accomplish some real work, to make some strenuous endeavour "before
the night cometh." Carlyle's contempt for sloth, stings; his bitter
words are a tonic, they scourge, encourage, and at times plead with
poetic fervour. "Think of living. Thy life wert thou the pitifullest
of all the sons of earth is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. _It
is thy own; it is all thou hast to front Eternity with._ Work then
like a star unhasting and unresting."

The man's soul, naked through sloth, or clothed through works, has to
meet its doom, and to bear it as it best can. For Carlyle ignored the
collective view of mankind, the single soul had to prostrate itself
before the Supreme Power. This Supreme Power was almost as vague (to
him) as George Eliot's Permanent Influence is to us. For Carlyle did
not believe "that the Soul could enter into any relations with God,
and in the sight of God it was nothing." There is nothing singular in
this. The religious, but independent-minded Joubert thought "it was
not hard to know God, provided one did not force oneself to define
Him," and deprecated "bringing into the domain of reason, that which
belongs to our innermost feeling."

This very well represented Carlyle's view, but it occupies but a small
place in his writings. All his books, his letters, pamphlets,
histories, essays show his profound living belief in the worth of
individual men, as the salt of the earth, and the young are always
greatly influenced by strong personalities. But the mature mind that
struggles after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives
some rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett
has well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has
led with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and
inspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him