To the ardent believer in progress such a state of mind is, of course, repulsive. It implies misanthropy, cynicism, and disbelief in mankind. Nor can anybody deny that Carlyle's gloomy and dyspeptic constitution palpably biassed his view of his contemporaries as well as of their theories. The 'mostly fools' expresses a deeply-rooted feeling, and we might add 'mostly bores,' and to a great extent humbugs. And this, of course, implies a very low estimate of the powers of unheroic mankind, and therefore of their rights. If most men are fools, their right to do as they please is a right to knock their heads against stone walls. Carlyle perhaps overlooked the fact that even that process may be useful training for fools. But even here he asserted a doctrine wrongly applied rather than false in principle. It shocks one to find an open advocacy of slavery for black Quashee. But we must admit, and admit for the reasons given by Carlyle, that even slavery may be better than sheer anarchy and barbarism; that, historically speaking, the system of slavery represents a necessary stage in civilisation; and therefore that the simple abolition of slavery—a recognition of unconditional 'right' without reference to the possession of the instincts necessary for higher kinds of society—might be disguised cruelty. The error was in the hasty assumption that his Quashee was, in fact, in this degraded state; and the haste to accept this disheartening belief was but too characteristic. That liberty might mean barbarism was true; that it actually did mean it in certain given cases was a rash assumption too much in harmony with his ordinary aversion to the theorists of his time.