The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume I Part 9

where there is no going back, though a constant interruption to the going forward; but a third hypothesis is possible: there may be continual loss of ground, yet so that continually the loss is more than compensated, and the total result, for any considerable period of observation, may be that progress is maintained:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

At O, by comparison with the previous elevation at A, there is a repeated falling back; but still upon the whole, and pursuing the inquiry through a sufficiently large segment of time, the constant report is--ascent.

Upon this explanation it is perfectly consistent with a general belief in the going forward of man--that this particular age in which we live might be stationary, or might even have gone back. It cannot, therefore, be upon any _a priori_ principle that I maintain the superiority of this age. It is, and must be upon special examination, applied to the phenomena of this special age. The last century, in its first thirty years, offered the spectacle of a death-like collapse in the national energies. All great interests suffered together. The intellectual power of the country, spite of the brilliant display in a lower element, made by one or two men of genius, languished as a whole. The religious feeling was torpid, and in a degree which insured the strong reaction of some irritating galvanism, or quickening impulse such as that which was in fact supplied by Methodism. It is not with that age that I wish to compare the present. I compare it with the age which terminated thirty years ago--roused, invigorated, searched as that age was through all its sensibilities by the electric shock of the French Revolution. It is by comparison with an age so keenly alive, penetrated by ideas stirring and uprooting, that I would compare it; and even then the balance of gain in well-calculated resource, fixed yet stimulating ideals, I hold to be in our favour--and this in opposition to much argument in an adverse spirit from many and influential quarters. Indeed, it is a remark which more than once I have been led to make in print: that if a foreigner were to inquire for the moral philosophy, the ethics, and even for the metaphysics, of our English literature, the answer would be, 'Look for them in the great body of our Divinity.' Not merely the more scholastic works on theology, but the occasional sermons of our English divines contain a body of richer philosophical speculation than is elsewhere to be found; and, to say the truth, far more instructive than anything in our Lockes, Berkeleys, or other express and professional philosophers.

Having said this by way of showing that I do not overlook their just pretensions, let me have leave to notice a foible in these writers which is not merely somewhat ludicrous, but even seriously injurious to truth. One and all, through a long series of two hundred and fifty years, think themselves called upon to tax their countrymen--each severally in his own age--with a separate, peculiar, and unexampled guilt of infidelity and irreligion. Each worthy man, in his turn, sees in his own age overt signs of these offences not to be matched in any other. Five-and-twenty periods of ten years each may be taken, concerning each of which some excellent writer may be cited to prove that it had reached a maximum of atrocity, such as should not easily have been susceptible of aggravation, but which invariably the _relays_ through all the subsequent periods affirm their own contemporaries to have attained. Every decennium is regularly worse than that which precedes it, until the mind is perfectly confounded by the _Pelion upon Ossa_ which must overwhelm the last term of the twenty-five. It is the mere necessity of a logical _sorites_, that such a horrible race of villains as the men of the twenty-fifth decennium ought not to be suffered to breathe. Now, the whole error arises out of an imbecile self-surrender to the first impressions from the process of abstraction as applied to remote objects. Survey a town under the benefit of a ten miles' distance, combined with a dreamy sunshine, and it will appear a city of celestial palaces. Enter it, and you will find the same filth, the same ruins, the same disproportions as anywhere else. So of past ages, seen through the haze of an abstraction which removes all circ.u.mstantial features of deformity. Call up any one of those ages, if it were possible, into the realities of life, and these worthy praisers of the past would be surprised to find every feature repeated which they had fancied peculiar to their own times. Meanwhile this erroneous doctrine of sermons has a double ill consequence: first, the whole chain of twenty-five writers, when brought together, consecutively reflect a colouring of absurdity upon each other; separately they might be endurable, but all at once, predicating (each of his own period exclusively) what runs with a rolling fire through twenty-five such periods in succession, cannot but recall to the reader that senseless doctrine of a physical decay in man, as if man were once stronger, broader, taller, etc.--upon which hypothesis of a gradual descent why should it have stopped at any special point? How could the human race have failed long ago to reach the point of _zero_? But, secondly, such a doctrine is most injurious and insulting to Christianity. If, after eighteen hundred years of development, it could be seriously true of Christianity that it had left any age or generation of men worse in conduct, or in feeling, or in belief, than all their predecessors, what reasonable expectation could we have that in eighteen hundred years more the case would be better? Such thoughtless opinions make Christianity to be a failure.

