ena is sustained and
energised by an infinite Eternal Power. Evolution is as emphatic as
Carlyle on the absolute distinction between right and wrong. Carlyle and
all the German school confront the evolutionary ethics with the Kantian
categorical imperative. Surely the Evolutionists in the matter of an
imperative out-rival the Intuitionalists, when, in addition to the
dictates of conscience, they can call as a witness and sanction to
morality the testimony of all-embracing experience. In his famous
saying, Might is Right, Carlyle was unconsciously formulating one aspect
of evolutionary ethics. Carlyle did not mean anything so silly as that
brute force and ethical sanctions are identical; what he meant was that
in the long run Righteousness will prove the mightiest force in the
universe. What is this but another version of the Spencerian doctrine of
the survival of the fittest, which, in the most highly evolved state of
society, will mean the survival of the best? In the highest social state
the only Might that will survive will be the Might which is rooted in
Right. Carlyle's contemptuous attitude towards science is deeply to be
deplored. He waged bitter warfare against the evolution theory, quite
oblivious of the fact that by means of it there was revealed a deeper
insight into the Power behind Nature, and into the ethical constitution
of the universe, than ever entered into the minds of transcendental
philosophers.'

It is taken for granted that Carlyle's thoughts have no organic unity.
He is looked upon as a stimulating, but confused, writer, as a thinker
of original, but incoherent, power. True, he has not a logical mind, and
pays no deference to the canons of the schools or the market-place. But
there is a method in Carlyle's apparent caprice. When analysed, his
thoughts are discovered to have unity. His transcendentalism embraces
the ethic as well as the cosmic side of life. In the sphere of morals,
as of science, his writings are one long tumultuous protest against the
mechanical philosophy and the utilitarian theory of morals. From his
essay on Voltaire we take the following:--'It is contended by many that
our mere love of personal Pleasure or Happiness, as it is called, acting
in every individual with such clearness as he may easily have, will of
itself lead him to respect the rights of others, and wisely employ his
own.... Without some belief in the necessary eternal, or, which is the
same thing, in the supra m