Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) did not care to attain any "higher" knowledge. He satirized Coleridge's "transcendental moonshine." He proposed a new basis of faith and for the guidance of life to which he was led by the study of Goethe and the romantic philosophy. His effort was directed towards securing independence from the never-ending investigations of science. After having extricated himself from materialistic theories in his early youth, he cherished a romantic aversion towards analysis and criticism. His polemic applies especially to the "philosophy of cause and effect" and the utilitarian ethics. In his profoundest essay, Sartor Resartus (1833), he develops a "philosophy of old clothes," based on Kant's distinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself: The world is the garment of Deity; natural science examines the garment without knowing its wearer. Nature is a mighty symbol, a revelation of ideas which no scientific method is capable of conceiving. It is the duty of philosophy ever and anon to inspire the sense of the mysterious majesty of being when men have fallen asleep through familiarity. Even our ideas of belief are garments of Deity;—but the garment of Deity must be woven anew from time to time.
Carlyle's practical view of life reveals two distinct characteristics.—Everything great takes place quietly, in silence. Great deeds are accomplished without any express consciousness of the fact. A full and clear consciousness makes everything small and mechanical. The highest truth, so far as man is concerned, can only exist in the form of a symbol: the symbol withholds and expresses, obscures and reveals at one and the same time.—The highest revelation consists of the great men, the heroes (On Heroes and Hero-worship, 1841). They are the guides and patterns, the founders of everything that is
