The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume I Part 10

All faith in the great majority is, and ought to be, implicit. That is, your faith is not unrolled--not separately applied to each individual doctrine--but is applied to some individual man, and on him you rely.

What he says, you say; what he believes, you believe. Now, he believes all these doctrines, and you implicitly through him. But what I chiefly say as the object of this note is, that the bulk of men must believe by an implicit faith. _Ergo_, decry it not.

You delude yourself, Christian theorist, with the idea of offences that else would unfit you for heaven being washed out by repentance. But hearken a moment. Figure the case of those innumerable people that, having no temptation, small or great, to commit murder, _would_ have committed it cheerfully for half-a-crown; that, having no opening or possibility for committing adultery, _would_ have committed it in case they had. Now, of these people, having no possibility of repentance (for how repent of what they have not done?), and yet ripe to excess for the guilt, what will you say? Shall they perish because they _might_ have been guilty? Shall they not perish because the potential guilt was not, by pure accident, accomplished _in esse_?

Here is a mistake to be guarded against. If you ask why such a man, though by nature gross or even Swift-like in his love of dirty ideas, yet, because a gentleman and moving in corresponding society, does not indulge in such brutalities, the answer is that he abstains through the modifications of the sympathies. A low man in low society would not be doubtful of its reception; but he, by the antic.i.p.ations of sympathy (a form that should be introduced as technically as Kant's antic.i.p.ations of perception), feels it would be ill or gloomily received. Well now, I, when saying that a man is altered by sympathy so as to think _that_, through means of this power, which otherwise he would not think, shall be interpreted of such a case as that above. But wait; there is a distinction: the man does not think differently, he only acts as if he thought differently. The case I contemplate is far otherwise; it is where a man feels a lively contempt or admiration in consequence of seeing or hearing such feelings powerfully expressed by a mult.i.tude, or, at least, by others which else he would not have felt. Vulgar people would sit for hours in the presence of people the most refined, totally unaware of their superiority, for the same reason that most people (if a.s.senting to the praise of the Lord's Prayer) would do so hyper-critically, because its real and chief beauties are negative.

Not only is it false that my understanding is no measure or rule for another man, but of necessity it is so, and every step I take towards truth for myself is a step made on behalf of every other man.

We doubt if the world in the sense of a synthesis of action--the procession and carrying out of ends and purposes--_could_ consist with the [Greek: anti]-world (in a religious sense). Men who divide all into pious people and next to devils see in such a state of evil the natural tendency (as in all other _monstrous_ evils--which this must be if an evil at all) to correction and redress. But now a.s.sume a man, sober, honourable, cheerful, healthy, active, occupied all day long in toilsome duties (or what he believes duties) for ends not selfish; this man has never had a thought of death, h.e.l.l, etc., and looking abroad on those who dwell in such contemplations, he regards them sincerely, not unkindly or with contempt; partially he respects them, but he looks on them as under a monstrous delusion, in a fever, in a panic, as in a case of broken equilibrium. Now he is right. And, moreover, secondly, two other feelings or suspicions come on, (1) of hypocrisy, (2) of the violation of inner shame in publishing the most awful private feelings.

_The Tendency of a Good Fortune inherited._--I know not that any man has reason to wish a _sufficient_ patrimonial estate for his son. Much to have something so as to start with an advantage. But the natural consequence of having a full fortune is to become idle and vapid. For, on asking what a young man has that he can employ himself upon, the answer would be, 'Oh! why, those pursuits which presuppose solitude.' At once you feel this to be hollow nonsense. Not one man in ten thousand has powers to turn solitude into a blessing. They care not, _e.g._, for geometry; and the cause is chiefly that they have been ill taught in geometry; and the effect is that geometry must and will languish, if treated as a mere amateur pursuit. So of any other. Secondly, yet of Englishmen I must say that beyond all nations a man so situated does not, in fact, become idle. He it is, and his cla.s.s, that discharge the public business of each county or district. Thirdly: And in the view, were there no other, one sees at once the use of fox-hunting, let it be as boisterous as you please. Is it not better to be boisterous than gossip-ridden, eaves-dropping, seeking aliment for the spirits in the petty scandal of the neighbourhood?

