Chapter I: Oxford (4)

Still, in the Greek tragedy, however otherwise embittered against ancient literature by the dismal affectations current in the scenical poetry, at least I felt the presence of a great and original power. It might be a power inferior, upon the whole, to that which presides in the English tragedy; I believed that it was; but it was equal and appealed equally to real and deep sensibilities in our nature. Yet, also, I felt that the two powers at work in the two forms of the drama were essentially different; and, without having read a line of German at that time, or knowing of any such controversy, I began to meditate on the elementary grounds of difference between the Pagan and the Christian forms of poetry. The dispute has since been carried on extensively in France, not less than in Germany, as between the _classical_ and the _romantic_. But I will venture to assert that not one step in advance has been made, up to this day. The shape into which I threw the question it may be well to state; because I am persuaded that out of that one idea, properly pursued, might be evolved the whole separate characteristics of the Christian and the Antique. Why is it, I asked, that the Christian idea of _sin_ is an idea utterly unknown to the Pagan mind? The Greeks and Romans had a clear conception of a moral ideal, as we have; but this they estimated by a reference to the will; and they called it virtue, and the antithesis they called vice. The _lacheté_ or relaxed energy of the will, by which it yielded to the seductions of sensual pleasure, that was vice; and the braced-up tone by which it resisted these seductions was virtue. But the idea of holiness, and the antithetic idea of sin, as a violation of this awful and unimaginable sanctity, was so utterly undeveloped in the Pagan mind, that no word exists in classical Greek or classical Latin which approaches either pole of this synthesis; neither the idea of _holiness_, nor of its correlate, _sin_, could be so expressed in Latin as at once to satisfy Cicero and a scientific Christian. Again (but this was some years after), I found Schiller and Goethe applauding the better taste of the ancients, in symbolizing the idea of death by a beautiful youth, with a torch inverted, &c., as compared with the Christian types of a skeleton and hourglasses, &c. And much surprised I was to hear Mr. Coleridge approving of this German sentiment. Yet, here again, I felt, the peculiar genius of Christianity was covertly at work moving upon a different road, and under opposite ideas, to a just result, in which the harsh and austere expression yet pointed to a dark reality, whilst the beautiful Greek adumbration was, in fact, a veil and a disguise. The corruptions and the other "dishonours" of the grave, and whatsoever composes the sting of death in the Christian view, is traced up to sin as its ultimate cause. Hence, besides the expression of Christian humility, in thus nakedly exhibiting the wrecks and ruins made by sin, there is also a latent profession indicated of Christian hope. For the Christian contemplates steadfastly, though with trembling awe, the lowest point of his descent; since, for him, that point, the last of his fall, is also the first of his re-ascent, and serves, besides, as an exponent of its infinity; the infinite depth becoming, in the rebound, a measure of the infinite re-ascent. Whereas, on the contrary, with the gloomy uncertainties of a Pagan on the question of his final restoration, and also (which must not be overlooked) with his utter perplexity as to the nature of his restoration, if any were by accident in reserve, whether in a condition tending downwards or upwards, it was the natural resource to consult the general feeling of anxiety and distrust, by throwing a thick curtain and a veil of beauty over the whole too painful subject. To place the horrors in high relief could here have answered no purpose but that of wanton cruelty; whereas, with the Christian hopes, the very saddest memorials of the havocks made by death are antagonist prefigurations of great victories in the rear.

These speculations, at that time, I pursued earnestly; and I then believed myself, as I yet do, to have ascertained the two great and opposite laws under which the Grecian and the English tragedy has each separately developed itself. Whether wrong or right in that belief, sure I am that those in Germany who have treated the case of Classical and Romantic are not entitled to credit for any discovery at all. The Schlegels, who were the hollowest of men, the windiest and wordiest (at least, Frederick was so), pointed to the distinction; barely indicated it; and that was already some service done, because a presumption arose that the antique and the modern literatures, having clearly some essential differences, might, perhaps, rest on foundations originally distinct, and obey different laws. And hence it occurred that many disputes, as about the unities, &c., might originate in a confusion of these laws. This checks the presumption of the shallow criticism, and points to deeper investigations. Beyond this, neither the German nor the French disputers on the subject have talked to any profitable purpose.

