The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume I Part 12

2. Further on, when contrasting, not the carvers, but the things _to be_ carved, coming to '_Neck of Veal_,' he says of the carver: 'Should the vertebrae have not been jointed by the butcher, you would find yourself in the position of the ungraceful carver, being compelled to exercise a degree of strength which should never be suffered to appear, very possibly, too, _a.s.sisting_ gravy in a manner not contemplated by the person unfortunate enough to receive it.'

_Genteel_ is the vulgarest and most plebeian of all known words.

Accordingly (and strange it is that the educated users of this word should not perceive that fact), aristocratic people--people in the most undoubted _elite_ of society as to rank or connections--utterly ignore the word. They are aware of its existence in English dictionaries; they know that it slumbers in those vast repositories; they even apprehend your meaning in a vague way when you employ it as an epithet for a.s.signing the pretensions of an individual or a family. Generally it is understood to imply that the party so described is in a position to make morning calls, to leave cards, to be presentable for anything to the contrary apparent in manners, style of conversation, etc. But these and other suggestions still leave a vast area unmapped of blank charts in which the soundings are still doubtful.

The word 'genteel' is so eminently vulgar apparently for this reason, that it presents a non-vulgar distinction under a gross and vulgar conception of that distinction. The true and central notion, on which the word revolves, is elevating; but, by a false abstraction of its elements, it is degraded. And yet in parts of this island where the progress of refinement is torpid, and the field of vision is both narrow and unchanging in all that regards the _nuances_ of manners, I have remarked that the word 'genteel' maintains its old advantageous acceptation; and as a proof of this, eminent and even revolutionary thinkers born and bred in such provincial twilight, use the word as if untainted and hardly aware that it is flyblown.

Among ourselves it is certain that a peculiar style of gossip, of babble, and of miniature intriguing, invests the atmosphere of little 'townishness,' such as often entangles the more thoughtful and dignified of the residents in troublesome efforts at pa.s.sive resistance or active counter-action. In dealing with this matter, Mr. Wordsworth instanced Northampton and Nottingham; but a broader difference could hardly be than between these towns. And just as 'genteel' remains the vulgarest of all words, so the words 'simple' and 'simplicity,' amongst all known words, offer the most complex and least simple of ideas.

Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was (and _is_, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the ancestral seats of our n.o.bility than any beside in the island. Norwich, again, though a seat of manufacturing industry, has always been modified considerably by a literary body of residents.

'Mein alter Herr' (von Stein) 'pflegte dann wohl scherzend zu sagen: Ich musse von irgend eine Hexe meinen Altem als ein Wechselbalg in's Nest gelegt seyn; ich geh.o.r.e offenbar einem Stamm amerikanischer wilden an, und habe noch die Huhnerhundnase zum Auswittern des verschiedenen Blutes.' Arndt, speaking of his power to detect at sight (when seen at a distance) Russians, English, etc., says that Von Stein replied thus in his surprise. But I have cited the pa.s.sage as one which amply ill.u.s.trates the suspensive form of sentence in the German always indicated by a colon (:), thus: 'zu sagen: Ich musse'--to say that I must have been (p. 164).

The active sense of _fearful_, viz., that which causes and communicates terror--not that which receives terror--was undoubtedly in Shakespeare's age, but especially amongst poets, the preponderant sense. Accordingly I am of opinion that even in neutral cases, such as are open indifferently to either sense, viz., that which affrights, or that which is itself affrighted, the bias in Shakespeare's interpretation of the feeling lay towards the former movement. For instance, in one of his sonnets:

'Oh, fearful meditation! where, alas!'

the true construction I believe to be--not this: Oh, though _deriving_ terror from the circ.u.mstances surrounding thee, _suffering_ terror from the _entourage_ of considerations pursuing thee; but this: Oh, thought impressing and creating terror, etc. A 'fearful' agent in Shakespeare's use is not one that shrinks in alarm from the act, but an agent that causes others to shrink; not panic-struck, but panic-striking.

Miss Edgeworth, let me remark, commits trespa.s.ses on language that are really past excusing. In one place she says that a man 'had a _contemptible_ opinion' of some other man's understanding. Such a blunder is not of that cla.s.s which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common amongst vulgar people, and them only. It ranks, for instance, with the common formula of '_I_ am agreeable, if you prefer it.'

Style is the disentangling of thoughts or ideas reciprocally involved in each other.

