The Everlasting No

The Everlasting No

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 ( q. v .) 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. See Sartor Resartus .