Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle (December 4, 1795 – February 5, 1881) was a Scottish essayist and historian, whose work was hugely influential during the Victorian era. He was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, and was educated at Annan Academy. Coming from a strictly Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his father to become a preacher. However, while at Edinburgh University he lost his Christian faith. Nevertheless Calvinist values remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in orthodox Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order.

The Everlasting Yea and No

The Everlasting Yea is Carlyle's name for the spirit of faith in God in an express attitude of clear, resolute, steady, and uncompromising antagonism to the Everlasting No, and the principle that there is no such thing as faith in God except in such antagonism against the spirit opposed to God.

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The Everlasting No is Carlyle's name for the spirit of unbelief in God, especially as it manifested itself in his own, or rather Teufelsdröckh's, warfare against it; the spirit, which, as embodied in the Mephistopheles of Goethe, is for ever denying,—der stets verneint—the reality of the divine in the thoughts, the character, and the life of humanity, and has a malicious pleasure in scoffing at everything high and noble as hollow and void.

Related Topics:
Mephistopheles - Goethe

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