Thus, moreover, we must be on our guard against the impetuosity of the revolutionary spirit and all rash rupture with the past.

To cast old clothes aside before new clothes are ready--this does not mean progress, but sansculottism, or a lapse into nakedness and anarchy.
* * * * * The lectures "On Heroes and Hero-Worship," here printed with "Sartor Resartus," contain little more than an amplification, through a series of brilliant character-studies, of those fundamental ideas of history which had already figured among Teufelsdroeckh's social speculations.
Simple in statement and clear in doctrine, this second work needs no formal introduction.

It may, however, be of service just to indicate one or two points at which, apart from its set theses, it expresses or implies certain underlying principles of all Carlyle's thought.
In the first place, his philosophy of history rests entirely on "the great man theory." "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in the world," is for him "at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here." This conception, of course, brings him into sharp conflict with that scientific view of history which was already gaining ground when "Heroes and Hero-Worship" was written, and which since then has become even more popular under the powerful influence of the modern doctrine of evolution.

A scientific historian, like Buckle or Taine, seeks to explain all changes in thought, all movements in politics and society, in terms of general laws; his habit is, therefore, to subordinate, if not quite to eliminate, the individual; the greatest man is treated as in a large measure the product and expression of the "spirit of the time." For Carlyle, individuality is everything.

While, as he is bound to admit, "no one works save under conditions," external circumstances and influences count little.