Томас де Квинси
The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1
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 illustrated 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 ☽ 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, 'Nobody 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 ætas 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 passing with downcast looks. But why, then, is she not so? That girl is immodest who reconciles to herself such things, and yet assumes 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 noble duties—she no less than he a creature of lofty aspirations; she by the same right a daughter of God as he a son of God; 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 illustration of synthesis.
To illustrate Cicero's argument in 'Pro Cælio' 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 Græci Rhetorici. But I see or I fancy cause to notice this passage 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 το πρωτον το τελεν; 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 Cælio.'
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 solutissimæ linguæ est,' said Seneca.
The silence must be καιριος, 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, asses, 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
There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of the good speaker, as contrasted with the good debater. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of à priori abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being spread through entire systems, and assumed as precognita that are familiar to the learned student.
Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word implicit. As the word condign, so capable of an extended sense, is yet constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the word punishment (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign rewards'), so also the word implicit is in English always associated with the word faith. People say that Papists have an implicit faith in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a carpet, is folded up, then it is implicit according to the original Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is explicit. Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he does say), 'Sir, I cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is wrapt up (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here the priest believes explicitly: he believes implicitly.
Modern.—Is it not shameful that to this hour even literary men of credit and repute cannot for the life of them interpret this line from 'As You Like It'—
'Full of wise saws and modern instances'?
A man as well read as Mr. Theodore Hook, and many a hundred beside, have seriously understood it to mean 'Full of old proverbs, the traditionary wisdom of nations, and of illustrative examples drawn from modern experience.' Nonsense! The meaning is, 'Full of old maxims and proverbs, and of trivial attempts at argument.' That is, tediously redundant in rules derived from the treasury of popular proverbs,' and in feeble attempts at connecting these general rules with the special case before him. The superannuated old magistrate sets out with a proverb, as for instance this, that the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing. That proverb forms his major proposition. In his minor proposition he goes on to argue that the trespass charged upon the particular prisoner before him was very little bigger than a midge's wing. And then in his conclusion triumphantly he infers, Ergo, the prisoner at the bar is the mother of mischief. But says the constable, 'Please, your worship, the prisoner is a man, a hulking clodhopper, some six or seven feet high, with a strong black beard.' 'Well, that makes no odds,' rejoins his worship; 'then he's the father of mischief. Clerk, make out his mittimus.'
The word 'instance' (from the scholastic instantia) never meant example in Shakespeare's age. The word 'modern' never once in Shakespeare means what it means to us in these days. Even the monkish Latin word 'modernus' fluctuated in meaning, and did not always imply recens, neotericus; but in Shakespeare never. What does it mean in Shakespeare? Once and for ever it means trivial, inconsiderable. Dr. Johnson had too much feeling not to perceive that the word 'modern' had this value in Shakespeare's acceptation; practically, he felt that it availed for that sense, but theoretically he could not make out the why. It means that, said the Doctor; but feebly and querulously, like one sick of the pip, he added, 'Yet I don't know why.' Don't you? Now, we do. The fact is, Dr. Johnson was in a fit of the dismals at that time; he had recently committed a debauch of tea, having exceeded his usual allowance by seventy-five cups, so that naturally he had a 'curmurring' in the stomach. Else he could not have failed to see what we are now going to explain with a wet finger. Everybody is aware that to be material is the very opposite of being trivial. What is 'material' in a chain of evidence, or in an argument, can never be trifling. Now, therefore, if you can find a word that will flatly contradict this word material, then you have a capital term for expressing what is trivial. Well, you find in the word immaterial all that you are seeking. 'It is quite immaterial' will suit Mr. Touts's purpose just as well as 'It is really of no consequence, of no consequence in the world.' To say in a law court that the objection is immaterial is otherwise to say that it is trivial. Here, then, is the first step: to contradict the idea of material is effectually to express the idea of trivial. Let us now see if we can find any other contradiction to the idea of material, for one antithesis to that idea will express as well as any other antithesis the counterpole of the trivial. Now, clearly the substance of a thing, the material out of which it is made, is oftentimes of great importance by comparison with its shape, fashion, or mode. It is of value in your eyes to know whether your family plate is in substance of gold or of silver; but whether such a vessel is round or square, ornamented with a wreath of acanthus or ivy, supported by tigers or by fawns, may be a trivial consideration, or even worse; for the fashion of your plate, after it has once become obsolete, may count against you for so much loss as something that will cost a good deal of money to alter. Here, then, is another contradiction to the material, and therefore another expression for the trivial: matter, as against vacancy or the privation of matter, yields the antithesis of material or immaterial, substantial and unsubstantial; matter, as against form, yields the antithesis of substance and shape, or otherwise of material and modal—what is matter and what is the mere modification of matter, its variation by means of ornament or shape.
