Appendix
Carlyle’s Religion
The St. James’ Gazette, February 11, 1881, writes:—
“It is obvious that from an early age he entirely ceased to believe, in its only true sense, the creed he had been taught. He never affected to believe it in any other sense, for he was far too manly and simple-hearted to care to frame any of those semi-honest transmutations of the old doctrines into new-fangled mysticism which had so great a charm for many of his weaker contemporaries. On the other hand, it is equally true that he never plainly avowed his unbelief. The line he took up was that Christianity, though not true in fact, had a right to be regarded as the noblest aspiration after a theory of the Universe and of human life ever formed: and that the Calvinistic version of Christianity was on the whole the best it ever assumed; and the one which represented the largest proportion of truth and the least amount of error. He also thought that the truths which Calvinism tried to express, and succeeded in expressing in an imperfect or partially mistaken manner, were the ultimate governing principles of morals and politics, of whose systematic neglect in this age nothing but evil could come.
“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.”
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
Galileo
Gallipoli
Galway
Game Laws
Gavazzi, Father
Georgel, Abbé
German literature
German worthies
Germany
Gibbon
Gladstone, Sir T
Gladstone, W. E.
Glasgow
Glasgow Herald
Goethe
Goldsmith
Gordon, Margaret
Gordon (quadroon preacher)
Gotha
Grant, J.
Greek thought
Grimm’s law
Gronlund
Grote
Guizot
Gully, Dr.
Gully, Miss
Guntershausen
Haddington
Hafiz
Hakluyt
Hallam
Hallam, Arthur
Hamburg
Hamilton, Sir William
Hare, Archdeacon
Harrison, Frederick
Harvard Discourse (Emerson’s)
Hawthorne
Hayti
Heath (royalist writer)
Hedonism
Hegel
Heine, Heinrich
Helena
Helps
Henry VIII.
Hero-Worship (and On Heroes}
Herrnhut
Hertzka
Heyne
Hildebrand
Hill, Lord George
Histories (Carlyle’s)
History, definition of
History review of
Hobbes
Hochkirk
Hoddam Hill
Hoffmann
Holinshed
Homburg
Homer
Home Rule
Horace
Home, E.H.
Houghton, Lord
Hudson (Railway King)
Hughes, T.
Hugo, Victor
Humboldt
Hume
Hunef
Hunt, Leigh
Huxley, Professor
“Ilias Americana in nuce”
Immortality
Inkermann
In Memoriam (Tennyson’s)
Inquisition
Ireland
Ireland, Mrs.
Irish Question
Irving, Edward
Jamaica
Jeffrey
Jena
Jerrold, Douglas
Jewsbury, Geraldine
Jocelin de Brakelond
Johnson
Johnson Review of Boswell’s
Johnston, James
Jomini
Jonson, Ben
Journalism, definition of
Judengasse
Junius
Juvenal
Kant
Keats
Keble
Kingsley, Charles
Kingsley, Henry
Kinnaird
Kirkcakly
Knox
Kolin
Körner
Kossuth
Kunersdorf
Lamb
Landor
Landshut
Lanin, M.
Laplace
Larkin
Latter-Day Pamphlets
Law, Carlyle’s study of
Lawson, Mr., James Carlyle’s estimate of
Lectures
Legendre
Leibnitz
Leipzig
Leith
Leslie, Prof.
Leuthen
Leyden
“Liberal Association”
Liberalism
Liegnitz
Literature as a profession
Liverpool
Livy
Lobositz
Locke
“Locksley Hall”
London
London Library
London Magazine
London Peace Congress
Longfellow
Longmans (the publisher)
Louis XIV.
Louis XV.
Louis XVIII.
Louisa, Electress
Lowell
Lucilius
Luichart, Loch
“Luria”
Luther
Macaulay
Macbeth
Machiavelli
Mackenzie, Miss Stuart
Mahon, Lord
Mainhill
Mainz
Malthusianism
Malvern
Marat
Marburg
Marcus Aurelius
Marlborough
Marseillaise
Marshall
Mavtineau, Miss H.
Marx, Carl
Massou, Prof.
Materialism
Mathematics
Maurice, F. D.
Mazzini
M’Crie
Meister, Wilhelm
Melanchthen
Mentone
Meredith, George
Mericourt
Merimée, Prosper
Metaphysics, Scotch
Michelet
Middle Ages
Mill, J.S.
Millais
Milman
Milton
Mirabeau
Miscellanies
Mitchell, Robert
Mitchell (Young Ireland leader)
Model Prisons
Mohammed
Molesworth
Molwitz
Montague, Basil
Montaigne
Montgomery, Robert
More, Sir Thomas
Morris, William
Motley
Motte, Countess de la
Muirkirk
Murchison, Sir R.
