Seeking For Balance

Thomas Carlyle was one of the most influential figures in the intellectual field in Victorian Britain, whose response to "the Mechanical Age" is enlightening so much so that its impact is still felt in our 21st century. He was called the "Sage of Chelsea", who got a "seeing eye"2 to point out ruthlessly what people had lost in industrialized Britain and what indeed they should do to improve the situation.Carlyle started his career as a social critic by contributing articles on social criticism to various periodicals of his day, of which "Signs of the Times" was the most famous. In this short essay, he gave a notorious name to his own day, "the Mechanical Age". Underlying the term was Carlyle's deep concern and worry about the sick age. Apart from these essays on social criticism, Carlyle wrote many other works in an attempt to warn his contemporaries and provide prescriptions for the times, with Sartor Resartus, Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History, and Past and Present being best examples.Carlyle perceived that despite its booming economy and exciting progress Victorian Britain was suffering "spiritual paralysis";3 mechanization dominated not only every corner of the industries, but also human souls. In response, Carlyle proposed to seek for a balance between economic boom and spiritual health, with which a society could be a healthy one in the real sense. Based upon this notion of balance, a series of prescriptions were given. In addition, his works discussed here reveal that Carlyle employed balance as an appropriate means of expression.