The universe is thus the “living visible garment of God,” and “matter exists only spiritually,” “to represent some Idea, and body it forth.”  We, each of us, are therefore one expression of this central spirit, the only abiding Reality; and so, in turn, everything we know and see is but an envelope or clothing encasing something more vital which is invisible within.  Just as books are the most miraculous things men can make, because a book “is the purest embodiment a Thought of man can have,” so great men are the highest embodiment of Divine Thought visible to us here.  Great men are, as it were, separate phrases, “inspired texts” of the great book of revelation, perpetually interpreting and unfolding in various ways the Godlike to man (Hero as Man of Letters, and Sartor, Book ii. chap. viii.).

From this ground-belief spring all Carlyle’s views and aims.  Hence his gospel of hero-worship, for the “hero” is the greatest embodied “Idea” a man can know, he is a “living light fountain,” he is “a man sent hither to make the divine mystery more impressively known to us.”  Hence it is clear that the first condition of the great man is that he should be sincere, that he should believe.  “The merit of originality is not novelty:  it is sincerity.  The believing man is the original man.”  It is equally necessary that his admirers should be sincere, they too must believe, and not only, as Coleridge puts it, “believe that they believe.”  No more immoral act can be done by a human creature, says Carlyle, than to pretend to believe and worship when he does not.

Hence also springs Carlyle’s doctrine of work.  If man is but the material embodiment of a spiritual Idea or Force, then his clear duty is to express that Force within him to the utmost of his power.  It is what he is here for, and only so can he bring help and light to his fellow-men.[51] And Carlyle, with Browning, believes that it is not the actual deeds accomplished that matter, no man may judge of these, for “man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became.”

Chapter V

Devotional and Religious Mystics

All mystics are devotional and all are religious in the truest sense of the terms.  Yet it seems legitimate to group under this special heading those writers whose views are expressed largely in the language of the Christian religion, as is the case with our earliest mystics, with Crashaw and Francis Thompson and it applies in some measure to Blake.  But beyond this, it seems, in more general terms, to apply specially to those who are so conscious of God that they seem to live in His presence, and who are chiefly concerned with approaching Him, not by way of Love, Beauty, Wisdom, or Nature, but directly, through purgation and adoration.

This description, it is obvious, though it fits fairly well the other writers here included, by no means suffices for Blake.  For he possessed in addition a philosophy, a system, and a profound scheme of the universe revealed to him in vision.  But within what category could Blake be imprisoned?  He outsoars them all and includes them all.  We can only say that the dominant impression he leaves with us that is of his vivid, intimate consciousness of the Divine presence and his attitude of devotion.