which followed upon the vast upheaval of the Revolution was one of
widespread turmoil and perplexity. Men felt themselves to be wandering
aimlessly "between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be
born." The old order had collapsed in shapeless ruin; but the promised
Utopia had not been realised to take its place. In many directions the
forces of reaction were at work. Religion, striving to maintain itself
upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a
mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had
fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and
inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and
hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms
which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary
movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, and with it the
mood of disillusion and despair. The spirit of doubt and denial was
felt as a paralysing power in every department of life and thought,
and the shadow of unbelief lay heavy on many hearts.

It was for the men of this "sad time" that Carlyle wrote
Teufelsdroeckh's story; and he wrote it not merely to depict the
far-reaching consequences of their pessimism but also to make plain to
them their true path out of it. He desired to exhibit to his age the
real nature of the strange malady from which it was suffering in order
that he might thereupon proclaim the remedy.

What, then, is the moral significance of Carlyle's "symbolic myth"?
What are the supreme lessons which he uses it to convey?

We must begin by understanding his diagnosis. For him, all the evils
of the time could ultimately be traced back to their common source in
what may be briefly described as its want of real religion. Of churches
and creeds there were plenty; of living faith little or nothing was
left. Men had lost all vital sense of God in the world; and because of
this, they had taken up a fatally wrong attitude to life. They looked
at it wholly from the mechanical point of view, and judged it by
merely utilitarian standards. The "body-politic" was no longer
inspired by any "soul-politic." Men, individually and in the mass,
cared only for material prosperity, sought only outward success, made
the pursuit of happiness the end and aim of their being. The divine
meaning of virtue, the infinite nature of duty, had been forgotten,
and morality had been turned into a sort of ledger-p