The word 'modern' is therefore in Shakespeare uniformly to be pronounced with the long o, as in the words modal, modish, and never with the short o of mŏderate, mŏdest, or our present word mŏdern. And the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to a permanent substance, that with Shakespeare is modish, or (according to his form) modern.29 Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or instantia, the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having the polemic office of contradicting an opponent) is in Shakespeare's idiom, when viewed as against a substantial argument, a modern argument.
Again, when Cleopatra, defending herself against the perfidy of her steward, wishes to impress upon Octavius that any articles which she may have kept back from the inventory of her personal chattels are but trifles, she expresses this by saying that they are but
'Such as we greet modern friends withal;'
i.e., such as we bestow, at welcoming or at parting, upon the slightest acquaintances. The whole stress of the logic lies upon the epithet modern—for simply as friends, had they been substantial friends, they might have levied any amount from the royal lady's bounty; kingdoms would have been slight gifts in her eyes, and that would soon have been objected to by her conqueror. But her argument is, that the people to whom such gifts would be commensurate are mere modish friends, persons known to us on terms of bare civility, people with whom we exchange salutations in the street, or occasional calls, what now we call acquaintances, for whom in Shakespeare's time there was no distinguishing expression.
Another case we remember at this moment in 'All's Well that Ends Well.' It occurs in Act II., at the very opening of scene iii.; the particular edition, the only one we can command at the moment, is an obscure one published by Scott, Webster and Geary, Charterhouse Square, 1840, and we mention it thus circumstantially because the passage is falsely punctuated; and we have little doubt that in all other editions, whether with or without the false punctuation, the syntax is generally misapprehended. In reality, the false punctuation has itself grown out of the false apprehension of the syntax, and not vice versâ. Thus the words stand literatim et punctuatim: 'They say, miracles are past: and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless.' The comma ought to have been placed after 'familiar,' the sense being this—and we have amongst us sceptical and irreligious people to represent as trivial and of daily occurrence things which in reality are supernatural and causeless (that is, not lying amongst the succession of physical causes and effects, but sent as miracles by the immediate agency of God). According to the true sense, things supernatural and causeless must be understood as the subject, of which modern and familiar is the predicate.
Mr. Grindon fancies that frog is derived from the syllable τραχ of βατραχος. This will cause some people to smile, and recall Menage's pleasantry about Alfana, the man of Orlando; It is true that frog at first sight seems to have no letter in common except the snarling letter (litera canina). But this is not so; the a and the o, the s and the k, are perhaps essentially the same. And even in the case where, positively and literally, not a single letter is identical, it is odd, but undeniable, that the two words may be nearly allied as mother and child. One instance is notorious, but it is worth citing for a purpose of instructive inference. 'Journal,' as a French word, or, if you please, as an English word—whence came that? Unquestionably and demonstrably from the Latin word dies, in which, however, visibly there is not one letter the same as any one of the seven that are in journal. Yet mark the rapidity of the transition. Dies (a day) has for its derivative adjective daily the word diurnus. Now, the old Roman pronunciation of diu was exactly the same as gio, both being pronounced as our English jorn. Here, in a moment, we see the whole—giorno, a day, was not derived directly from dies, but secondarily through diurnus. Then followed giornal, for a diary, or register of a day, and from that to French, as also, of course, the English journal. But the moral is, that when to the eye no letter is the same, may it not be so to the ear? Already the di of dies anticipates and enfolds the giorno.