_XXIV. BREVIA: SHORT ESSAYS (IN CONNECTION WITH EACH OTHER.)_

1.--PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY--THE IDEAS OF DUTY AND HOLINESS.

The Pagan G.o.d could have perfect peace with his votary, and yet could have no tendency to draw that votary to himself. Not so with the G.o.d of Christianity, who cannot give His peace without drawing like a vortex to Himself, who cannot draw into His own vortex without finding His peace fulfilled.

'An age when l.u.s.tre too intense.'--I am much mistaken if Mr. Wordsworth is not deeply wrong here. Wrong he is beyond a doubt as to the _fact_; for there could have been no virtual intensity of l.u.s.tre (unless merely as a tinsel toy) when it was contradicted by everything in the _manners_, _habits_, and situations of the Pagan G.o.ds--they who were content to play in the coa.r.s.est manner the part of gay young bloods, _sowing_ their wild oats, and with a recklessness of consequences to their female partners never by possibility rivalled by men. I believe and affirm that l.u.s.tre the most dazzling and blinding would not have any _enn.o.bling_ effect except as received into a matrix of previous unearthly and holy type.

As to Bacchus being eternally young, the ancients had no idea or power to frame the idea of eternity. Their eternity was a limitary thing. And this I say not empirically, but _a priori_, on the ground that without the idea of holiness and unfleshliness, eternity cannot rise buoyant from the ground, cannot sustain itself. But waive this, and what becomes of the other things? If he were characteristically distinguished as young, then, by a mere rebound of the logic, the others were not so honoured, else where is the special privilege of Bacchus?

'And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth' (Hosea ii.

15).--The case of pathos, a person coming back to places, recalling the days of youth after a long woe, is quite unknown to the ancients--nay, the maternal affection itself, though used inevitably, is never consciously reviewed as an object of beauty.

Duties arise everywhere, but--do not mistake--not under their sublime form _as_ duties. I claim the honour to have first exposed a fallacy too common: duties never did, never will, arise save under Christianity, since without it the sense of a morality lightened by religious motive, aspiring to holiness, not only of act, but of motive, had not before it even arisen. It is the pressure of society, its mere needs and palpable claims, which first calls forth duties, but not _as_ duties; rather as the casting of parts in a scenical arrangement. A duty, under the low conception to which at first it conforms, is a _role_, no more; it is strictly what we mean when we talk of a _part_. The sense of conscience strictly is not touched under any preceding system of religion. It is the daughter of Christianity. How little did Wordsworth seize the fact in his Ode: 'Stern Daughter of the Voice of G.o.d' is not enough; the voice of G.o.d is the conscience; and neither has been developed except by Christianity.

The conscience of a pagan was a conscience pointing to detection: it pointed only to the needs of society, and caused fear, shame, anxiety, only on the principles of sympathy; that is, from the impossibility of releasing himself from a dependence on the reciprocal feelings--the rebound, the dependence on the _re_sentments of others.

_Morals._--Even ordinary morals could have little practical weight with the ancients: witness the Roman juries and Roman trials. Had there been any sense of justice predominant, could Cicero have hoped to prevail by such defences as that of Milo and fifty-six others, where the argument is merely fanciful--such a _Hein-gespinst_ as might be applauded with 'very good!' 'bravo!' in any mock trial like that silly one devised by Dean Swift.

The slowness and obtuseness of the Romans to pathos appears _a priori_ in their amphitheatre, and its tendency to put out the theatre; secondly, _a posteriori_, in the fact that their theatre was put out; and also, _a posteriori_, in the coa.r.s.eness of their sensibilities to real distresses unless costumed and made sensible as well as intelligible. The grossness of this demand, which proceeded even so far as pinching to elicit a cry, is beyond easy credit to men of their time.

The narrow range of the Greek intellect, always revolving through seven or eight centuries about a few memorable examples--from the Life of Themistocles to Zeno or Demosthenes.