Murray (the publisher)
Murray, Thomas
Musæus
Napier, Macvey
Napoleon I.
Napoleon III.
Naseby
Nassau
Necker
Negroes
Nelson
“Nero” (Mrs. Carlyle’s dog)
Neuberg
New England
Newman, Cardinal
Newspapers
Newton
Nibelungen Lied
Nicholas the Czar
“Nigger Question”
Noble (biographer of Cromwell)
North, Christopher
Norton, Charles E.
Norway, Early Kings of
Novalis
O’Brien, Smith
O’Connell
Optimism
Orsay, Count d’
Orthodoxy vetoed
Ossoli, Countess (Margaret Fuller)
Owen
Oxford
Oxford, Bishop of
Paraguay
Pardubitz
Paris
Past and Present
Paton, Noel
Paulets, the
Peel
Pericles
Peter the Hermit
Philanthropy
Philip of Hesse
Plato
Playfair
Political economy
Political philosophy
Pope
Popes
Prague
Prayer
Prescott
Preuss
Prinzenraub
Procter
Procter, Mrs. Anne
Puritanism
Pusey
Putbus
Quarterly Review
Queen Victoria
Radicalism
Railways
Raleigh
Ranke
Ranch
“Reading of Books”
Redwood
Reform Bills
Reminiscences
Renan
Rennie, George
Revolution years
Rhine
Ricardo
Richter
Riesen-Gebirge
Riquetti
Ritualism
Robertson
Robespierre
Roland, Madame
Rolandseck
Romans
Rome, cause of its preservation
Romilly, Sir Samuel
Rossbach
Rossetti, Dante
Rotterdam
Rousseau
Rugby
Rügen
Rushworth
Ruskin
Russell, Lord John
Russell, Mrs., at Thornhill
Russia
Russo-Turkish War
Sadowa
St. Andrews
St. Ives
St. James’s Gazette
St. Simon
Samson, Abbot
Sand, George
Sartor Resartus
Saunders and Otley (publishers)
Saxons
Scepticism
Schiller
Schlosser
Science
Scotland
Scotsbrig
Scotsman newspaper
Scott, W.B.
Scott, Sir Walter
Sedan
Sepoy rebellion
Seven Years’ War
Shaftesbury, Lord
Shakespeare
Shelley
Shooting Niagara
Sidney, Sir Philip
Signs of the Times
Simon de Montfort
Sinclair, Sir George
Slavery
Sloane, Sir Hans
Smail, Tom
Smith, Adam
Smith, Goldwin
Smith, Sydney
Smollett
Snowdon
Socrates
Sophocles
Southey
Spain
Spedding
Spencer, Herbert
Spenser
Stanley, Dean
Stanley, Lady Augusta
Stanleys (of Alderley)
Steele
Stein
Stephen, Fitzjames
Stephen, Sir James
Sterling
Sterling, Life of
Sterne
Stewart, Dugald
Stodart, Miss Eliza
Stonehenge
Strachey, Mr.
Strachey, Mrs.
Stralsund
Strauss
Stuart, Mary
Sturge
Sun, newspaper
Swift
Swinburne
Switzerland
Tacitus
Taine, M.
Tale of a Tub (Swift’s)
Talleyrand
Talma
Taylor, Henry
Taylor’s German Literature
Taylor, Mrs.
Tennyson
Teufelsdröckh
Thackeray
Theism
Thierry, M.
Thiers
Thirlwall, Bishop
Thoreau
Thucydides
Tieck
Times, the
Toplitz
Torgau
Trafalgar
Turgot
Turks
Turner
Tyndall
Unto this Last (Ruskin’s)
Usedom, Baron
Varennes
Vauvenargues
Vehse
Verses (Carlyle’s)
Verses (Mrs. Carlyle’s)
Virginia
Voltaire
Wanderjahre
Wartburg
Washington
Waterloo
Watts, G. F.
Webster, Daniel
Weimar
Weissenfels
Wellington (Duke of)
Welsh, Jane. See Mrs. Carlyle
Welsh, Mrs.
Werner
Werther (Goethe’s)
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Confession
Westminster Review
Westport
Wilberforce (Bishop)
William the Conqueror
William the Silent
Willis’s Rooms
Wilson
Wolseley
Worcester
Wordsworth
Work
Working classes
World (newspaper)
Wotton Reinfred
Yarmouth
Zittau
Zorndorf