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Philosophical concept developed by Thomas Carlyle

Natural Supernaturalism is one of Thomas Carlyle's philosophical concepts. It derives from the name of a chapter in his novel Sartor Resartus (1833–34) in which it is a central tenet of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh's "Philosophy of Clothes". Natural Supernaturalism holds that "existence itself is miraculous, that life contains elements of wonder that can never be defined or eradicated by physical science." Carlyle conceived of Natural Supernaturalism as a "new Mythus" consistent with the discoveries of modern science. Rather than regarding a miracle as "simply a violation of the Laws of Nature",

Carlyle thought of Natural Supernaturalism as a corrective to the errors of the Enlightenment, as his journal entry for 13 February 1833 shows:That the Supernatural differs not from the Natural is a great truth, which the last century (especially in France) has been engaged in demonstrating. The Philosophes went far wrong, however, in this, that instead of raising the Natural to the Supernatural, they strove to sink the Supernatural to the Natural. The gist of my whole way of thought is to do not the latter but the former. His journal entry for 31 March 1833 reiterated his conviction in the importance of this idea:Neither fear thou that this thy great Message (of the Natural being the Supernatural) will wholly perish unuttered. One way or other it will and shall be uttered[.] Write it down on Paper any way; speak it from thee; so shall thy painful, destitute Existence not have been in vain. Carlyle wrote a piece dated 15 and 16 November 1852, which James Anthony Froude edited and published as "Spiritual Optics" in his biography of Carlyle. In it, Carlyle wrote of an altogether (totally) new (or hitherto unconceived) species of divineness, a divineness lying much nearer home than formerly. A divineness that does not come from Judea from Olympus, Asgard, Mt. Meru; but is in man himself, in the heart of every living man. The old "divineness" Carlyle speaks of is theism, which he compares to the Ptolemaic model, while Natural Supernaturalism is compared to the Copernican model. Just as the Copernican system superseded the Ptolemaic, Natural Supernaturalism represents "a 'revolution' [in 'our spiritual world'] such as never was before, or at least since letters and recorded history existed among us never was."

Carlyle's theory of Natural Supernaturalism was highly influential on British idealism. James Hutchison Stirling said that the chapter "contains the very first word of a higher philosophy as yet spoken in Great Britain, the very first English word towards the restoration and rehabilitation of the dethroned Upper Powers." The term has been used in a literary context (notably by M. H. Abrams) to discuss the work of Margaret Oliphant, Elizabeth Gaskell, Brontë family, E. M. Forster, Eric Pankey and William Shakespeare.