The Grecian glories of every kind seem sociable and affable, courting sympathy. The Jewish seem malignantly [Greek: autarkeis].

But just as Paganism respected only rights of action, possession, etc., Christianity respects a far higher scale of claims, viz., as to the wounds to feelings, to deep injury, though not grounded in anything measurable or expoundable by external results. Man! you have said that which you were too proud and obstinate to unsay, which has lacerated some heart for thirty years that had perhaps secretly and faithfully served you and yours. Christianity lays hold on that as a point of conscience, if not of honour, to make _amends_, if in no other way, by remorse.

As to the tears of Oedipus in the crises. I am compelled to believe that Sophocles erred as regarded nature; for in cases so transcendent as this Greek nature and English nature could not differ. In the great agony on Mount Oeta, Hercules points the pity of his son Hyllus to the extremity of torment besieging him on the humiliating evidence of the tears which they extorted from him. 'Pity me,' says he, 'that weep with sobs like a girl: a thing that no one could have charged upon the man' (pointing to himself); 'but ever without a groan I followed out to the end my calamities.' Now, on the contrary, on the words of the oracle, that beckoned away with impatient sounds Oedipus from his dear sublime Antigone, Oedipus is made to weep.

But this is impossible. Always the tears arose, and will arise, on the _relaxation_ of the torment and in the rear of silent anguish on its sudden suspense, amidst a continued headlong movement; and also, in looking back, tears, unless checked, might easily arise. But never during the torment: on the rack there are no tears shed, and those who suffered on the scaffold never yet shed tears, unless it may have been at some oblique glance at things collateral to their suffering, as suppose a sudden glimpse of a child's face which they had loved in life.

Is not every [Greek: aion] of civilization an inheritance from a previous state not so high? Thus, _e.g._, the Romans, with so little of Christian restraint, would have perished by reaction of their own vices, but for certain prejudices and follies about trade, manufacture, etc., and but for oil on their persons to prevent contagion. Now, this oil had been, I think, a secret bequeathed from some older and higher civilization long since pa.s.sed away. We have it not, but neither have we so much needed it. Soon, however, we shall restore the secret by science more perfect.

Was Christianity meant to narrow or to widen the road to future happiness? If I were translated to some other planet, I should say:

1. _No_; for it raised a far higher standard--_ergo_, made the realization of this far more difficult.

2. _Yes_; for it introduced a new machinery for realizing this standard: (first) Christ's atonement, (second) grace.

But, according to some bigots (as Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne), as cited by Coleridge, Christianity first opened any road at all. Yet, surely they forget that, if simply to come too early was the fatal bar to their claims in the case, Abraham, the father of the faithful, could not benefit.

Yesterday, Thursday, October 21 (1843), I think, or the day before, I first perceived that the first great proof of Christianity is the proof of Judaism, and the proof of that lies in the Jehovah. What merely natural man capable of devising a G.o.d for himself such as the Jewish?

Of all eradications of this doctrine (of human progress), the most difficult is that connected with the outward shows--in air, in colouring, in form, in grouping of the great elements composing the furniture of the heavens and the earth. It is most difficult, even when confining one's attention to the modern case, and neglecting the comparison with the ancient, at all to a.s.sign the a.n.a.lysis of those steps by which to us Christians (but never before) the sea and the sky and the clouds and the many inter-modifications of these, A, B, C, D, and again the many interactions of the whole, the sun (S.), the moon (M.), the noon (N. S.)--the breathless, silent noon--the gay afternoon--the solemn glory of sunset--the dove-like glimpse of Paradise in the tender light of early dawn--by which these obtain a power utterly unknown, undreamed of, unintelligible to a Pagan. If we had spoken to Plato--to Cicero--of the deep pathos in a sunset, would he--would either--have gone along with us? The foolish reader thinks, Why, perhaps not, not altogether as to the quant.i.ty--the degree of emotion.

Doubtless, it is undeniable that we moderns have far more sensibility to the phenomena and visual glories of this world which we inhabit. And it _is_ possible that, reflecting on the singularity of this characteristic badge worn by modern civilization, he may go so far as to suspect that Christianity has had something to do with it. But, on seeking to complete the chain which connects them, he finds himself quite unable to recover the princ.i.p.al link.