I have mentioned Paley as accidentally connected with my _début_ in literary conversation; and I have taken occasion to say how much I admired his style and its unstudied graces, how profoundly I despised his philosophy. I shall here say a word or two more on that subject. As respects his style, though secretly despising the opinion avowed by my tutor (which was, however, a natural opinion for a stiff lover of the artificial and the pompous), I would just as unwillingly be supposed to adopt the extravagant opinions, in the other extreme, of Dr. Parr and Mr. Coleridge. These two gentlemen, who privately hated Paley, and, perhaps, traduced him, have hung like bees over one particular paragraph in his Evidences, as though it were a flower transplanted from Hymettus. Dr. Parr pronounced it the finest sentence in the English language. It is a period (that is, a cluster of sentences) moderately well, but not _too_ well, constructed, as the German nurses are accustomed to say. Its felicity depends on a trick easily imitated--on a balance happily placed (namely, "_in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts and rest to their inquiries_)." As a _bravura_, or _tour de force_, in the dazzling fence of rhetoric, it is surpassed by many hundreds of passages which might be produced from rhetoricians; or, to confine myself to Paley's contemporaries, it is very far surpassed by a particular passage in Burke's letter upon the Duke of Bedford's base attack upon him in the House of Lords; which passage I shall elsewhere produce, because I happen to know, on the authority of Burke's executors, that Burke himself considered it the finest period which he had ever written. At present, I will only make one remark, viz. that it is always injudicious, in the highest degree, to cite for admiration that which is not a _representative_ specimen of the author's manner. In reading Lucian, I once stumbled on a passage of German pathos, and of German effect. Would it have been wise, or would it have been intellectually just, to quote this as the text of an eulogium on Lucian? What false criticism it would have suggested to every reader! what false anticipations! To quote a formal and periodic pile of sentences was to give the feeling that Paley was what the regular rhetorical artists designate as a periodic writer, when, in fact, no one conceivable character of style more pointedly contradicted the true description of his merits.

But, leaving the style of Paley, I must confess that I agree with Mr. Bulwer (_England and the English_) in thinking it shocking and almost damnatory to an English University, the great well-heads of creeds, moral and evangelical, that authors such in respect of doctrine as Paley and Locke should hold that high and influential station as teachers, or rather oracles of truth, which has been conceded to them. As to Locke, I, when a boy, had made a discovery of one blunder full of laughter and of fun, which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime, would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the _soi-disant_ detecter of flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous--_that_ is fatal; and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I shall expose it elsewhere; and, perhaps, one or two other exposures of the same kind will give an impetus to the descent of this falling philosophy. With respect to Paley, and the naked _prudentialism_ of his system, it is true that in a longish note Paley disclaims that consequence. But to this we may reply, with Cicero, _Non quæro quid neget Epicurus, sed quid congruenter neget_. Meantime, waiving all this as too notorious, and too frequently denounced, I wish to recur to this trite subject, by way of stating an objection made to the Paleyan morality in my seventeenth year, and which I have never since seen reason to withdraw. It is this:--I affirm that the whole work, from first to last, proceeds upon that sort of error which the logicians call _ignoratio elenchi_, that is, ignorance of the very question concerned--of the point at issue. For, mark, in the very vestibule of ethics, two questions arise--two different and disconnected questions, A and B; and Paley has answered the wrong one. Thinking that he was answering A, and meaning to answer A, he has, in fact, answered B. One question arises thus: Justice is a virtue; temperance is a virtue; and so forth. Now, what is the common principle which ranks these several species under the same genus? What, in the language of logicians, is the common differential principle which determines these various aspects of moral obligation to a common genus? Another question, and a more interesting question to men in general, is this,--What is the motive to virtue? By what impulse, law, or motive, am I impelled to be virtuous rather than vicious? Whence is the motive derived which should impel me to one line of conduct in preference to the other? This, which is a practical question, and, therefore, more interesting than the other, which is a pure question of speculation, was that which Paley believed himself to be answering. And his answer was,--that utility, a perception of the resulting benefit, was the true determining motive. Meantime, it was objected that often the most obvious results from a virtuous action were far otherwise than beneficial. Upon which, Paley, in the long note referred to above, distinguished thus: that, whereas actions have many results, some proximate, some remote, just as a stone thrown into the water produces many concentric circles, be it known that he, Dr. Paley, in what he says of utility, contemplates only the final result, the very outermost circle; inasmuch as he acknowledges a possibility that the first, second, third, including the penultimate circle, may all happen to clash with utility; but then, says he, the outermost circle of all will never fail to coincide with the absolute maximum of utility. Hence, in the first place, it appears that you cannot apply this test of utility in a practical sense; you cannot say, This is useful, _ergo_, it is virtuous; but, in the inverse order, you must say, This is virtuous, _ergo_, it is useful. You do not rely on its usefulness to satisfy yourself of its being virtuous; but, on the contrary, you rely on its virtuousness, previously ascertained, in order to satisfy yourself of its usefulness. And thus the whole practical value of this test disappears, though in that view it was first introduced; and a vicious circle arises in the argument; as you must have ascertained the virtuousness of an act, in order to apply the test of its being virtuous. But, _secondly_, it now comes out that Paley was answering a very different question from that which he supposed himself answering. Not any practical question as to the motive or impelling force in being virtuous, rather than vicious,--that is, to the _sanctions_ of virtue,--but a purely speculative question, as to the essence of virtue, or the common _vinculum_ amongst the several modes or species of virtue (justice, temperance, &c.)--this was the real question which he was answering. I have often remarked that the largest and most subtle source of error in philosophic speculations has been the confounding of the two great principles so much insisted on by the Leibnitzians, viz., the _ratio cognoscendi_ and the _ratio essendi_. Paley believed himself to be assigning--it was his full purpose to assign--the _ratio cognoscendi_; but, instead of that, unconsciously and surreptitiously, he has actually assigned the _ratio essendi_, and, after all, a false and imaginary _ratio essendi_.

