"Unwilling to take up the position of a rebel or revolutionist by stating his views plainly—indeed if he had done so sixty years ago he might have starved—the only resource left to him was that of approaching all the great subjects of life from the point of view of grim humour, irony, and pathos. This was the real origin of his unique style; though no doubt its special peculiarities were due to the wonderful power of his imagination, and to some extent—to a less extent we think than has been usually supposed—to his familiarity with German.
"What then was his creed? What were the doctrines which in his view Calvinism shadowed forth and which were so infinitely true, so ennobling to human life? First, he believed in God; secondly, he believed in an absolute opposition between good and evil; thirdly, he believed that all men do, in fact, take sides more or less decisively in this great struggle, and ultimately turn out to be either good or bad; fourthly, he believed that good is stronger than evil, and by infinitely slow degrees gets the better of it, but that this process is so slow as to be continually obscured and thrown back by evil influences of various kinds—one of which he believed to be specially powerful in the present day.
"God in his view was not indeed a personal Being, like the Christian God—still less was He in any sense identified with Jesus Christ; who, though always spoken of with rather conventional reverence in his writings, does not appear to have specially influenced him. The God in which Mr. Carlyle believed is, as far as can be ascertained, a Being possessing in some sense or other will and consciousness, and personifying the elementary principles of morals—Justice, Benevolence (towards good people), Fortitude, and Temperance—to such a pitch that they may be regarded, so to speak, as forming collectively the will of God…. That there is some one who—whether by the earthquake, or the fire, or the still small voice—is continually saying to mankind—'Discite justitiam moniti'; and that this Being is the ultimate fact at which we can arrive … is what Mr. Carlyle seems to have meant by believing in God. And if any one will take the trouble to refer to the first few sentences of the Westminster Confession, and to divest them of their references to Christianity and to the Bible, he will find that between the God of Calvin and of Carlyle there is the closest possible similarity…. The great fact about each particular man is the relation, whether of friendship or enmity, in which he stands to God. In the one case he is on the side which must ultimately prevail, … in the other … he will, in due time, be crushed and destroyed…. Our relation to the universe can be ascertained only by experiment. We all have to live out our lives…. One man is a Cromwell, another a Frederick, a third a Goethe, a fourth a Louis XV. God hates Louis XV. and loves Cromwell. Why, if so, He made Louis XV., and indeed whether He made him or not, are idle questions which cannot be answered and should not be asked. There are good men and bad men, all pass alike through this mysterious hall of doom called life: most show themselves in their true colours under pressure. The good are blessed here and hereafter; the bad are accursed. Let us bring out as far as may be possible such good as a man has had in him since his origin. Let us strike down the bad to the hell that gapes for him. This, we think, or something like this, was Mr. Carlyle's translation of election and predestination into politics and morals…. There is not much pity and no salvation worth speaking of in either body of doctrine; but there is a strange, and what some might regard as a terrible parallelism between these doctrines and the inferences that may be drawn from physical science. The survival of the fittest has much in common with the doctrine of election, and philosophical necessity, as summed up in what we now call evolution, comes practically to much the same result as predestination."
INDEX
Aberdour
Addiscombe
Addison
Æschylus
Ailsa Craig
Airy (the astronomer)
Aitken, James
Aitken, Mary
Aitken, Mrs.
Aix-la-Chapelle
Albert, Prince
Alison
Alma
America
Annan
Annandale
Annual Register
Antoinette, Marie
Aristotle
Arndt
Arnold, Dr.
Arnold, Matthew
Ashburton, Lord and Lady
Assaye
Atheism
Athenæum
Augustenburg
Austerlitz
Austin
Austin, Mrs.
Azeglio
Bacon
Badams
Badcort
Balaclava
Balzac
Bamford, Samuel
Barbarossa
Baring, see Ashburton
Bassompierre
Beaconsfield, Lord
Beaumarchais
Beethoven
Belgium
Bellamy
Bentham
Berkeley
Berlin
Bernstoff, Count
Biography (by Froude)
Birmingham
Bismarck
Blackwood,
Boehm
Bohemia
Bolingbroke
Bonn
Boston
Boswell
Breslau
Brewster, Sir David
Bright
Brocken, spectre of the
Bromley, Miss
Bronte, Emily
Brougham
Brown, Prof.
