The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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[10] This fragment appeared in _The Instructor_ for July, 1853. The
subject was not continued in any form.--H.

[11] '_Sealed_,' &c.:--I do not believe that, in the sense of holy
conscientious loyalty to his own innermost convictions, any writer of
history in any period of time can have surpassed Herodotus. And the
reader must remember (or, if unlearned, he must be informed) that this
judgment has _now_ become the unanimous judgment of all the most
competent authorities--that is, of all those who, having first of all
the requisite erudition as to Greek, as to classical archaeology, &c.,
then subsequently applied this appropriate learning to the searching
investigation of the several narratives authorised by Herodotus. In the
middle of the last century, nothing could rank lower than the historic
credibility of this writer. And to parody his title to be regarded as
the 'Father of History,' by calling him the 'Father of Lies,' was an
unworthy insult offered to his admirable simplicity and candour by more
critics than one. But two points startle the honourable reader, who is
loathe to believe of any laborious provider for a great intellectual
interest that he _can_ deliberately have meant to deceive: the first
point, and, separately by itself, an all-sufficient demur, is
this--that, not in proportion to the learning and profundity brought to
bear upon Herodotus, did the doubts and scruples upon his fidelity
strengthen or multiply. Precisely in the opposite current was the
movement of human opinion, as it applied itself to this patriarch of
history. Exactly as critics and investigators arose like Larcher--just,
reasonable, thoughtful, patient, and combining--or geographers as
comprehensive and as accurate as Major Rennel, regularly in that ratio
did the reports and the judgments of Herodotus command more and more
respect. The other point is this; and, when it is closely considered, it
furnishes a most reasonable ground of demur to the ordinary criticisms
upon Herodotus. These criticisms build the principle of their objection
generally upon the marvellous or romantic element which intermingles
with the current of the narrative. But when a writer treats (as to
Herodotus it happened that repeatedly he treated) tracts of history far
removed in space and in time from the domestic interests of his native
land, naturally he misses as any available guide the ordinary
utilitarian relations which would else connect persons and events with
great outstanding interests of his own contemporary system. The very
abstraction which has silently been performed by the mere effect of vast
distances, wildernesses that swallow up armies, and mighty rivers that
are unbridged, together with the indefinite chronological remoteness, do
already of themselves translate such sequestered and insulated chambers
of history into the character of moral apologues, where the sole
surviving interest lies in the quality of the particular moral
illustrated, or in the sudden and tragic change of fortune recorded.
Such changes, it is urged, are of rare occurrence; and, recurring too
often, they impress a character of suspicious accuracy upon the
narrative. Doubtless they do so, and reasonably, where the writer is
pursuing the torpid current of circumstantial domestic annals. But, in
the rapid abstract of Herodotus, where a century yields but a page or
two, and considering that two slender octavos, on the particular scale
adopted by Herodotus, embody the total records of the human race down to
his own epoch, really it would furnish no legitimate ground of scruple
or jealousy, though every paragraph should present us with a character
that seems exaggerated, or with an incident approaching to the
marvellous, or a catastrophe that is revolting. A writer is bound--he
has created it into a duty, having once assumed the office of a national
historiographer--to select from the rolls of a nation such events as are
the most striking. And a selection conducted on this principle through
several centuries, or pursuing the fortunes of a dynasty reigning over
vast populations, _must_ end in accumulating a harvest of results such
as would startle the sobriety of ordinary historic faith. If a medical
writer should elect for himself, of his own free choice, to record such
cases only in his hospital experience as terminated fatally, it would be
absurd to object the gloomy tenor of his reports as an argument for
suspecting their accuracy, since he himself, by introducing this as a
condition into the very terms of his original undertaking with the
public, has created against himself the painful necessity of continually
distressing the sensibilities of his reader. To complain of Herodotus,
or any public historian, as drawing too continually upon his reader's
profounder sensibilities, is, in reality, to forget that this belongs as
an original element to the very task which he has undertaken. To
undertake the exhibition of human life under those aspects which
confessedly bring it into unusual conflict with chance and change, is,
by a mere self-created necessity, to prepare beforehand the summons to a
continued series of agitations: it is to seek the tragic and the
wondrous wilfully, and then to complain of it as violating the laws of
probability founded on life within the ordinary conditions of
experience.