Mr. Grindon justly remarks upon the tendency, in many instances, of the German ss to reappear in English forms as t. Thus heiss (hot), fuss (foot), etc. These are Mr. Grindon's own examples, and a striking confirmation occurs in the old English hight, used for he was called, and again for the participle called, and again, in the 'Met. Romanus,' for I was called: 'Lorde, he saide, I highth Segramour.' Now, the German is heissen (to be called). And this is a tendency hidden in many long ages: as, for instance, in Greek, every person must remember the transition of ττ and σσ as in θαττω, θασσω.
On Pronunciation and Spelling.—If we are to surrender the old vernacular sound of the e in certain situations to a ridiculous criticism of the eye, and in defiance of the protests rising up clamorously from every quarter of old English scholarship, let us at least know to what we surrender. What letter is to usurp the vacant seat? What letter? retorts the purist—why, an e, to be sure. An e? And do you call that an e? Do you pronounce 'ten' as if it were written 'tun', or 'men' as if written 'mun'? The 'Der' in Derby, supposing it tolerable at all to alter its present legitimate sound, ought, then, to be pronounced as the 'Der' in the Irish name Derry, not as 'Dur'; and the 'Ber' in Berkeley not as 'Bur,' but as the 'Ber' in Beryl. But the whole conceit has its origin in pure ignorance of English archæology, and in the windiest of all vanities, viz., the attempt to harmonize the spelling and the pronunciation of languages.
Naturally, it fills one with contempt for these 'Derby' purists to find that their own object, the very purpose they are blindly and unconsciously aiming at, has been so little studied or steadily contemplated by them in anything approaching to its whole extent. Why, upon the principle which they silently and virtually set up, though carrying it out so contradictorily (driving out an a on the plea that it is not an e, only to end by substituting, and without being aware, the still remoter letter u), the consequence must be that the whole language would go to wreck. Nine names out of every ten would need tinkering. 'London,' for instance, no more receives the normal sound of the o in either of its syllables than does the e in 'Derby.' The normal sound of the o is that heard in 'song,' 'romp,' 'homage,' 'drop.' Nevertheless, the sound given to the o in 'London,' 'Cromwell,' etc., which strictly is the short sound of u in 'lubber,' 'butter,' etc., is a secondary sound of o in particular combinations, though not emphatically its proper sound. The very same defence applies to the e in 'Berkeley,' etc. It is the legitimate sound of the English e in that particular combination, viz., when preceding an r, though not its normal sound. But think of the wild havoc that would be made of other more complex anomalies, if these purists looked an inch in advance. Glocester or Gloucester, Worcester, Cirencester, Pontefract, etc. What elaborate and monstrous pronunciations would they affix to these names? The whole land would cease to recognise itself. And that the purists should never have contemplated these veritable results, this it is which seals and rivets one's contempt for them.
Now, if such harmony were at all desirable (whereas, on the contrary, we should thus be carrying ruin into the traditions and obliteration into the ethnological links of languages, industriously, in fact, throwing up insuperable obstacles in the path of historical researches), it would be far better, instead of adjusting the pronunciation to the imaginary value of the spelling, inversely to adjust the spelling to the known and established pronunciation, as a certain class of lunatics amongst ourselves, viz., the phonetic gang, have for some time been doing systematically.
Here, therefore, I hope is one fixed point. Here there is anchorage. The usage is the rule, at any rate; and the law of analogy takes effect only where that cannot be decisively ascertained.
