What does Carlyle mean by 'essence' in 'History is the essence of innumerable Biographies'?

Question

I have read Carlyle's 1830 essay on history with its famous paragraph :

Before Philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly recorded. Now, overlooking the former consideration, and with regard only to the latter, let anyone who has examined the current of human affairs, and how intricate, perplexed, unfathomable, even when seen into with our own eyes, are their thousand-fold blending movements, say whether the true representing of it is easy or impossible. Social Life is the aggregate of all the individual men's Lives who constitute society; History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. But if one Biography, nay, our own Biography, study and recapitulate it as we may, remains in so many points unintelligible to us, how much more must these million, the very facts of which, to say nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot know!

I can readily see how, from a methodological individualist perspective, Carlyle might suppose that institutions, customs, practices, social objects of all kinds, might be reducible to the interactions of (innumerable) individuals. What I cannot see is the point of that word, 'essence'. Why not just say History is the sum of innumerable Biographies or even History is reducible to, is nothing but, innumerable Biographies ?

I may be handicapped by being a philosopher : 'essence' is a problematic notion in the trade but I don't suppose that Carlyle used 'essence' in any philosophically technical sense. I am not raising a casual question without research. I have read much of Caryle - nothing like all - but I have never been able to persuade myself that I understood what 'essence' is doing here.

Historians are much likely than I am to give an informed explanation.

Answer 1

Let us consider the etymology of the word:

essence

late 14c., essencia (respelled late 15c. on French model), from Latin essentia "being, essence," abstract noun formed (to translate Greek ousia "being, essence") from essent-, present participle stem of esse "to be," from PIE root *es- "to be."

Originally "substance of the Trinity;" the general sense of "basic element of anything" is first recorded in English 1650s, though this is the underlying notion of the first English use of essential. Meaning "ingredient which gives something its particular character" is from c. 1600, especially of distilled oils from plants (1650s), hence "fragrance, perfume" (17c.). In 19c. U.S., essence-peddler could mean "medical salesman" and "skunk."

In particular, consider that an

ingredient which gives something its particular character

can be thought of as that which is left when a substance is rendered to its most basic form; just as the rendering or distillation of plant oils yields perfumes and fragrances.

So for example if we were to compile the biographies of every Napoleonic soldier, from all countries; and then render them to the most basic and common substance by removing every individual's petty details; we would be left as the essence of these biographies a history of the period.

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Update

Note that distillation requires repeated renderings to achieve the pure essence. One repeats until the desired purity has been reached. This is why perfumes are much more expensive than mere eau de toilettes.