Now, it will prove, after all, even for myself who have exposed and revealed these new ligatures by which Christianity connects man with awful interests in the world, a most insurmountable task to a.s.sign the total nidus in which this new power resides, or the total phenomenology through which that pa.s.ses to and fro. Generally it seems to stand thus: G.o.d reveals Himself to us more or less dimly in vast numbers of processes; for example, in those of vegetation, animal growth, crystallization, etc. These impress us not primarily, but secondarily on reflection, after considering the enormity of changes worked annually, and working even at the moment we speak. Then, again, other arrangements throw us more powerfully upon the moral qualities of G.o.d; _e.g._, we see the fence, the sh.e.l.l, the covering, varied in ten million ways, by which in buds and blossoms He insures the ultimate protection of the fruit.

What protection, a.n.a.logous to this, has He established for animals; or, taking up the question in the ideal case, for man, the supreme of His creatures? We perceive that He has relied upon love, upon love strengthened to the adamantine force of insanity or delirium, by the mere aspect of utter, utter helplessness in the human infant. It is not by power, by means visibly developed, that this result is secured, but by means spiritual and 'transcendental' in the highest degree.

The baseness and incorrigible ign.o.bility of the Oriental mind is seen in the radical inability to appreciate justice when brought into collision with the royal privileges of rulers that represent the nation. Not only, for example, do Turks, etc., think it an essential function of royalty to cut off heads, but they think it essential to the consummation of this function that the sacrifice should rest upon caprice known and avowed. To suppose it wicked as a mere process of executing the laws would rob it of all its grandeur. It would stand for nothing. Nay, even if the power were conceded, and the sovereign should abstain from using it of his own free will and choice, this would not satisfy the wretched Turk. Blood, lawless blood--a horrid Moloch, surmounting a grim company of torturers and executioners, and on the other side revelling in a thousand unconsenting women--this hideous image of brutal power and unvarnished l.u.s.t is clearly indispensable to the Turk as incarnating the representative grandeur of his nation. With this ideal ever present to the Asiatic and Mohammedan mind, no wonder that even their religion needs the aid of the sword and bloodshed to secure conversion.

In the _Spectator_ is mentioned, as an Eastern apologue, that a vizier who (like Chaucer's Canace) had learned the language of birds used it with political effect to his sovereign. The sultan had demanded to know what a certain reverend owl was speechifying about to another owl distantly related to him. The vizier listened, and reported that the liberal old owl was making a settlement upon his daughter, in case his friend's son should marry her, of a dozen ruined villages. Loyally long life to our n.o.ble sultan! I shall, my dear friend, always have a ruined village at your service against a rainy day, so long as our present ruler reigns and desolates.

_Obliviscor jam injurias tuas, Clodia._--This is about the most barefaced use of the rhetorical trick--viz., to affect _not_ to do, to pa.s.s over whilst actually doing all the while--that anywhere I have met with.--'Pro Caelio,' p. 234 [p. 35, Volgraff's edition].

_Evaserint_ and _comprehenderint._--Suppose they had rushed out, and suppose they had seized Licinus. So I read--not _issent._--_Ibid., p.

236_ [_Ibid., p. 44_].

_Velim vel potius quid nolim dicere._--Aristotle's case of throwing overboard your own property. He _vult dicere_, else he could not mean, yet _nonvult_, for he is shocked at saying such things of Clodia.--_Ibid., p. 242_ [_Ibid., p. 49_].

2.--MORAL AND PRACTICAL.

_Morality._--That Paley's principle does not apply to the higher morality of Christianity is evident from this: when I seek to bring before myself some ordinary form of wickedness that all men offend by, I think, perhaps, of their ingrat.i.tude. The man born to 400 a year thinks nothing of it, compares himself only with those above his own standard, and sees rather a ground of discontent in his 400 as not being 4,000 than any ground of deep thankfulness. Now, this being so odious a form of immorality, should--by Paley--terminate in excessive evil. On the contrary, it is the principle, the very dissatisfaction which G.o.d uses for keep_ing_ the world mov_ing_ (how villainous the form--these 'ings'!).