The Latin Word 'Felix.'—The Romans appear to me to have had no term for happy, which argues that they had not the idea. Felix is tainted with the idea of success, and is thus palpably referred to life as a competition, which for Romans every distinguished life was. In fact, apart from his city the Roman was nothing. Too poor to have a villa or any mode of retirement, it is clear that the very idea of Roman life supposes for the vast majority a necessity of thick crowded intercourse, without the possibility of solitude. I, for my peculiar constitution of mind, to whom solitude has in all periods of life been more of a necessity almost than air, view with special horror the life of a Roman or Athenian. All the morning he had to attend a factious hustings or a court—assemblies deliberative or judicial. Here only he was somebody, and yet, however, somebody through others. Combining with one leader and many underlings like himself, he also became a power; but in himself and for himself, after all, he was consciously nothing. When Cicero speaks of his nunquam minus Solus quam cum solus, he is announcing what he feels to be, and knows will be, accepted as a very extraordinary fact. For even in rure it is evident that friends made it a duty of friendship to seek out and relieve their rusticating friends.
On the Distinction between 'Rhetorica utens' and 'Rhetorica docens'.—It was a perplexity, familiar to the experience of the Schoolmen, that oftentimes one does not know whether to understand by the term logic the act and process of reasoning involved and latent in any series of connected propositions, or this same act and process formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. For instance, if you should happen to say, 'Dr. Isaac Watts, the English Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man; but alas! for his logic, what can his best friend say for it? The most charitable opinion must pronounce it at the best so, so'—in such a case, what is it that you would be understood to speak of? Would it be the general quality of the Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of his philosophical method, or would it be the particular little book known as 'The Doctor: his Logic,' price 5s., bound in calf, and which you might be very shy of touching with a pair of tongs, for fear of dimming their steel polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your motions? The same ambiguity affects many other cases. For instance, if you heard a man say, 'The rhetoric of Cicero is not fitted to challenge much interest,' you might naturally understand it of the particular style and rhetorical colouring—which was taxed with being florid; nay, Rhodian; nay, even Asiatic—that characterizes that great orator's compositions; or, again, the context might so restrain the word as to force it into meaning the particular system or theory of rhetoric addressed to Herennius, a system which (being traditionally ascribed to Cicero) is usually printed amongst his works. Here, and in scores of similar cases, lies often a trap for the understanding; but the Schoolmen evaded this trap by distinguishing between 'Rhetorica utens,' and 'Rhetorica docens,' between the rhetoric that laid down or delivered didactically the elements of oratorical persuasion as an art to be learned, and rhetoric, on the other hand, as a creative energy that wielded these elements by the mouth of Pericles in the year 440 b. c., or by the mouth of Demosthenes, 340 b. c.; between rhetoric the scholastic art and rhetoric the heaven-born power; between the rhetoric of Aristotle that illuminated the solitary student, and the rhetoric of Demosthenes that ran along in rolling thunders to the footstool of Artaxerxes' throne. Oh, these dear spindle-shanked Schoolmen! they were people, respected reader, not to be sneezed at. What signifies having spindle-shanks?
Synonyms.—A representative and a delegate, according to Burke, are identical; but there is the same difference as between a person who on his own results of judgment manages the interests of X, and a person merely reporting the voice of X. Probably there never was a case which so sharply illustrated the liability of goodish practical understanding to miss, to fail in seeing, an object lying right before the eyes; and that is more wonderful in cases where the object is not one of multitude, but exists almost in a state of insulation. At the coroner's inquest on a young woman who died from tight-lacing, acting, it was said, in combination with a very full meal of animal food, to throw the heart out of position, Mr. Wakely pronounced English or British people all distorted in the spine, whereas Continental people were all right. Continental! How unlimited an idea! Why, it meant nothing; it defines nothing, limits nothing, excludes nothing. Who or what is Continental? Apparently it means anyone out of 240 millions not being one of the 27 millions in the Britannides. Every man escapes an insane folly who happens to breathe an air E. (N. E., S. E., N. N. E., S. S. E., etc.) of the Britannides. Vanity, the inevitable wish to improve, or rather to avail, one's self of a natural means offered for deepening and marking out the natural outline of the shape, i.e., of the sexual characteristics, has no effect, dies out, the instant that a family is one of those who have the privilege of basking anywhere 2,000 miles E. or 2,000 miles N. and S.!
