Severe comment has been made upon Carlyle's attitude towards science. There was this excuse for his contemptuous attitude--science in its early days fell into the hands of Dryasdusts. So absorbed were these men in analysing Nature, that they missed the sense of mystery and beauty which is the essence of all poetry and all religion. In the hands of the Dryasdusts, Nature was converted into a museum in which everything was duly labelled. During the mania for analysis, it was forgotten that there is a great difference between the description and the explanation of phenomena. In _Sartor Resartus_ Carlyle rescues science from the grip of the pedant and restores it to the poet. 'Wonder, is the basis of Worship; the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible in Man; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for some short season, a reign _in partibus infidelium_.' That progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdröckh, much as he otherwise venerates these two latter processes. 'Shall your Science,' exclaims he, 'proceed in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of Logic alone; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart,--but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous; at best, dies like Cookery with the day that called it forth; does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to all Time.' * * * * * 'The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole _Mécanique Céleste_ and _Hegel's Philosophy_, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head,--is but a pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.'