The Works of Thomas de Quincey. Riverside edition

Front matter

THE WORKS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY. RIVERSIDE EDITION. VOLUME ESSAYS ON CHRISTIANITY, PAGANISM, AND SUPERSTITION. BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. BOSTON : H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. QTambribgc : ®r)c Kioersibe Press. 1877. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by Ticknop. and Fields, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Copyright, 1877, By HURD AND HOUGHTON. The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company, CONTENTS. PAGE Ox Christianity as as Organ of Political Movement . 1 The Essenes 52 Secret Societies 138 Supplementary Note on the Essenes .... 199 Judas Iscariot 223 The True Relations of the Bible to merely Human- Science ... 262 On the Supposed Scriptural Expression for Eternity 271 On Hume's Argument Against Miracles .... 291 Protestantism 317 Secession from the Church of Scotland .... 407 The Pagan Oracles 465 Modern Superstition 533 Sortilege on Behalf of the Glasgow Athenæum . 589 Notes ESSAYS ON CHRISTIANITY, PAGANISM, AND SUPERSTITION.

ON CHRISTIANITY, AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT. Fokces, which are illimitable in their compass of effect, are often, for the same reason, obscure and un traceable in the steps of their movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can arrest its eternal increments ? The hour-hand of a watch. who can detect the separate fluxions of its advance ? Judging -by the past, and the change which is registered between that and the present, we know that it must be awake ; judging by the immediate appearances, we should say that it was always asleep. Gravitation, again, that works without holiday forever, and searches every corner of the universe, what intellect can follow it to its fountains ? And yet, shyer than gravitation, less to be counted than the fluxions of sun-dials, stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the footsteps of Christianity amongst the political workings of man.

Nothing, that the heart of man values, is so secret ; nothing is so potent. It is because Christianity works so secretly, that it works so potently ; it is because Christianity Durrows and hides itself, that it towers above the clouds; and hence partly it is that its working comes to be misap prehended, or even lost out of sight. It is dark to eyes touched with the films of human frailty : but it is " dark with excessive bright."*" Hence it has happened sometimes that minds of the highest order have entered into enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned it as a curse to man, and have fought against it even upon Christian impulses (impulses of benignity that could not have had a birth except in Christianity). All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which the social action of Christianity involves itself to the eye of a contemporary.

Part II

* We have sketched rapidly, in the first part of our essay, some outline of a theory with regard to the Essenes, confining ourselves to such hints as are sug gested by the accounts of this sect in Josephus. And we presume that most readers will go along with us so far as to acknowledge some shock, some pause given [* Part II. is omitted in De Quincey's latest revision.] to that blind acquiescence in the Bible statement which had hitherto satisfied them. By the Bible statement we mean, of course, nothing which any inspired part of the Bible tells us — on the contrary, one capital reason for rejecting the old notions is, the total silence of the Bible ; but we mean that little explanatory note on the Essenes, wliich our Bible translators under Jamas I. have thought fit to adopt, and in reality to adopt from Josephus, with reliance on his authority which closer study would have shown to be unwar ranted.

We do not wonder that Josephus has been misappreciated by Christian readers. It is painful to read any author in a spirit of suspicion ; most of all, that author to whom we must often look as our only guide. Upon Josephus we are compelled to rely for the most affecting section of ancient history. Merely as a scene of human passion, the main portion of his Wars transcends, in its theme, all other histories But considered also as the agony of a mother church, out of whose ashes arose, like a phœnix, that filial faith ' which passeth all understanding,' the last conflict of Jerusalem and her glorious temple exacts from the devotional conscience as much interest as would other wise be yielded by our human sympathies. For the circumstances of this struggle: we must look to Jose phus : him or none we must accept for witness.

And in such a case, how painful to suppose a hostile heart in every word of his deposition ! Who could bear to take the account of a dear friend's last hours and fare well words from one who confessedly hated him? — one word melting us to tears, and the next rousing us to the duty of j ealousy and distrust ! Hence we do not wonder at the pious fraud which interpolated the wellknown passage about our Saviour. Let us read any author in those circumstances of time, place, or imme diate succession to the cardinal events of our own religion, and we shall find it a mere postulate of the heart, a mere necessity of human feeling, that we should think of him as a Christian ; or, if not absolutely that, as every way disposed to be a Christian, and falling short of that perfect light only by such clouds as his hurried life or his personal conflicts might interpose.

