create,
know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee,
'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!

"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of
Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision the whole members are
in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tossed Soul, as
once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: 'Let there be
Light!' Even to the greatest that has felt such moment is it not
miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to
the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the
rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate
Firmaments: deep, silent rock-foundations are built beneath, and
the skyey vault, with its everlasting Luminaries, above; instead
of a dark, wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile,
heaven-encompassed World.

"I, too, could now say to myself: 'Be no longer a Chaos, but a
World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the
pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in
God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then.
Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole
might. Work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh
wherein no man can work.'"

There is another passage in _Sartor Resartus_ which I have always
held in veneration, though the field labourer is not now so
"hardly-entreated" as when Carlyle wrote of him:--

"Two men I honour, and no third. First the toilworn Craftsman that
with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and
makes her man's.

"Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein
notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue indefeasibly royal, as of
the sceptre of this planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is
the face of a man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for
thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee!
Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were
thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our
conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so
marred. For in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to
be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and
defacements of labour;