4.--THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

Religion under any of its aspects, revealing or consoling--religion in connection with any of its affinities, ethics or metaphysics, when _self_-evoked by a person of earnest nature, not imposed from without by the necessities of monastic life, not caught as a contagion from the example of friends that surround you, argues some 'vast volcanic agency'

moving at subterraneous depths below the ordinary working mind of daily life, and ent.i.tled by its own intrinsic grandeur to enn.o.ble the curiosity (else a petty pa.s.sion) which may put questions as to its origin. In any case of religion arising, as a spontaneous birth, in the midst of alien forces, it is inevitable to ask for its _why_ and its _whence_. Religion considered as a sentiment of devotion, as a yearning after some dedication to an immeasurable principle of that n.o.blest temple among all temples--'the upright heart and pure,' or religion, again, as the apprehension of some mighty synthesis amongst truths dimly perceived heretofore amidst separating clouds, but now brought into strict indissoluble connection, proclaims a revolution so great that it is otherwise not to be accounted for than as the breaking out of a germ of the supernatural in man as a seed from a hitherto barren soil.

Sin is that secret word, that dark _aporreton_ of the human race, undiscoverable except by express revelation, which having once been laid in the great things of G.o.d as a germinal principle, has since blossomed into a vast growth of sublime ideas known only to those nations who have lived under the moulding of Scriptural truth--and comprehending _all_ functions of the Infinite operatively familiar to man. Yes, I affirm that there is no form through which the Infinite reveals itself in a sense comprehensible by man and adequate to man; that there is no sublime agency which _compresses_ the human mind from infancy so as to mingle with the moments of its growth, positively none but has been in its whole origin--in every part--and exclusively developed out of that tremendous mystery which lurks under the name of sin.

Yes, I affirm that even in its dreams every Christian child is invested by an atmosphere of sublimity unknown to the greatest of Pagan philosophers: that golden rays reach it by two functions of the Infinite; and that these, in common with those emanations of the Infinite that do not settle upon the mind until mature years, are all projections--derivations or counterpositions--from the obscure idea of sin; could not have existed under any previous condition; and for a Pagan mind would not have been intelligible.

_Sin._--It is not only that the Infinite arises as part of the entire system resting on sin, but specifically from sin apart from its counterforces or reactions, viz., from sin as a thing, and the only thing originally shadowy and in a terrific sense mysterious.

_Stench._--I believe that under Burke's commentary, this idea would become a high test of the doctrine of the Infinite. He p.r.o.nounces it sublime, or sublime in cases of intensity. Now, first of all, the intense state of everything or anything is but a mode of power, that idea or element or moment of greatness under a varied form. Here, then, is nothing _proper_ or separately peculiar to stench: it is not stench _as_ stench, but stench as a mode or form of sensation, capable therefore of intensification. It is but a case under what we may suppose a general Kantian rule--that every sensation runs through all gradations, from the lowest or most obscure and nascent to the highest.

Secondly, however, pa.s.s over to the contemplation of stench _as_ stench: then I affirm--that as simply expounding the decay, and altering or spoiling tendency or state of all things--simply as a register of imperfection, and of one which does not (as ruins to the eye) ever put on a pleasing transitional aspect, it is merely disagreeable, but also at the same time mean. For the imperfection is merely transitional and fleeting, not absolute. First, midst and last, it is or can be grand when it reverts or comes round upon its mediating point, or point of reaction.

The arrangement of my Infinite must be thus: After having expounded the idea of holiness which I must show to be now potent, proceed to show that the Pagan G.o.ds did not realize and did not meet this idea; that then came the exposure of the Pagan G.o.ds and the conscious presence of a new force among mankind, which opened up the idea of the Infinite, through the awakening perception of holiness.

I believe that in every mode of existence, which probably is always by an incarnation, the system of flesh is made to yield the organs that express the alliance of man with the Infinite. Thus the idea of mystery, [Greek: aporreta], finds its organ of expression in the sensualities of the human race. Again, the crime, whatever it were, and the eternal pollution is expressed in these same organs. Also, the prolongation of the race so as to find another system is secured by the same organs.

Generally, that is, for a million against a unit, the awful mystery by which the fearful powers of death, and sorrow, and pain, and sin are locked into parts of a whole; so as, in fact, to be repet.i.tions, reaffirmations of each other under a different phase--this is nothing, does not exist. Death sinks to a mere collective term--a category--a word of convenience for purposes of arrangement. You depress your hands, and, behold! the system disappears; you raise them, it reappears. This is nothing--a cipher, a shadow. Clap your hands like an Arabian girl, and all comes back. Unstop your ears, and a roar as of St. Lawrence enters: stop your ears, and it is m.u.f.fled. To and fro; it is and it is not--is not and is. Ah, mighty heaven, that such a mockery should cover the whole vision of life! It is and it is not; and on to the day of your death you will still have to learn what is the truth.