We do not blame, far from it — we admire those vvho find it necessary (even at the cost of a little self-delusion) to place themselves in a state of charity with an author treating such subjects, and in whose company they were to travel through some thousands of pages. We also find it painful to read an author and to loathe him. We, too, would be glad to suppose, as a possibility about Josephus, what many adopt as a certainty. But we know too much. Unfortunately, we have read Josephus with too scrutinizing (and, what is more, with too combining) an eye. We know him to be an unprincipled man, and an Ignoble man ; one whose adhesion to Christianity wrould have done no honor to our faith — one vvho most assuredly was not a Christian — one who was not even in any tolera ble sense a Jew — one who was an enemy to our faith, a traitor to his own : as an enemy, vicious and ignorant ; as a traitor, steeped to the lips in superfluous baseness.

The vigilance with which we have read Josephus, lias (amongst many other hints) suggested some with regard to the Essenes : and to these we shall now make our own readers a party ; after stepping to say, that thus sar, so far as we have gone already, we count on their assent to our theory, were it only from those considerations : First, the exceeding improbability that a known philosophic sect amongst the Jews, chiefly distinguished from the other two by its moral aspects, could have lurked unknown to the Evangelists ; Sec ondly, the exceeding improbability that such a sect, laying the chief burden of its scrupulosity in the matter of oaths, should have bound its members by ' tremendous ' oaths of secrecy in a case where there was nothing to conceal ; Thirdly, the staring contradictori ness between such an avowal on the part of Josephus, and his deliberate revelation of what he fancied to be their creed.

The objection is too inevitable : either you have taken the oaths or you have not. You have 1 Then by your own showing you are a perjured traitor. You have not ? Then you confess yourself to speak from no personal knowledge. How can you know anything of their secret doctrines ? The seal is wanting to the record. However, it is possible that some people will evade this last dilemma, by suggesting — that Josephus wrote for Roman readers — for strangers — and for strangers after any of his countrymen who might be interested in the secret, had perished ; if not personally perished, at least as a body politic. The last vestiges of the theo retical government had foundered with Jerusalem ; and it might be thought by a better man than Josephus, that all obligations of secrecy had perished in the general wreck.

We need not dispute that point. There is enough in what remains. The positive points of contact be tween the supposed Essenes and the Christians are too many to be got over. But upon these we will not at present insist. In this place we confine ourselves to the two points : 1. Of the universal silence amongst Christian writers, who, of all parties, would have felt it most essential to notice the Essenes, had there ex isted such a sect antecedently to Christ : and, 2. Of the absurdity involved in exacting an inexorable con cealment from those who had nothing to reveal. But then recollect, reader, precisely the Christian truths which stood behind the exoteric doctrines of the Essenes, were the truths hidden from Josephus. Reason enough there was for concealment, if the Essenes were Christians ; and reason more than was ever known to Josephus.

But then, this reason for concealment in the Essenes could be known only to him who was aware that they had something to conceal. He who saw only the masque, supposing it to be the true face, ought to have regarded the mystifying arrangements as perfect mummery. He that saw the countenance behind the masque — a countenance sweet as Paradise, but fearful as the grave at that particular time in Jerusalem, would never ask again for the motives to this concealment. Those he would apprehend in a moment. But as to Josephus, who never had looked behind the masque, the order for concealment, the adjurations to concealment, the vows of concealment, the adamantine walls of separation between the differ ent orders of the fraternity, in order to ensure concealment, ought to have been, must have been regarded by him, as the very hyperbole of childishness.

Partly because Josephus was in this state of dark ness, partly from personal causes, has he failed to clear up the secret history of Judea, in her final, that is, her Epichristian generation. The evidences of his having failed are two, — 1st, the absolute fact, as existing iu his works ; which present us with a mere anarchy of incidents, as regards the politics of his own times, under no law of cohesion whatsoever, or of intelligible derivation ; 2dly, the a priori necessity that he should fail ; a necessity laid in the very situation of Josephus — as a man of servile temper placed amongst elements that required a Maccabee, and as a man without principle, who could not act so that his actions would bear to be reported without disguise, and as one in whom no confidence was likely to be lodged by the managers of great interests, or the depositories of great secrets.

