have a natural distaste for the rational or calculating side of conduct. He will depreciate the mechanical, and give undue emphasis to the inspirational. His heroes will be not men of placid temperament, methodical habits, and utilitarian aims, but men of mystical and passionate natures, spasmodic in action, and guided by ideas not easily justified at the bar of utility. Just as in the sphere of speculative thought, he has profound contempt for the Diderots and Voltaires, with their mechanical views of the Universe, so in practical affairs Carlyle has contempt for the men who endeavour to further their aims by appealing to commonplace motives by means of commonplace methods. Specially opposed is he to the tendency of the age to rely for progress, not upon appeals to the great elemental forces of human nature, but upon organisations, committees, and all kinds of mechanism. In his remarkable essay, 'Signs of the Times,' we have ample verification of our exposition. After talking depreciatingly of the mechanical tendency of the prevailing philosophies, Carlyle comments upon the mechanical nature of the reforming agencies of civilisation. The intense Egoism of his nature rebels against any kind of Socialism or Collectivism. He says: 'Were we required to characterise this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not a Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Heroic Age, but, above all, the Mechanical Age. It is the age of machinery in every outward and inward sense of that word.... Men are grown mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force of any kind.... We may trace this tendency in all the great manifestations of our time: in its intellectual aspect, the studies it most favours, and its manner of conducting them; in its practical aspects, its politics, art, religious work; in the whole sources, and throughout the whole current of its spiritual, no less than its material, activity.' With Carlyle the secrets of Nature and Life were discoverable, not so much by the intellect as by the heart. The man with the large heart, rather than the clear head, saw furthest into the nature of things. The history of German thought is strewn with the wreck of systems based upon the Carlylian doctrine of intuition. Schelling and Hegel showed the puerility to which great men are driven when they started to construct science out of their own intuitions, instead of patiently and humbly sitting down to study Nature. Tyndall has left on record his gratitude to Carlyle. Tyndall had grip of the scientific method, and was able to allow Carlyle's inspiration to play upon his mind without fear of harm; but how many waverers has Carlyle driven from the path of reason into the bogs of mysticism?