That most memorable of Panhellenic festivals it was, which first made
known to each other the two houses of Grecian blood that typified its
ultimate and polar capacities, the most and the least of exorbitations,
the utmost that were possible from its equatorial centre; viz., on the
one side, the Asiatic Ionian, who spoke the sweet musical dialect of
Homer, and, on the other side, the austere Dorian, whom ten centuries
could not teach that human life brought with it any pleasure, or any
business, or any holiness of duty, other or loftier than that of war. If
it were possible that, under the amenities of a Grecian sky, too fierce
a memento could whisper itself of torrid zones, under the stern
discipline of the Doric Spartan it was that you looked for it; or, on
the other hand, if the lute might, at intervals, be heard or fancied
warbling too effeminately for the martial European key of the Grecian
muses, amidst the sweet blandishments it was of Ionian groves that you
arrested the initial elements of such a relaxing modulation. Twenty-five
centuries ago, when Europe and Asia met for brotherly participation in
the noblest, perhaps,[12] of all recorded solemnities, viz., the
inauguration of History in its very earliest and prelusive page, the
coronation (as with propriety we may call it) of the earliest (perhaps
even yet the greatest?) historic artist, what was the language employed
as the instrument of so great a federal act? It was that divine Grecian
language to which, on the model of the old differential compromise in
favour of Themistocles, all rival languages would cordially have
conceded the second honour. If now, which is not impossible, any
occasion should arise for a modern congress of the leading nations that
represent civilisation, not probably in the Isthmus of Corinth, but on
that of Darien, it would be a matter of mere necessity, and so far
hardly implying any expression of homage, that the English language
should take the station formerly accorded to the Grecian. But I come
back to the thesis which I announced, viz., to the twofold _onus_ which
the English language is called upon to sustain:--first, to the
responsibility attached to its _powers_; secondly, to the responsibility
and weight of expectation attached to its destiny. To the questions
growing out of the first, I will presently return. But for the moment, I
will address myself to the nature of that DESTINY, which is often
assigned to the English language: what is it? and how far is it in a
fair way of fulfilling this destiny?

[12] Perhaps, seriously, the most of a _cosmopolitical_ act that has
ever been attempted. Next to it, in point of dignity, I should feel
disposed to class the inauguration of the Crusades.

As early as the middle of the last century, and by people with as little
enthusiasm as David Hume, it had become the subject of plain prudential
speculations, in forecasting the choice of a subject, or of the language
in which it should reasonably be treated, that the area of expectation
for an English writer was prodigiously expanding under the development
of our national grandeur, by whatever names of 'colonial' or 'national'
it might be varied or disguised. The issue of the American War, and the
sudden expansion of the American Union into a mighty nation on a scale
corresponding to that of the four great European potentates--Russia,
Austria, England, and France--was not in those days suspected. But the
tendencies could not be mistaken. And the same issue was fully
anticipated, though undoubtedly through the steps of a very much slower
process. Whilst disputing about the items on the tess apettiele, the
disputed facts were overtaking us, and flying past us, on the most
gigantic scale. All things were changing: and the very terms of the
problem were themselves changing, and putting on new aspects, in the
