In summing up the present results of Carlyle’s labor, foolish men of the world and small critics have not failed to ask what it all amounts to,—­what the great Demiurgus is aiming at in his weary battle of life; and the question is significant enough,—­one more proof of that Egyptian darkness of vision which he is here to dispel.  “He pulls down the old,” say they; “but what does he give us in place of it?  Why does he not strike out a system of his own?  And after all, there is nothing new in him.”  Such is the idle talk of the day, and such are the men who either guide the people, or seek to guide them.  Poor ignorant souls! who do not know the beginning of the knowledge which Carlyle teaches, nor its infinite importance to life and all its concerns:—­this, namely, as we have said before, that the soul should first of all be wakened to the consciousness of its own miraculous being, that it may be penetrated by the miracles of the universe, and rise by aspiration and faith to the knowledge and worship of God, in whom are all things; that this attitude of the soul, and its accompanying wisdom, will beget the strength, purity, virtue, and truth which can alone restore order and beauty upon the earth; that all “systems,” and mechanical, outward means and appliances to the end, will but increase the Babel of confusion, as things unfitted to it, and altogether extraneous and hopeless.  “Systems!” It is living, truthful men we want; these will make their own systems; and let those who doubt the truth humbly watch and wait until it is manifest to them, or go on their own arid and sorrowful ways in what peace they can find there.

The catholic spirit of Carlyle’s works cannot be better illustrated than by the fact that he has received letters from all sorts and conditions of men, Methodists and Shakers, Churchmen and Romanists, Deists and Infidels, all claiming his fellowship, and thinking they find their peculiarities of thought in him.  This is owing partly, perhaps, to the fact that in his earlier writings he masked his sentiments both in Hebraic and Christian phraseology; and partly to the lack of vision in his admirers, who could not distinguish a new thought in an old garment.  His “Cromwell” deceived not a few in this respect; and we were once asked in earnest, by a man who should have been better informed, if Carlyle was a Puritan.  Whatever he may be called, or believed to be, one thing is certain concerning him:  that he is a true and valiant man,—­all out a man!—­and that literature and the world are deeply indebted to him.  His mission, like that of Jeremy Collier in a still baser age, was to purge our literature of its falsehood, to recreate it, and to make men once more believe in the divine, and live in it.  So earnest a man has not appeared since the days of Luther, nor any one whose thoughts are so suggestive, germinal, and propagative.  All our later writers are tinged with his thought, and he has to answer for such men as Kingsley, Newman, Froude, and others who will not answer for him, nor acknowledge him.