This view of things summons us to pause, and to turn aside from our general inquiry into a special one as to Josephus. Hitherto we have derived our arguments on the Essenes from Josephus, as a willing wit ness — a volunteer even. But now we are going to extort our arguments ; to torture him, to put him on the rack, to force him into confession ; and upon points which he has done his best to darken, by throwing dust in the eyes of us all. Why ? — because hand-in-hand with the truth must go the exposure of himself. Jose phus stands right in the very doorway of the light, purposely obscuring it. A glare comes round by side snatches ; oblique rays, stray gleams, from the truth which he so anxiously screens. But before the real state of things can be guessed at, it is necessary to destroy this man's character.

Now, let us try to appreciate the exact position and reasonable credibility of Josephus, as he stands at present, midway between us a distant posterity, and his own countrymen of his own times, sole interpreter, sole surviving reporter, having all things his own way, nobody to contradict him, nobody to taint his evidence with suspicion. His case is most remarkable ; and yet, though remarkable, is not so rare but that many times it must have occurred in private (sometimes in public) life. It is the case of a solitary individual surviving out of a multitude embarked in a desperate enterprise — some playing one part, (a part, suppose, sublime and heroic,) some playing another, (base, treacherous, fiendish.) Suddenly a great convulsion involves all in one common ruin, this man only excepted. He now finds himself with a carte blanche before him, on which he may inscribe whatever romance in behalf of himself he thinks proper.

The whole field of action is open to him — the whole field of motives. He may take what side he will. And be assured that, what ever part in the play he assumes, he will give himself the best of characters. For courage you will find him a Maccabee. His too tender heart interfered, or he could have signalized his valor even more emphat ically. And, descending to such base things as treasures of money, jewels, land, &c, the chief part of what had been captured, was of course (strictly speaking) his own property. What impudent false hood, indeed, may such a man not bring forward, when there is nobody to confront him ? But was there nobody ? Reader, absolutely nobody. Prisoners captured with himself at Jotopata there were none — not a man. That fact, indeed — the inexorable fact, that he only endured to surrender — that one fact, taken with the commentary which we could furnish as to the circumstances of the case, and the Jewish casuistry under those circumstances, is one of the many damning features of his tale.

But was there nobody, amongst the ninety thousand prisoners taken at Jerusalem, who could have spoken to parts cf this man's public life : Doubtless there were ; but to what purpose for people in their situation to come forward ? One and all, positively without a solitary exception, they were themselves captives, slaves con demned, despairing. Ten thousand being selected for the butcheries of the Syrian amphitheatres, the rest were liable to some punishment equally terrific ; multitudes were perishing of hunger ; under the mildest award, they were sure of being sentenced to the stone quarries of Egypt. Wherefore, in this extremity of personal misery and of desperate prospects, should any man find himself at leisure for a vengeance on one happier countryman which could bring no profit to the rest ?

Still, in a case so questionable as that of Josephus, it is possible enough that Titus would have sought some further light amongst the prisoners under any ordinary circumstances. In his heart, the noble Roman must have distrusted Josephus and his vain glorious account of himself. There were circumstances outstanding, many and strong, that must have pointed his suspicions in that direction ; and the very con versation of a villain is sure to entangle him in con tradictions. But it was now too late to move upon that inquest. Josephus himself acknowledges, that Vespasian was shrewd enough from the first to suspect him for the sycophantish knave that he was. But that time had gone by. And, in the interval, Josephus had used his opportunities skilfully ; he had performed that particular service for the Flavian family, which was the one desideratum they sought for and yearned for.

