Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

!;WOTTON REINFRED 103pressing of a spring ; and the mind is some balance,or engine, motionless of itself, till it be swayed thisway and that by external things. Good HeavensSurely if we have any soul there must be a kind of lifein it ?Surely it does not hang passive and inert withinus, but acts and works ; and if so, acts and workslike an immaterial spirit on spiritual things, not likean artisan on matter. Surely it were good, then,even in our loosest contemplations, to admit some littlemystery in the operating of a power by its nature soinscrutable.With our simiUtudes, we make the minda passive engine, set in motion by the senses ; as itwere a sort of thought-mill to gi'ind sensations intoideas, by which figures also we conceive thisgrindingprocess to be very prettily explained. Nay, it is thesame in our material physiology as in our mentalanimal life, like spiritual, you find is tacitly regarded asa quality, a susceptibility, the relation and result ofother powers, not itself the origin and fountain-headof all other powers ; but its force comes from withoutby palpable transmission, does not dwell mysteriouslywithin, and emanate mysteriously in wonder-workinginfluences from within ; and man himself is but amore cunning chemico -mechanical combination, suchas in the progress of discovery we may hope to seemanufactured at Soho. Nay, smile not incredulously,John Williams ! It is even as I say ; and thus runsthe high road to Atheism in religion, materialism inphilosophy, utility in morals, and flaring, effect-seek-