Browne, Sir Thomas
Browning
Bryant note
Buckle
Buller, Charles
Buller, Mrs.
Bunsen
Burke
Burness, William
Burns
Byron
Caesar Cagliostro, Count Cairnes Calderon Calvin Campbell, Macleod Campbell, Thomas Carleton Carlyle (family) Carlyle, Alexander Carlyle, James (brother) Carlyle, James (father) Carlyle, John, Dr. Carlyle, Margaret (mother) Carlyle, Margaret (sister) Carlyle, Mrs. (Jane Welsh)(wife) Carlyle, Thomas (grandfather) Carlyle, Thomas, birth; education; studies German; lives in Edinburgh and takes pupils; studies law; tutor to the Bullers; goes to London; at Hoddam Hill; marriage; Edinburgh life; married life; life at Craigenputtock; second visit to London; publishes Sartor; takes house in Chelsea; life and work in London; loss of first volume of French Revolution; rewrites first volume of French Revolution; lectures; founds London Library; publishes Chartism; writes Past and Present; writes Life of Cromwell; visits Ireland; visits Paris; writes History of Friedrich II.; excursions to Germany; nominated Lord Rector of Glasgow; success of Friedrich II.; Lord Rector of Edinburgh; death of his wife; writes his Reminiscences; defends Governor Eyre; writes on Franco-German War; writes on Russo-Turkish War; honours; declining years; death; Appreciation of; authorities for his life; complaints; contemporary history; conversation; critic, as; descriptive passages; domestic troubles; dreams; dyspepsia; elements of his character; estimates (his) of contemporaries; ethics; financial affairs; friends; genius; historian, as; ignorance; influence; journal; jury, serves on a; letters; literary artist mission nicknaming mania noises opinions paradoxes polities popularity and praise preacher, as, rank as a writer relations to other thinkers religion routine scepticism sound-proof room, style teaching translations travels, and visits truth verses views, change of walks worker, as Cassel Castlebar Cato Cavaignac, General Cervantes Chalmers, Dr. Changarnier, General Characteristics, Charlemagne Chartism, Chatham Chaucer Chelsea Cheyne Row China Chotusitz Christianity Church, English Cicero Cid, the Civil War Civil War (American) Clare, Lady Clarendon Clerkenwell explosions Clough, Arthur Cobden Coblenz Cockburn Colenso, Bishop Coleridge Colonies Columbus Comte Conservatism Conway, Moncure Cooper, Thomas Cornelius Correspondence, Cortes Cousin Craigcrook Craigenputtock Crimean War Cromwell Cromwell, Life and Letters of, Crystal Palace Exhibition Cushman, Miss Cüstrin Cuvier Czars, the
Dante
Danton
Dardanelles
Darwin
David II.
Deism,
Democracy,
De Morgan
Demosthenes
De Quincey
Derby, Countess of
Desmoulins
Dial, The,
Diamond Necklace,
Dickens
Diderot
Diogenes
Disraeli. See Beaconsfield
Dobell
Don Quixote,
Döring, Herr
Dresden
Drogheda
Drumclog
Dryden
Duffy, Sir C. Gavan
Dumfries
Dunbar
Dunbar (poet)
Duty
Ecclefechan
Eckermann
Edinburgh
Edinburgh Encyclopaedia
Edinburgh Review
Education
Eisenach
Eldin, Lord
Eliot, George
Emerson
Emigration
Ems
England
English Traits (Emerson's)
Erasmus
Erfurt
Erskine
Essay on Proportion
Essays (Carlyle's)
Everett, Alexander
Examiner,
"Exodus from Houndsditch,"
Eyre, Governor
Eyre, Jane
Faber
Factory Acts
Faust
Fawcett
Fergusson, Dr. John
Fichte
FitzGerald, Edward
Flaxman
Foreign Quarterly Preview
Foreign Review
Förster
Forster, John
Forster, W.E.
Fouqué
Fourier
Foxton, Mr.
France
Franchise
Francia, Dr.
Frankenstein
Frankfort
Fraser
Free Trade
French Directory
French literature
French Revolution
Friedrich II.
Friedrich II., History of
Fritz. See Friedrich
Fritz (Carlyle's horse)
Froude, Mr.
Fryston
Fuchs, Reinecke