By his pretended dreams, Josephus had put that seal of heavenly ratification to the ambitious projects of Vespasian, which only was wanting for the satisfaction of his soldiers. The service was critical. What Titus said to his father is known : — This man, be he what he may, has done a service to us. It is not for men of rank like us to haggle and chaffer about rewards. Having received a favor, we must make the reward princely ; not what he deserves to receive, but what is becoming for us to grant. On this consideration these great men acted. Sensible that, not having hanged Josephus at first, it was now become their duty to reward him, they did not do the thing by halves. Not content with releasing him from his chains, they sent an officer to cut his chains to pieces — that being a symbolic act by which the Romans abolished the very memory and legal record that ever a man had been in confinement.

The fact is, that amongst the Roman public virtues in that age, was an intense fidelity to engagements ; and where they had even tacitly per mitted a man to form hopes, they fulfilled them beyond the letter. But what Titus said to his staff, though naturally not put on record by Josephus, was very probably this : — ' Gentlemen, I see you look upon this Jew as a poltroon, and perhaps worse. Well, possibly we don't much differ upon that point. But it has become necessary to the public service that this man should be reinstated in credit. He will now, perhaps, turn over a new leaf. If he does not, kick him to Hades. But, meantime, give tho man a trial.' Such, there can be little doubt, was the opinion of Cæsar about this man. But now it remains to give our own, with the reasons on which it rests.

I. — First of all — which we bring merely as a proof of his habitual mendacity — in one of those tongue doughty orations, which he represents himself as having addressed to the men of Jerusalem, they standing on the walls patiently, with paving-stones in their hands, to hear a renegade abuse them by the hour, [such is his lying legend,] Josephus roundly asserts that Abraham, the patriarch of their nation, had an army of three hundred and sixty thousand troops, that is, somewhere about seventy-five legions — an establishment beyond what the first Cæsars had found requisite for mastering the Mediterranean sea vvith all the nations that belted it — that is, a ring fence of five thousand miles by seven hundred on an average. Now, this is in the style of the Baron Munchausen. But it is worthy of a special notice, for two illustrations which it offers of this renegade's propensities.

One is the abject homage vvith which he courted the Roman notice. Of this lie, as of all his lies, the primary purpose is, to fix the gaze and to court the admiration of the Romans. Judea, Jerusalem — these were objects never in his thoughts ; it was Rome, the haven of his apostasy, on which his anxieties settled. Now, it is a judgment upon the man who carried these purposes in his heart — it is a judicial retribution — that precisely this very lie, shaped and pointed to conciliate the Roman taste for martial splendor, was probably the very ground of that disgust which seems to have alienated Tacitus from his works. Apparently Josephus should have been the foremost authority with this historian for Jewish affairs. But enough remains to show that he was not ; and it is clear that the confidence of so sceptical a writer must have been shaken from the very first by so extravagant a tale.

Abraham, a mere stranger and colonist in Syria, whose descendants in the third generation mustered only seventy persons in emigrating to Egypt, is here placed at the head of a force greater than great empires had commanded or had needed. And from what resources raised ? From a little section of Syria, which (supposing it even the personal domain of Abraham) could not bo equal to Wales. And for what objects ? To face what enemies ? A handful of robbers that might congregate in the desert. Such insufferable fairy tales must have vitiated the credit even of his rational statements ; and it is thus pleasant to see the apostate missing one reward which he courted, purely through his own eagerness to buy it at the price of truth. But a second feature which this story betrays in the mind of Josephus, is the thorough defect of Hebrew sublimity and scriptural simplicity which mark his entire writing.

How much more impressive is the picture of Abraham, as the father of the faithful, the selected servant and feudatory of God, sitting in the wilderness, majestically reposing at the door of his tent, surrounded by a little camp of servants and kinsmen, a few score of camels and a few herds of cattle, than in the melodramatic attitude of a general, belted and plumed, with a glittering staff of officers at his orders ? But the mind of Josephus, always irreligious, was now violently warped into a poor imitation of Roman models. He absolutely talks of ' liberty ' and ' glory,' as the moving impulses of Hebrew saints ; and does his best to translate the Maccabees, and many an elder soldier of the Jewish faith, into poor theatrical mimics of Spartans and Thebans. This depravity of taste, and ab, aration of his national characteristics, must not be overlooked in estimating the value whether of his opinions or his statements.