'He' (_The Times_) 'declares that the poorest artisan has a greater stake than they' ('the Landed Interest') 'in the prosperity of the country, and is, consequently, more likely to give sound advice. His exposition of the intimate connection existing between the welfare of the poor workman and the welfare of the country is both just and admirable. But he manifestly underrates the corresponding relations of the landowners, and wholly omits to show, even if the artisan's state were the greatest, how his opinions are likely to be most valuable. To suppose that a man is necessarily the best judge in whatever concerns him most is a sad _non-sequitur_; for if self-interest ensured wisdom, no one would ever go wrong in anything. Every man would be his own minister, and every invalid would be his own best physician. The wounded limbs of the community are the best judges of the pain they suffer; but it is the wise heads of the community that best can apply a remedy that best can cure the wound without causing it to break out in another quarter. Poverty is blind; but the upper cla.s.ses "education has enlightened, and habit made foreseeing."'

We live in times great from the events and little from the character of the actors. Every month summons us to the spectacle of some new perfidy in the leaders of parties and the most conspicuous public servants; and the profligacy which we charge upon the statesmen of the seventeenth century has revolved in full measure upon our own days.

_Justifications of Novels._--The two following justifications of novels occur to me. Firstly, that if some dreadful crisis awaited a ship of pa.s.sengers at the line--where equally the danger was mysterious and multiform, the safety mysterious and multiform--how monstrous if a man should say to a lady, 'What are you reading?' 'Oh, I'm reading about our dreadful crisis, now so near'; and he should answer, 'Oh, nonsense! read something to improve your mind; read about Alexander the Great, about Spurius Ahala, about Caius Gracchus, or, if you please, Tiberius.' But just such nonsense it is, when people ridicule reading romances in which the great event of the fiction is the real great event of a female life.

There are others, you say--she loses a child. Yes, that's a great event.

But that arises out of this vast equinoctial event.

Secondly, as all things are predisposed to the natures which must be surrounded by them, so we may see that the element of social evolution of character, manners, caprices, etc., has been adapted to the vast ma.s.s of human minds. It is a mean element, you say. The revelations of Albert Smith, d.i.c.kens, etc., are essentially mean, vulgar, plebeian, not only in an aristocratic sense, but also in a philosophical sense. True, but the minds that are to live and move in it are also mean, essentially mean. Nothing grand in them? Yes, doubtless in the veriest grub as to capacity, but the capacity is undeveloped.

_Ergo_, as to the intrigue or fable, and as to the conduct or evolution of this fable--novels must be the chief natural resource of woman.

_Moral Certainty._--As that a child of two years (or under) is not party to a plot. Now, this would allow a shade of doubt--a child so old might cry out or give notice.

This monstrous representation that the great war with France (1803-15) had for its object to prevent Napoleon from sitting on the throne of France--which recently, in contempt of all truth and common-sense, I have so repeatedly seen advanced--throws a man profoundly on the question of what _was_ the object of that war. Surely, in so far as we are concerned, the matter was settled at Amiens in the very first year of the century. December, 1799, Napoleon had been suffered by the unsteady public opinion of France--abhorring a master, and yet sensible that for the chief conscious necessity of France, viz., a developer of her latent martial powers, she must look for a master or else have her powers squandered--to mount the consular throne. He lived, he _could_ live, only by victorious war. Most perilous was the prospect for England. In the path which not Napoleon, but France, was now preparing to tread, and which was the path of Napoleon no otherwise than that he was the tool of France, was that servitor who must gratify her grand infirmity or else be rapidly extinguished himself, unhappily for herself, England was the main counter-champion. The course of honour left to England was too fatally the course of resistance. Resistance to what? To Napoleon personally? Not at all; but to Napoleon as pledged by his destiny to the prosecution of a French conquering policy. That personally England had no hostility to Napoleon is settled by the fact that she had at Amiens cheerfully conceded the superior power. Under what t.i.tle? would have been the most childish of demurs. That by act she never conceded the t.i.tle of emperor was the mere natural diplomatic result of never having once been at peace with Napoleon under that t.i.tle. Else it was a point of entire indifference. Granting the consulship, she had granted all that could be asked. And what she opposed was the determined war course of Napoleon and the schemes of ultra-Polish part.i.tion to which Napoleon had privately tempted her under circ.u.mstances of no such sense as existed and still exist for Russia.

