ion and the English Rebellion, and
their knowledge of German literature and history, as well as most of
their acquaintance with the prominent men of the eighteenth century, and
we shall see how much work Mr. Carlyle has done simply as schoolmaster.

This, however, is emphatically a secondary aspect of his character, and
of the function which he has fulfilled in relation to the more active
tendencies of modern opinion and feeling. We must go on to other ground,
if we would find the field in which he has laboured most ardently and
with most acceptance. History and literature have been with him, what
they will always be with wise and understanding minds of creative and
even of the higher critical faculty--only embodiments, illustrations,
experiments, for ideas about religion, conduct, society, history,
government, and all the other great heads and departments of a complete
social doctrine. From this point of view, the time has perhaps come when
we may fairly attempt to discern some of the tendencies which Mr.
Carlyle has initiated or accelerated and deepened, though assuredly many
years must elapse before any adequate measure can be taken of their
force and final direction.

It would be a comparatively simple process to affix the regulation
labels of philosophy; to say that Mr. Carlyle is a Pantheist in religion
(or a Pot-theist, to use the alternative whose flippancy gave such
offence to Sterling on one occasion[1]), a Transcendentalist or
Intuitionist in ethics, an Absolutist in politics, and so forth, with
the addition of a crowd of privative or negative epithets at discretion.
But classifications of this sort are the worst enemies of true
knowledge. Such names are by the vast majority even of persons who think
themselves educated, imperfectly apprehended, ignorantly interpreted,
and crudely and recklessly applied. It is not too much to say that nine
out of ten people who think they have delivered themselves of a
criticism when they call Mr. Carlyle a Pantheist, could neither explain
with any precision what Pantheism is, nor have ever thought of
determining the parts of his writings where this particular monster is
believed to lurk. Labels are devices for saving talkative persons the
trouble of thinking. As I once wrote elsewhere:

[1] _Life of John Sterling_, p. 153.

'The readiness to use general names in speaking of the greater subjects,
and the fitness which qualifies a man to use them, commonly exist in
inverse