process and at the moment of enunciation. For instance, it had been
sufficiently seen that another Christendom, far more colossal than the
old Christendom of Europe, _might_, and undoubtedly _would_, form itself
rapidly in America. Against the tens of millions in Europe would rise
up, like the earth-born children of Deucalion and Pyrrha (or of the
Theban Cadmus and Hermione) American millions counted by hundreds. But
from what _radix_? Originally, it would have been regarded as madness to
take Ireland, in her Celtic element, as counting for anything. But of
late--whether rationally, however, I will inquire for a brief moment or
so--the counters have all changed in these estimates. The late Mr
O'Connell was the parent of these hyperbolical anticipations. To count
his ridiculous 'monster-meetings' by hundreds of thousands, and then at
last by millions, cost nobody so much as a blush; and considering the
open laughter and merriment with which all O'Connell estimates were
accepted and looked at, I must think that the _London Standard_ was more
deeply to blame than any other political party, in giving currency and
acceptation to the nursery exaggerations of Mr O'Connell. Meantime
those follies came to an end. Mr O'Connell died; all was finished: and a
new form of mendacity was transferred to America. There has always
existed in the United States one remarkable phenomenon of Irish politics
applied to the deception of both English, Americans, and Irish. All
people who have given any attention to partisanship and American
politics, are aware of a rancorous malice burning sullenly amongst a
small knot of Irishmen, and applying itself chiefly to the feeding of an
interminable feud against England and all things English. This, as it
chiefly expresses itself in American journals, naturally passes for the
product of American violence; which in reality it is not. And hence it
happens, and for many years it _has_ happened, that both Englishmen and
Americans are perplexed at intervals by a malice and an _acharnement_ of
hatred to England, which reads very much like that atrocious and
viperous malignity imputed to the father of Hannibal against the Romans.
It is noticeable, both as keeping open a peculiar exasperation of Irish
patriotism absurdly directed against England; as doing a very serious
injustice to Americans, who are thus misrepresented as the organs of
this violence, so exclusively Irish; and, finally, as the origin of the
monstrous delusion which I now go on to mention. The pretence of late
put forward is, that the preponderant element in the American population
is indeed derived from the British Islands, but by a vast overbalance
from Ireland, and from the Celtic part of the Irish population. This
monstrous delusion has recently received an extravagant sanction from
the London _Quarterly Review_. Half a dozen other concurrent papers, in
journals political and literary, hold the same language. And the upshot
of the whole is--that, whilst the whole English element (including the
earliest colonisation of the New England states at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and including the whole stream of British
emigration since the French Revolution) is accredited for no more than
three and a half millions out of pretty nearly twenty millions of
_white_ American citizens, on the other hand, against this English
element, is set up an Irish (meaning a purely Hiberno-_Celtic_) element,
amounting--oh, genius of blushing, whither hast thou fled?--to a total
of eight millions. Anglo-Saxon blood, it seems, is in a miserable
minority in the United States; whilst the German blood composes, we are
told, a respectable nation of five millions; and the Irish-Celtic young
noblemen, though somewhat at a loss for shoes, already count as high as
eight millions!

