dissecting-knives and real metal probes; and exhibits it to the inspection of mankind
The dissecting mania of the first seventeeth-century still echoes in Carlyle's century.
Fundamental is "De Motu Cordis" by William Harvey (1628) account on the discovery of the circulation of blood in the body.
towing
OED:
pulling along with a rope, chain, or tow bar.
his Essay
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) Locke illustrates his theory in which he rejects the concept of innate ideas, claiming that men are born with a blank mind, because knowledge is acquired through experience.
Metaphysics
The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space. It his a highly theoretical discipline.
there is now no such thing as a Science of Mind
a Science of Mind is a purely theoretical subject, that cannot be proved in factual reality. Mathematics is the epitome of Theoretical Science since its very basis - numbers - are a pure convention. Carlyle had started his degree in Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, he never completed it.
Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements
Carlyle's repetitive use of negatives enforces the absolutist statement immediately following: Everything has its cunningly devised implemets". With ths structural device, he manages to draw importance on the statement, the contrast is in fact greater and makes the reader focus on that final sentence.
Mechanical Age
Norton Anthology:
"The eighteenth-century Enlightenment had left him not in light but in darkness."
"Utilitarians regarded society and the universe as machines." Practically, everything could be grasped within human control and understood "through reason and observation."
Echo
Echo was a nymph in Greek mythology, cursed by the godess Hera to only repeat the last words of another person's utterance/speech. She fell in love with Narcissus, but the man died falling in a lake while contemplating his reflection in the water. Echo wasted away for grieving his beloved. What remains of her, it is only her voice.
What is it to them that the great continents of the earth are still standing; and the polestar and all our loadstars ' in the heavens, still shining and eternal? Their cherished little haven is gone,
Norton Anthology:
"To Carlyle, [...] life without a sense of the divine was a meaningless nightmare."
"Carlyle judges everything in terms of the presence or absence of some vital spark."
contritely
OED: adverb. From the adjective contrite: feeling or expressing remorse at the recognition that one has done wrong.