"...
Canst _thou_ by searching find out God? I am not surprised thou canst
not, vain fool. If they do abolish God from their poor bewildered
hearts, there will be seen such a world as few are dreaming of.
Carlyle calls evidence from all quarters, appealing to Napoleon's
question, "Who made all that?" and to Friedrich's belief that intellect
"could not have been put into him by an entity that had none of its own,"
in support of what he calls the Eternal Fact of Facts, to which he clings
as to the Rock of Ages, the sole foundation of hope and of morality to
one having at root little confidence in his fellow-men.
If people are only driven upon virtuous conduct ... by association of
ideas, and there is no "Infinite Nature of Duty," the world, I should
say, had better count its spoons to begin with, and look out for
hurricanes and earthquakes to end with.
Carlyle hazardously confessed that as regards the foundations of his
faith and morals, with Napoleon and Friedrich II. on his side, he had
against him the advancing tide of modern _Science._ He did not attempt
to disprove its facts, or, as Emerson, to sublimate them into a new
idealism; he scoffed at and made light of them, _e.g._--
Geology has got rid of Moses, which surely was no very
sublime achievement either. I often think ... it is pretty
much all that science in this age has done.
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