Now, if there were any semblance of truth in all this, we should have
very good reason indeed to tremble for the future prospects of the
English language throughout the Union. Eight millions struggling with
three and a half should already have produced some effect on the very
composition of Congress. Meantime, against these audacious falsehoods I
observe a reasonable paper in the _Times_ (August 23, 1852), rating the
Celtic contribution from Ireland--that is, exclusively of all the
_Ulster_ contribution--at about two millions; which, however, I view as
already an exaggeration, considering the number that have always by
preference resorted to the Canadas. Two millions, whom poverty, levity,
and utter want of all social or political consideration, have reduced to
ciphers the most absolute--two millions, in the very lowest and most
abject point of political depression, cannot do much to disturb the
weight of the English language: which, accordingly, on another
occasion, I will proceed to consider, with and without the aid of the
learned Dr Gordon Latham, and sometimes (if he will excuse me) in
defiance of that gentleman, though far enough from defiance in any
hostile or unfriendly sense.

THE CASUISTRY OF DUELLING.[13]

This mention of Allan Cunningham recalls to my recollection an affair
which retains one part of its interest to this day, arising out of the
very important casuistical question which it involves. We Protestant
nations are in the habit of treating casuistry as a field of
speculation, false and baseless _per se_; nay, we regard it not so much
in the light of a visionary and idle speculation, as one positively
erroneous in its principles, and mischievous for its practical results.
This is due in part to the disproportionate importance which the Church
of Rome has always attached to casuistry; making, in fact, this
supplementary section of ethics take precedency of its elementary
doctrines in their catholic simplicity: as though the plain and broad
highway of morality were scarcely ever the safe road, but that every
case of human conduct were to be treated as an exception, and never as
lying within the universal rule: and thus forcing the simple,
honest-minded Christian to travel upon a tortuous by-road, in which he
could not advance a step in security without a spiritual guide at his
elbow: and, in fact, whenever the hair-splitting casuistry is brought,
with all its elaborate machinery, to bear upon the simplicities of
household life, and upon the daily intercourse of the world, there it
has the effect (and is expressly cherished by the Romish Church with a
view to the effect) of raising the spiritual pastor into a sort of
importance which corresponds to that of an attorney. The consulting
casuist is, in fact, to all intents and purposes, a moral attorney. For,
as the plainest man, with the most direct purposes, is yet reasonably
afraid to trust himself to his own guidance in any affair connected with
questions of law; so also, when taught to believe that an upright
intention and good sense are equally insufficient in morals, as they are
in law, to keep him from stumbling or from missing his road, he comes to
regard a conscience-keeper as being no less indispensable for his daily
life and conversation, than his legal agent, or his professional 'man of
business,' for the safe management of his property, and for his guidance
amongst the innumerable niceties which beset the real and inevitable
intricacies of rights and duties, as they grow out of human enactments
and a complex condition of society. Fortunately for the happiness of
human nature and its dignity, those holier rights and duties which grow
out of laws heavenly and divine, written by the finger of God upon the
heart of every rational creature, are beset by no such intricacies, and
require, therefore, no such vicarious agency for their practical
assertion. The primal duties of life, like the primal charities, are
placed high above us--legible to every eye, and shining like the stars,
with a splendour that is read in every clime, and translates itself into
every language at once. Such is the imagery of Wordsworth. But this is
otherwise estimated in the policy of papal Rome: and casuistry usurps a
place in her spiritual economy, to which our Protestant feelings demur.
So far, however, the question between us and Rome is a question of
degrees. They push casuistry into a general and unlimited application;
we, if at all, into a very narrow one. But another difference there is
between us even more important; for it regards no mere excess in the
_quantity_ of range allowed to casuistry, but in the _quality_ of its
speculations: and which it is (more than any other cause) that has
degraded the office of casuistical learning amongst us. Questions are
raised, problems are entertained, by the Romish casuistry, which too
often offend against all purity and manliness of thinking. And that
objection occurs forcibly here, which Southey (either in _The Quarterly
Review_ or in his _Life of Wesley_) has urged and expanded with regard
to the Romish and also the Methodist practice of _auricular
confession_--viz., that, as it _is_ practically managed, not leaving the
person engaged in this act to confess according to the light of his own
conscience, but at every moment interfering, on the part of the
confessor, to suggest _leading questions_ (as lawyers call them), and to
throw the light of confession upon parts of the experience which native
modesty would leave in darkness,--so managed, the practice of confession
is undoubtedly the most demoralising practice known to any Christian
society. Innocent young persons, whose thoughts would never have
wandered out upon any impure images or suggestions, have their ingenuity
and their curiosity sent roving upon unlawful quests: they are
instructed to watch what else would pass undetained in the mind, and
would pass unblameably, on the Miltonic principle: ('Evil into the mind
of God or man may come unblamed,' &c.) Nay, which is worst of all,
unconscious or semi-conscious thoughts and feelings or natural impulses,
rising, like a breath of wind under some motion of nature, and again
dying away, because not made the subject of artificial review and
interpretation, are now brought powerfully under the focal light of the
consciousness: and whatsoever is once made the subject of consciousness,
can never again have the privilege of gay, careless thoughtlessness--the
privilege by which the mind, like the lamps of a mail-coach, moving
rapidly through the midnight woods, illuminate, for one instant, the
foliage or sleeping umbrage of the thickets; and, in the next instant,
have quitted them, to carry their radiance forward upon endless
successions of objects. This happy privilege is forfeited for ever, when
the pointed significancy of the confessor's questions, and the direct
knowledge which he plants in the mind, have awakened a guilty
familiarity with every form of impurity and unhallowed sensuality.

[13] This appeared in _Tait's Magazine_ for February, 1841. Although
practically an independent paper, it was included in the series entitled
'Sketches of Life and Manners; from the Autobiography of an English
Opium-Eater.' The reference to Allan Cunningham occurs in the previous
chapter of these 'Sketches.'--H.

