Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish philosopher satirical writer essayist historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He brought a trenchant style to his social and political criticism and a complex literary style to works such as The French Revolution: A History (1837).