mantic utterances, whether poetical, critical, or historical, is this
inward remedilessness, what Carlyle calls this far-off whimpering of
wail and woe. And from this romantic state of mind there is absolutely
no possible _theoretic_ escape. Whether, like Renan, we look upon life
in a more refined way, as a romance of the spirit; or whether, like the
friends of M. Zola, we pique ourselves on our 'scientific' and
'analytic' character, and prefer to be cynical, and call the world a
'roman experimental' on an infinite scale,--in either case the world
appears to us potentially as what the same Carlyle once called it, a
vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha and mill of death.

The only escape is by the practical way. And since I have mentioned
the nowadays much-reviled name of Carlyle, let me mention it once more,
and say it is the way of his teaching. No matter for Carlyle's life,
no matter for a great deal of his {174} writing. What was the most
important thing he said to us? He said: "Hang your sensibilities!
Stop your snivelling complaints, and your equally snivelling raptures!
Leave off your general emotional tomfoolery, and get to WORK like men!"
But this means a complete rupture with the subjectivist philosophy of
things. It says conduct, and not sensibility, is the ultimate fact for
our recognition. With the vision of certain works to be done, of
certain outward changes to be wrought or resisted, it says our
intellectual horizon terminates. No matter how we succeed in doing
these outward duties, whether gladly and spontaneously, or heavily and
unwillingly, do them we somehow must; for the leaving of them undone is
perdition. No matter how we feel; if we are only faithful in the
outward act and refuse to do wrong, the world will in so far be safe,
and we quit of our debt toward it. Take, then, the yoke upon our
shoulders; bend our neck beneath the heavy legality of its weight;
regard something else than our feeling as our limit, our master, and
our law; be willing to live and die in its service,--and, at a stroke,
we have passed from the subjective into the objective philosophy of
things, much as one awakens from some feverish dream, full of bad
lights and noises, to find one's self bathed in the sacred coolness and
quiet of the air of the night.

But what is the essence of this philosophy of objective conduct, so
old-fashioned and finite, but so chaste and sane and strong, when
compared with its romantic rival?