APPENDED NOTE

As De Quincey's long and interesting Chapter on Oxford from 1803 to 1808 leaves the incidents of his own passage through the University rather hazy, the following condensation of particulars on the subject may not be unwelcome. They are partly from one of his own conversations in 1821 with Richard Woodhouse (the notes of which conversations are appended to Mr. Garnett's edition in 1885 of the _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_), partly from an article in the _Quarterly Review_ for July 1861 containing information supplied by Dr. Cotton of Worcester College, and partly from information collected by Mr. Page for his _Life of De Quincey_:--Admitted into Worcester College on the 17th of December 1803, he did for the first two years of his residence lead, as he tells us, a very solitary life, withdrawing himself from wine-parties, and frequenting chiefly the society of a German named Schwartzburg. Even then, however, he had the reputation with some in the college of being, though of shy and quaint ways, a man of uncommon genius and erudition; and, latterly, as this reputation spread in the college, and some inevitable appearances of his in college declamations and the like confirmed it, he became the object of more general attention, and was urged to go up for honours in taking his degree. He did attend the first examination for B.A. honours at Michaelmas in the year 1808, with the result that Dr. Goodenough of Christ Church, who was one of the examiners, is said to have told one of the Worcester College dons, "You have sent us to-day the cleverest man I ever met with; if his _vivâ voce_ examination to-morrow correspond with what he has done in writing, he will carry everything before him." De Quincey's own account to Mr. Woodhouse was that the examination was an oral one and in Latin; which agrees more with the possibility of such a report from Dr. Goodenough on the same day. De Quincey further adds that this examination was on a Saturday, and that the remaining examination, which was to follow on Monday, was to be in Greek. He had been looking forward to this examination with much interest, his Greek readings having been of wide range and in many directions out of the ordinary academic track; and his interest had been increased by the regulation that the answers to the questions were to be wholly or largely in the Greek tongue itself. The fact that this rule had been altered at the last moment had, however, disgusted him; and this, together with "his contempt for his examiners" and the thought that the examination would be of a kind that would leave his real resources untested, had such an effect upon him that, "when the time came, he was _non inventus_." Mr. Woodhouse's report from himself is that "on the Sunday morning he left Oxford"; the Worcester College tradition, which is equally precise as to the main fact that he "packed up his things and walked away from Oxford," makes the flight occur in the night following the first examination. Whatever other causes there may have been for the break-down, the opium-eating habit must have been chiefly responsible. That habit had been formed by De Quincey in 1804 in one of those visits of his to London which, with visits to other places, are to be understood as having varied the monotony of his Oxford residence. The habit had grown upon him in his solitude in his college rooms; and part of the college tradition respecting his break-down is that, having taken a large dose of the drug to stimulate him sufficiently for the first day's examination, he was wrecked by the reaction. He took no University degree; and, though his name remained on the college books to as late as 15th December 1810, his real connexion with Oxford ceased in 1808.--D. M.