me, without distortion. His heroes are messengers "from the Infinite Unknown," not just models of "excellence." They bring "a kind of 'revelation.' " Their creative power does not derive from the "self." It is a gift in the fullest sense of the word, entrusted to them for safekeeping, and their intuitive, unself-conscious understanding of this fact is what makes them heroes in the first place. Their heroism lies in their acceptance of their fate, their willingness to be used for purposes not their own. Heroism is thus the reverse of "self-expression"—voluntary, hence triumphant, submission. ^*

Ralph Waldo Emerson introduced Sartor Resartus to the American public and made no secret of his lifelong admiration for its author. Carlyle returned the compliment. "'In the wide Earth,' I say sometimes with a sigh, 'there is none but Emerson that responds to me with a voice wholly human!'" At first, Emerson's association with Carlyle heightened popular misgivings about the fatalistic overtones in his philosophy. George Gilfillan of Edinburgh, one of his most persistent detractors, accused him of promoting "mere negation," of denying the possibility of "steady progress in humanity," and of preaching a "gospel ... of the deepest and the most fixed despair." George W. Bungay, in a book published in Boston in 1852, called Emerson "one of the most erratic and capricious men in America," a "better and a greater man than Carlyle" perhaps, but still a

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This line of thought makes Jesus one among many heaven-sent heroes and thus deprives his revelation of unique significance. At this point, Carlyle obviously parts company with Christians. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that his doctrine of hero worship therefore represents a secularized form of Christianity in which Jesus is reduced merely to a moral example. One of the many features of Carlyle's position that distinguishes it from religious liberalism of this type (and at the same time links it to an earlier Calvinism) is that he does not associate heroism with morality at all but with reverence and "wonder."

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