Here, then, are objections sound and deep, to casuistry, as managed in
the Romish church. Every possible objection ever made to auricular
confession applies with equal strength to casuistry; and some
objections, besides these, are peculiar to itself. And yet, after all,
these are but objections to casuistry as treated by a particular church.
Casuistry in itself--casuistry as a possible, as a most useful, and a
most interesting speculation--remains unaffected by any one of these
objections; for none applies to the essence of the case, but only to its
accidents, or separable adjuncts. Neither is this any curious or subtle
observation of little practical value. The fact is as far otherwise as
can be imagined--the defect to which I am here pointing, is one of the
most clamorous importance. Of what value, let me ask, is Paley's Moral
Philosophy? What is its imagined use? Is it that in substance it reveals
any new duties, or banishes as false any old ones? No; but because the
known and admitted duties--duties recognised in _every_ system of
ethics--are here placed (successfully or not) upon new foundations, or
brought into relation with new principles not previously perceived to be
in any relation whatever. This, in fact, is the very meaning of a
theory[14] or contemplation, [[Greek: Theoria],] when A, B, C, old and
undisputed facts have their relations to each other developed. It is
not, therefore, for any practical benefit in action, so much as for the
satisfaction of the understanding, when reflecting on a man's own
actions, the wish to see what his conscience or his heart prompts
reconciled to general laws of thinking--this is the particular service
performed by Paley's Moral Philosophy. It does not so much profess to
tell _what_ you are to do, as the _why_ and the _wherefore_; and, in
particular, to show how one rule of action may be reconciled to some
other rule of equal authority, but which, apparently, is in hostility to
the first. Such, then, is the utmost and highest aim of the Paleyian or
the Ciceronian ethics, as they exist. Meantime, the grievous defect to
which I have adverted above--a defect equally found in all systems of
morality, from the Nichomachean ethics of Aristotle downwards--is the
want of a casuistry, by way of supplement to the main system, and
governed by the spirit of the very same laws, which the writer has
previously employed in the main body of his work. And the immense
superiority of this supplementary section, to the main body of the
systems, would appear in this, that the latter I have just been saying,
aspires only to guide the reflecting judgment in harmonising the
different parts of his own conduct, so as to bring them under the same
law; whereas the casuistical section, in the supplement, would seriously
undertake to guide the conduct, in many doubtful cases, of action--cases
which are so regarded by all thinking persons. Take, for example, the
case which so often arises between master and servant, and in so many
varieties of form--a case which requires you to decide between some
violation of your conscience, on the one hand, as to veracity, by saying
something that is not strictly true, as well as by evading (and that is
often done) all answer to inquiries which you are unable to meet
satisfactorily--a violation of your conscience to this extent, and in
this way; or, on the other hand, a still more painful violation of your
conscience in consigning deliberately some young woman--faulty, no
doubt, and erring, but yet likely to derive a lesson from her own
errors, and the risk to which they have exposed her--consigning her, I
say, to ruin, by refusing her a character, and thus shutting the door
upon all the paths by which she might retrace her steps. This I state as
one amongst the many cases of conscience daily occurring in the common
business of the world. It would surprise any reader to find how many
they are; in fact, a very large volume might be easily collected of such
cases as are of ordinary occurrence. _Casuistry_, the very word
_casuistry_ expresses the science which deals with such _cases_: for as
a case, in the declension of a noun, means a falling away, or a
deflection from the upright nominative (_rectus_), so a case in ethics
implies some falling off, or deflection from the high road of catholic
morality. Now, of all such cases, one, perhaps the most difficult to
manage, the most intractable, whether for consistency of thinking as to
the theory of morals, or for consistency of action as to the practice of
morals, is the case of DUELLING.

[14] No terms of art are used so arbitrarily, and with such perfect
levity, as the terms _hypothesis_, _theory_, _system_. Most writers use
one or other with the same indifference that they use in constructing
the title of a novel, or, suppose, of a pamphlet, where the phrase
_thoughts_, or _strictures_, or _considerations_, upon so and so, are
used _ad libitum_. Meantime, the distinctions are essential. That is
properly an _hypothesis_ where the question is about a cause: certain
phenomena are known and given: the object is to place below these
phenomena a basis [[Greek: a hypothosis]] capable of supporting them,
and accounting for them. Thus, if you were to assign a cause sufficient
to account for the _aurora borealis_, that would be an hypothesis. But a
theory, on the other hand, takes a multitude of facts all disjointed,
or, at most, suspected, of some inter-dependency: these it takes and
places under strict laws of relation to each other. But here there is no
question of a cause. Finally, a system is the synthesis of a theory and
an hypothesis: it states the relations as amongst an undigested mass,
_rudis indigestaque moles_, of known phenomena; and it assigns a basis
for the whole, as in an hypothesis. These distinctions would become
vivid and convincing by the help of proper illustrations.

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