Thomas Carlyle · 1829
Signs of the Times
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- Ben Breen, 2026-09-29; suggested by Claude research agents, 29 Sep 2026
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Q14SUCCESSION
Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?Yes. machinery subordinates people. Argues that the age of machinery has made men mechanical in head and heart as well as in hand.
Thus does the Genius of Mechanism stand by to help us in all difficulties and emergencies, and with his iron back bears all our burdens. These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, — for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.
OCR corrected
Edinburgh Review, June 1829 (Victorian Web); Internet Archive community upload opened.
Q31SACRED
Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?Yes. faith in mechanism displaces worship. Calls the age mechanical in head and heart; men hope only in mechanism, and worship an idol of Strength instead of the Beautiful and Good.
By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages. In fact, if we look deeper, we shall find that this faith in Mechanism has now struck its roots down into man’s most inti- mate, primary sources of conviction; and is thence sending up, over his whole life and activity, innumerable stems, — fruit- bearing and poison-bearing. The truth is, men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe, and hope, and work only in the Visible; or, to speak it in other words: This is not a Religious age. Only the material, the immediately practical, not the divine and spiritual, is important to us. The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable. Worship, indeed, in any sense, is not recognised among us, or is mechanically explained into Fear of pain, or Hope of pleasure. Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and we think it will do all other things. We are Giants in physical power: in a deeper than metaphorical sense, was are Titans, that strive, by heaping mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also.
Internet Archive text (Edinburgh Review, June 1829); 'faith', 'worship' and 'idol' passages read.
Q35STATE
Does treating the state as an artificial machine give its members grounds to redesign it?No. The age trusts machinery in politics as in industry, believing good government is a matter of mechanical arrangements; Carlyle holds that social health depends on inward, dynamic forces that no constitution-making can supply.
It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws. Thus is the Body-politic more than ever worshipped and tended; but the Soul-politic less than ever. Love of country, in any high or generous sense, in any other than an almost animal sense, or mere habit, has little importance attached to it in such reforms, or in the opposition shown them. Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self- interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a ‘taxing-machine; to the contented, a ‘machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish- constable. Thus it is by the mere condition of the machine, by preserving it untouched, or else by reconstructing it, and oiling it anew, that man’s salvation as a social being is to be insured and indefinitely promoted.
Victorian Web pages on the essay (Edinburgh Review, June 1829); Internet Archive PDF listing.
Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one. These things rose up, as it were, by spontaneous growth, in the free soil and sunshine of Nature. They were not planted or grafted, nor even greatly multiplied or improved by the culture or manuring of institutions. Generally speaking, they have derived only partial help from these; often enough have suffered damage. They made constitutions for themselves. They originated in the Dynamical nature of man, not in his Mechanical nature.Retained as a reserve/context passage for the original question; no stronger alternative placement established.