This policy, as soon as exposed, and not before bitter insults to herself, England resisted. And therefore it is that at this day we live.

But as to Napoleon, as apart from the policy of Napoleon, no childishness can be wilder.

At some unlucky moment when the Crown commanded unusual resources, the De Quinceys met with the fate ascribed, perhaps fabulously, to some small heavenly bodies (asteroids or what, I do not precisely know): on some dark day, by mistake perhaps, they exploded, and scattered their ruins all over the central provinces of England, where chiefly had lain their territorial influence. Especially in the counties of Leicester, Lincoln and Rutland were found fragments of the vast landed estates held by these potentates when Earls of Winchester.

The hatred of truth at first dawning--that instinct which makes you revolt from the pure beams which search the foul depths and abysses of error--is well ill.u.s.trated by the action of the atmospheric currents, when blowing through an open window upon smoke. What do you see?

Sometimes the impression is strong upon your _ocular_ belief that the window is driving the smoke in. You can hardly be convinced of the contrary--scarcely when five or seven minutes has absolutely rarefied the smoke so much that a book-lettering previously invisible has become even legible. And at last, when the fact, the result, the experience, has corrected the contradictory theory of the eye, you begin to suspect, without any aid from science, that there were two currents, one of which comes round in a curve [Ill.u.s.tration: )] and effects the exit for the other which the window had driven in; just as in the Straits of Gibraltar there is manifestly an upper current setting one way, which you therefore conjecture to argue a lower current setting the other, and thus redressing the equilibrium. Here the smoke corresponds to bits of chip or any loose suspended body in the Gibraltar current. What answers to the current of water is the air, and if the equilibrium _is_ kept up, the re-entrant current balances your retiring current, and the latter carries out the smoke entangled in itself. By the objection, say, of a child, there ought to be a re-entrant column of smoke, which there is not. For the air drives the smoke of the fire up the chimney, and of its own contribution the air has no smoke to give.

Or the Augean stable may image it. Doubtless when the first disturbance took place in the abominable mess, those acting would be apt to question for a moment whether it had not been more advisable to leave it alone.

Moralists say, 'n.o.body will attack you, or hate you, or blame you for your virtues.' What falsehood! Not _as_ virtues, it may be in their eyes, but virtues, nevertheless. Connect with Kant the error of supposing _aetas parentum_, etc., to be the doctrine of sin.

Not for what you have done, but for what you are--not because in life you did forsake a wife and children--did endure to eat and drink and lie softly yourself whilst those who should have been as your heart-drops were starving: not because you did that so much is forgiven you, but because you were capable of that, therefore you are incapable of heaven.

_Immodesty._--The greatest mistake occurs to me now (Wednesday, April 17th, '44). A girl who should have been unhappily conscious of voluptuous hours, her you would call modest in case of her pa.s.sing with downcast looks. But why, then, is she not so? That girl is immodest who reconciles to herself such things, and yet a.s.sumes the look of innocence.

_About Women._--A man brings his own idle preconceptions, and fancies that he has learned them from his experience.

Far more to be feared than any depth of serious love, however absorbing and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when called 'the ladies.' On the other hand, what an awful elevation arises when each views in the other a creature capable of the same n.o.ble duties--she no less than he a creature of lofty aspirations; she by the same right a daughter of G.o.d as he a son of G.o.d; she bearing her eyes erect to the heavens no less than he!