We have evidence superabundant to these two features in the character of Josephus — that he would distort everything in order to meet the Roman taste, and that he had originally no sympathy whatsoever with the peculiar grandeur of his own country. II. — It is a remarkable fact, that Josephus never speaks of Jerusalem and those who conducted its resistance, but in words of abhorrence and of loathing that amounts to frenzy. Now in what point did they differ from himself? Change the name Judea to Galilee, and the name Jerusalem to Jotopata, and their case was his ; and the single difference was — that the men, whom he reviles as often as he mentions them, had persevered to martyrdom, whilst he — he only — had snatched at life under any condition of ignominy. But precisely in that difference lay the ground of his hatred.

He could not forgive those whose glorious resistance (glorious, were it even in a mistaken cause) embla zoned and threw into relief his own apostasy. This we cannot dwell on ; but we revert to the question — What had the people of Jerusalem done, which Jose phus had not attempted to do ? III. — Whiston, another Caliban worshipping another Trinculo, finds out a divinity in Josephus, because, on being brought prisoner to Vespasian, he pretended to have seen in a dream that the Roman general would be raised to the purple. Now, 1. When we see Cyrus lurking in the prophecies of Isaiah, and Alexander in those of Daniel, we appre hend a reasonableness in thus causing the spirit of prophecy to settle upon those who vvere destined to move in the great cardinal revolutions of tliis earth. But why, amongst all the Cæsars, must Vespasian, in particular, be the subject of a prophecy, and a pro phecy the most thrilling, from the mysterious circum stances which surrounded it, and from the silence with which it stole into the mouths of all nations ?

The reigns of all the three Flavian Cæsars, Vespasian, with his sons Titus and Domitian, were memorable for nothing : with the sole exception of the great revolu tion in Judea, none of them were marked by any great event ; and all the three reigns combined filled no im pcrtant space of time. 2. If Vespasian, for any incomprehensible reason, were thought worthy of being heralded by a prophecy, what logic was there in connecting him with Syria ? That which raised him to the purple, that which suggested him to men's minds, was his military eminence, and this was obtained in Britain. 3. If the mere local situations from which any unin teresting emperor happened to step on to the throne, merited this special glorification from prophecy, why was not many another region, town, or village, illustrated in the same way ?

That Thracian hamlet, from which the Emperor Maximin arose, had been pointed out to notice before the event as a place likely to be distinguished by some great event. And yet, because this prediction had merely a personal reference, and no relation at all to any great human interest, it was treated with little respect, and never crept into a general circulation. So of this prophecy with respect to one who should rise out of the East, and should ultimately stretch his sceptre over the whole world, (rerum potiretur,) if Josephus is allowed to ruin it by his syco phancy, instantly, from the rank of a Hebrew prophecy — a vision seen by ' the man whose eyes God had opened ' — it sinks to the level of a vagrant gipsy's gossip. What ! shall Rome combine with Jerusalem ? — for we find this same mysterious prediction almost verbally the same in Suetonius and in Tacitus, no less than in the Jewish prophets.

Shall it stretch not only from the east to the west in point of space, but through the best part of a thousand years in point of time, all for the sake of preparing one clay's adulatory nuzzur, by which a trembling Jew may make his propitiation to an intriguing lieutenant of Cæsar ? And how came it that Whiston (who, to do him justice, was too pious to have abetted an infidel trick, had his silliness suffered him to have seen through it) failed to perceive this consequence ? If the prophecy before us belong to Vespasian, then does it not belong to Christ. And in that case, the worst error of the Herodian Jews, who made the Messiah prophecies terminate in Herod, is ratified by Christians ; for between Herod and Vespa sian the difference is none at all, as regards any interest of religion. Can human patience endure the spectacle of a religious man, for perfect folly, combining in their very worst efforts vvith those whom it was the object of his life to oppose ? 4.

But finally, once for all, to cut sharp off by the roots this corruption of a sublime prophecy, and to re enthrone it in its ancient sanctity, it was not in the ' Orient,' (which both technically meant Syria in that particular age, and is acknowledged to mean it here by all parties,) that Vespasian obtained the purple. The oracle, if it is to be translated from a Christian to a Pagan oracle, ought at least to speak the truth. