The Ancient Dialect

In The Ancient Dialect: Thomas Carlyle and Comparative Religion, the author examines how Carlyle’s perspective on religion, language, and human potential both shaped and transcended the intellectual boundaries of his time. The book highlights Carlyle’s movement away from traditional Christian dogma to a more inclusive view that embraces the diversity of world religions, myths, and the collective quest for meaning as central products of human expression. Carlyle recognized these varied forms of belief as expressions of a shared human essence, intuitively grasping the notion of a “global village” long before the term existed. His work placed him at the intersection of emerging modern perspectives, anticipating philosophical shifts from universal truths to pluralistic understandings of reality. Carlyle’s idea of language as a mutable, expressive force reflects a philosophy where meaning is not fixed but rather molded by the cultural and historical contexts of the speaker.

This book focuses on how Carlyle’s writings, especially his engagement with comparative religion, anticipated ideas that later shaped both literary and scientific thought. Carlyle’s views on the mysteries of the universe—often explored through Job’s questioning stance and metaphors of human limitation—parallel scientific perspectives on the unknown and unknowable. He approached humanity’s role in the cosmos with a sense of wonder and humility, challenging the reductive interpretations of positivism in favor of an epistemology that acknowledges the limits of human understanding. By celebrating human creativity and the diversity of religious expression, Carlyle underscored the idea that humans are “miracles of miracles,” embodying an intellectual and spiritual curiosity that links to the central theme of this study: Carlyle as a visionary whose insights bridge religious tradition and the modernist embrace of an expansive, interconnected world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.