_Low Degree._--We see often that this takes place very strongly and decidedly with regard to men, notoriously pleasant men and remarkably good-natured, which shows at once in what road the thing travels. And if such a nature should be combined with what Butler thinks virtue, it might be doubtful to which of the two the tribute of kind attentions were paid; but now seeing the true case, we know how to interpret this hypothetical case of Butler's accordingly.

'Visit the sins of the fathers,' etc. This people pretend to think monstrous. Yet what else in effect happens and must happen to Jews inheriting by filial obedience and natural sympathy all that anti-Christian hostility which prevailed in the age succeeding to that of Christ? What evil--of suffering, of penalties now or in reserve may be attached to this spirit of hostility--follows the children through all generations!

Case of Timoleon, whose killing of his brother might afterwards be read into X Y Z or into X a b according to his conduct (either into murder or patriotism), is a good ill.u.s.tration of synthesis.

To ill.u.s.trate Cicero's argument in 'Pro Caelio' as to the frequency of men wild and dissipated in youth becoming eminent citizens, one might adduce this case from the word _Themistocles_ in the Index to the Graeci Rhetorici. But I see or I fancy cause to notice this pa.s.sage for the following cause: it contains only nine words, four in the first comma, five in the last, and of these nine four are taken up in noting the time [Greek: to proton to telen]; ergo, five words record the remarkable revolution from one state to another, and the character of each state.

Two cases of young men's dissipation--1. Horace's record of his father's advice: 'Concessa,' etc.; 2. Cicero's 'Pro Caelio.'

_What Crotchets in every Direction!_--1. The Germans, or, let me speak more correctly, some of the Germans (and doubtless full of Hoch beer or strong drink), found out some thirty years ago that there were only three men of genius in the records of our planet. And who were they? (1) Homer; (2) Shakespeare; (3) Goethe. So that absolutely Milton was shut out from the constellation. Even he wanted a ticket, though Master Sorrows-of-Werther had one. The porter, it seems, fancied he had no marriage garment, a mistake which a mob might correct, saying, 'No marriage garment! then, damme, he shall have this fellow's' (viz., Goethe's). The trinity, according to these vagabonds, was complete without Milton, as the Roman pomp was full to the eye of the sycophant without the bust of Brutus.

2. Macaulay fancied there were only two men of genius in the reign of Charles II., viz., Milton and the tinker Bunyan.

3. Coleridge (p. 237, 'Table-Talk') fancied there were only two men of genius in his own generation: W. W. and Sir Humphrey Davy.

Jeremy Taylor having mentioned two religious men, St. Paul the Hermit and Sulpitius, as having atoned for some supposed foolish garrulities, the one by a three years' silence, the other by a lifelong silence, goes on to express his dissatisfaction with a mode of _rabiosa silentia_ so memorable as this.

Yet it is certain in silence there is wisdom, and there may be deep religion. And indeed it is certain, great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so I have heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissoluteness of the tongue. 'Ut quisque contemplissimus est, ita solutissimae linguae est,' said Seneca.

The silence must be [Greek: kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?--of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like the laughters of drunkenness.

_Public Morality._--It ought not to be left to a man's interest merely to protect the animals in his power. Dogs are no longer worked in the way they were, although the change must have arbitrarily robbed many poor men of half bread. But in a case as valuable as that of the horse, it has been known that a man has incurred the total ruin of a series of horses against even his own gain or self-interest. There ought to be a _custos veteranorum_, a keeper and protector of the poor brutes who are brought within the pale of social use and service. The difficulty, you say! Legislation has met and dealt effectively with far more complicated and minute matters than that. For, after all, consider how few of the brute creation on any wide and permanent scale are brought into the scheme of human life. Some birds as food, some fishes as ditto; beeves as food and _sometimes_ as appliers of strength; horses in both characters. These with elephants and camels, mules, a.s.ses, goats, dogs, and sheep, cats and rabbits, gold-fishes and singing-birds, really compose the whole of our animal equipage harnessed to the car of human life.

3.--On Words And Style.