Book ii. chap. viii.).

From this ground-belief spring all Carlyle's views and aims. Hence his gospel of hero-worship, for the "hero" is the greatest embodied "Idea" a man can know, he is a "living light fountain," he is "a man sent hither to make the divine mystery more impressively known to us." Hence it is clear that the first condition of the great man is that he should be sincere, that he should _believe_. "The merit of originality is not novelty: it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man." It is equally necessary that his admirers should be sincere, they too must believe, and not only, as Coleridge puts it, "believe that they believe." No more immoral act can be done by a human creature, says Carlyle, than to pretend to believe and worship when he does not. Hence also springs Carlyle's doctrine of work. If man is but the material embodiment of a spiritual Idea or Force, then his clear duty is to express that Force within him to the utmost of his power. It is what he is here for, and only so can he bring help and light to his fellow-men.[51] And Carlyle, with Browning, believes that it is not the actual deeds accomplished that matter, no man may judge of these, for "man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became."