No one set a more incisive brand on the
meanness that often marks the unrestrained competition of great cities;
no one was more effective in his insistence that the mere accumulation
of wealth may mean the ruin of true prosperity; no one has assailed with
such force the mammon-worship and the frivolity of his age. Everything he
writes comes home to the individual conscience: his claim to be regarded
as a moral exemplar has been diminished, his hold on us as an ethical
teacher remains unrelaxed. It has been justly observed that he helped
to modify "the thought rather than the opinion of two generations." His
message, as that of Emerson, was that "life must be pitched on a higher
plane." Goethe said to Eckermann in 1827 that Carlyle was a moral force
so great that he could not tell what he might produce. His influence has
been, though not continuously progressive, more marked than that of any
of his compeers, among whom he was, if not the greatest, certainly the
most imposing personality. It had two culminations; shortly after the
appearance of _The French Revolution,_ and again towards the close of the
seventh decade of the author's life. To the enthusiastic reception of his
works in the Universities, Mr. Froude has borne eloquent testimony, and
the more reserved Matthew Arnold admits that "the voice of Carlyle,
overstrained and misused since, sounded then in Oxford fresh and
comparatively sound," though, he adds, "The friends of one's youth cannot
always support a return to them.
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