Carlyle and cyclical models of history

Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

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[Chapter 3, note 35, of the author's Carlyle and the Search for Authority, which the Ohio State University Press published in 1991. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright. indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

While, as Carlyle quickly saw, Mill had been influenced by the St. Simonians, Carlyle traced this cyclical model of history to the Germans. Indeed, he wrote to the St. Simonian Gustave d'Eichthal that the idea that revelation may be found in the "acted History of Man" is the "Religion of all Thinkers ... for the last half century: of Goethe. . . Schiller, of Lessing, Jacobi, Herder" (CL, 5:278-79). On the origins of this concept in Carlyle's writings, see Wellek, "Carlyle and the Philosophy of History," and Shine, Carlyle and the Saint-Simonians.

Contents last modified 5 October 2001