea