The Great Man is supreme.

He is not the creature of his age, but its creator; not its servant, but its master.

"The History of the World is but the Biography of Great Men." Anti-scientific in his reading of history, Carlyle is also anti-democratic in the practical lessons he deduces from it.

He teaches that our right relations with the Hero are discipular relations; that we should honestly acknowledge his superiority, look up to him, reverence him.

Thus on the personal side he challenges that tendency to "level down" which he believed to be one alarming result of the fast-spreading spirit of the new democracy.