Why did Carlyle criticize the Mechanical Age?

Answered in Thomas Carlyle's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

The Mechanical Age, with its relentless focus on machines, utilitarianism, and endless, soulless labour, threatened to extinguish the very essence of humanity. It fostered a spirit of calculation over creation, of outward appearance over inner worth. This mechanization extended to social and political life, reducing individuals to cogs in a vast, indifferent system, devoid of spiritual purpose or heroic aspiration. It was a world of 'gospel of Mammon,' where profit and efficiency supplanted virtue and meaning.

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