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sential quality of the great German philosophy, and this is the conception which Mr. Hillebrand elaborates in his brilliant Lectures. 66 Germany," he says, “introduced once for all the idea of Organism into European thought, just as French Rationalism, English Empiricism, and Italian Humanism were introduced before, and have become integral parts of the mental constitution of Europe."

Emerson says, and it is almost the last thing that he has said, "The next age will behold God in the ethical laws, as mankind begins to see them in this age, self-equal, self-executing, instantaneous and self-affirmed, needing no voucher, no prophet, and no miracle besides their own irresistibility; and will regard natural history, private fortunes, and politics, not for themselves, as we have done, but as illustrations of those laws, of that beatitude and love. Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere." That is what the German Idealism stands for, — the glory of the One. It drives out the old duality and mechanism, and will have unity and monism, everything comprehended and informed by its one first principle. "You are no philosopher," says Hegel, "unless first of all a Spinozist." And Carlyle himself had a certain kindness, as opposed to the old dualism, to "your frightful theory of materialism, of man's being but a body, and therefore at least once more a unity." This, he said, may be the paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of

cure.

The language of religion becomes, following up the cue of old Jacob Boehme, Our Father who art in heaven, and earth, and hell. "The First Table of the Law," says Carlyle, " concerns man's duties to himself, to what is highest in himself."

Carlyle, as M. Taine says again, "translates into a poetic and religious style German philosophy. He speaks, like Fichte, of the divine idea of the world, the reality which lies at the bottom of every apparition. He speaks, like Goethe, of the spirit which eternally weaves the living robe of divinity." Sartor Resartus is one sustained expression of this Absolute Idealism. "Natural Supernaturalism" is the "Transcendental Esthetic " put into poetry and passion. "Matter," says Carlyle, in the chapter upon "Pure Reason," "were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit; were it never so honorable, can it be more? The thing visible, nay the thing imagined, the thing in any way conceived as visible, what is it but a garment, a clothing of the higher celestial Invisible?" Again, “All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all. Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth." And this from "Natural Supernaturalism" "Through every star, through every grassblade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the time-vesture of God, and reveals him

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to the wise, hides him from the foolish." But our knowledge of God, the absolute essence itself, is, according to Carlyle, and in the language of Kant, a regulative and not a constitutive knowledge. Our whence and whither, he says, "Sense knows not, Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God." There is always an unsolved beyond and above, Carlyle stands here with Kant at the end of his Pure Reason, whose nature we can only infer from the operation of the laws which work in that section of the universal globe of which we have some knowledge, laws which our broadening knowledge puts in ever changing aspects and proportions. "The course of Nature's phases on this our little fraction of a planet is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger cycle (of causes) our little epicycle revolves on? To the minnow, every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident may have become familiar; but does the minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the tradewinds and monsoons, and moon's eclipses, by all which the condition of its little creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (unmiraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is man; his creek, this planet earth; his ocean, the immeasurable All; his monsoons and periodic currents the mysterious course of Providence through æons of æons." We stand at last in the presence

of mystery, of something fuller than our thought, and reverence is the wise man's deepest feeling. "Thought without reverence," says Carlyle, "is barren, perhaps poisonous." "The man who does not wonder and worship, were he president of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mécanique Céleste, and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories, with their results, in his single head, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no Eye."

Yet it would be almost as improper to say that Carlyle was a Kantian as to say that he was a Fichtian or an Hegelian. He has, as the foundation of his thought, what is common to all the German idealists; but he was too original a man, and applied his Kant, or what not, in a way too purely his own to allow us to call him strictly anybody's disciple. I have said that Schelling, of the German metaphysicians, was the one whom Carlyle read most as he was breaking from the church, and "finding his soul." It will be remembered what an important part Schelling played, too, with Coleridge, and with our early New England Transcendentalists. We, perhaps, are inclined to pass over Schelling a trifle too lightly just now, in following the course of German thought. But neither Schelling, nor any of the metaphysicians proper, did half so much for Carlyle as Goethe. If anybody's disciple, then, as I have said already, we must call Carlyle Goethe's disciple. At heart a

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poet, "with the gift of song," says Mr. Lowell, "Carlyle would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer," he had little taste for the strict metaphysical method, and "the disease of metaphysics" gets as hard words from him as anything else. Metaphysical speculation," he says, "as it begins in nothingness, so it must needs end in nothingness; circulates and must circulate in endless vortices; creating, swallowing — itself.” "The Irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his corollaries, dilemmas, and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful horoscope, and speak reasonable things; nevertheless, your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming. Often, by some winged word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irrefragable, with all his logical tools, hews at it and hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too hard for him." Yet, for the great and genuine metaphysicians he has as hearty words as for anybody. His enthusiastic discussion of the character and influence of the Critical Philosophy will be remembered, and his glowing panegyric upon Fichte. There is very much in his expression which is strikingly Hegelian, and it is interesting to remark in this connection that he had the same high respect and admiration for Hutchison Stirling which Emerson expressed when he urged

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