ractical bearings. Since "all Forms whereby Spirit
manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or in the imagination,
are Clothes," civilisation and everything belonging to it--our
languages, literatures and arts, our governments, social machinery and
institutions, our philosophies, creeds and rituals--are but so many
vestments woven for itself by the shaping spirit of man. Indispensable
these vestments are; for without them society would collapse in
anarchy, and humanity sink to the level of the brute. Yet here again
we must emphasise the difference, already noted, between the foolish
man and the wise. The foolish man once more assumes that the vestments
exist for themselves, as ultimate facts, and that they have a value of
their own. He, therefore, confuses the life with its clothing; is even
willing to sacrifice the life for the sake of the clothing. The wise
man, while he, too, recognises the necessity of the vestments, and
indeed insists upon it, knows that they have no independent
importance, that they derive all their potency and value from the
inner reality which they were fashioned to represent and embody, but
which they often misrepresent and obscure. He therefore never confuses
the life with the clothing, and well understands how often the
clothing has to be sacrificed for the sake of the life. Thus, while
the utility of clothes has to be recognised to the full, it is still
of the essence of wisdom to press hard upon the vital distinction
between the outer wrappings of man's life and that inner reality which
they more or less adequately enfold.

The use which Carlyle makes of this doctrine in his interpretation of
the religious history of the world and of the crisis in thought of his
own day, will be anticipated. All dogmas, forms and ceremonials, he
teaches, are but religious vestments--symbols expressing man's deepest
sense of the divine mystery of the universe and the hunger and thirst
of his soul for God. It is in response to the imperative necessities
of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his
ideas and aspirations. Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all
other human things, they partake of the ignorance and weakness of the
times in which they were framed, it is inevitable that with the growth
of knowledge and the expansion of thought they must presently be
outgrown. When this happens, there follows what Carlyle calls the
"superannuation of symbols." Men wake to the fac