The eternal now through the dreadful loom is the overflowing future poured back into the capacious reservoir of the past. All the active element lies in that infinitesimal _now_. The future is not except by relation; the past is not at all, and the present but a sign of a nexus between the two.

G.o.d's words require periods, so His counsels. He cannot precipitate them any more than a man in a state of happiness _can_ commit suicide.

Doubtless it is undeniable that a man may arm his hand with a sword: and that his flesh will be found penetrable to the sword, happy or not. But this apparent physical power has no existence, no value for a creature having a double nature: the moral nature not only indisposes him to use his power, but really creates a far greater antagonist power.

This G.o.d--too great to be contemplated steadily by the loftiest of human eyes; too approachable and condescending to be shunned by the meanest in affliction: realizing thus in another form that reconcilement of extremes, which St. Paul observed: far from all created beings, yet also very near.

'A conviction that they needed a Saviour was growing amongst men.' How?

In what sense? Saviour from what? You can't be saved from nothing. There must be a danger, an evil threatening, before even in fancy you can think of a deliverer. Now, what evil was there existing to a Pagan? Sin?

Monstrous! No such idea ever dawned upon the Pagan intellect. Death?

Yes; but that was inalienable from his nature. Pain and disease? Yes; but these were perhaps inalienable also. Mitigated they might be, but it must be by human science, and the progress of knowledge. Grief? Yes; but this was inalienable from life. Mitigated it might be, but by superior philosophy. From what, then, was a Saviour to save? If nothing to save from, how any Saviour? But here arises as the awful of awfuls to me, the deep, deep exposure of the insufficient knowledge and sense of what is peculiar to Christianity. To imagine some sense of impurity, etc., leading to a wish for a Saviour in a Pagan, is to defraud Christianity of all its grandeur. If Paganism could develop the want, it is not at all clear that Paganism did not develop the remedy. Heavens! how deplorable a blindness! But did not a Pagan lady feel the insufficiency of earthly things for happiness? No; because any feeling tending in that direction would be to her, as to all around her, simply a diseased feeling, whether from dyspepsia or hypochondria, and one, whether diseased or not, worthless for practical purposes. It would have to be a Christian lady, if something far beyond, something infinite, were not connected with it, depending on it. But if this were by you ascribed to the Pagan lady, then _that_ is in other words to make her a Christian lady already.

_Exhibition of a Roman Dialogue on Sin._--What! says the ignorant and unreflecting modern Christian. Do you mean to tell me that a Roman, however buried in worldly objects, would not be startled at hearing of a Saviour? Now, hearken.

ROMAN. Saviour! What do you mean? Saviour for what? In good faith, my friend, you labour under some misconception. I am used to rely on myself for all the saving that I need. And, generally speaking, if you except the sea, and those cursed north-east winds, I know of no particular danger.

CHRISTIAN. Oh, my friend, you totally mistake the matter. I mean saving from sin.

ROMAN. Saving from a fault, that is--well, what sort of a fault? Or, how should a man, that you say is no longer on earth, save me from any fault? Is it a book to warn me of faults that He has left?

CHRISTIAN. Why, yes. Not that He wrote Himself; but He talked, and His followers have recorded His views. But still you are quite in the dark.

Not faults, but the fountain of all faults, that is what He will save you from.

ROMAN. But how? I can understand that by illuminating my judgment in general He might succeed in making me more prudent.

CHRISTIAN. 'Judgment,' 'prudent'--these words show how wide by a whole hemisphere you are of the truth. It is your will that He applies His correction to.

ROMAN. 'Will!' why I've none but peaceable and lawful designs, I a.s.sure you. Oh! I begin to see. You think me a partner with those pirates that we just spoke to.

CHRISTIAN. Not at all, my friend. I speak not of designs or intentions.

What I mean is, the source of all desires--what I would call your wills, your whole moral nature.

ROMAN (_bridling_). Ahem! I hope Roman nature is quite as little in need of improvement as any other. There are the Cretans; they held up their heads. Accordingly they had their fire inst.i.tutions, and that true inst.i.tution against bribery and luxury, and all such stuff. They fancied themselves impregnable. Why, bless you! even Marcus Tullius, that was a prosing kind of man and rather peevish about such things, could not keep in the truth. 'Why, Cato, my boy,' says he, 'you talk.' And to hear you, bribery and luxury would not leave one a stick to fight for. Why, now, these same Cretans--lord! we took the conceit out of them in twenty-five minutes. No more time, I a.s.sure you, did it cost three of our cohorts to settle the whole lot of them.

CHRISTIAN. My friend, you are more and more in the dark. What I mean is not present in your senses, but a disease.

ROMAN. Oh, a disease! that's another thing. But where?

CHRISTIAN. Why, it affects the brain and the heart.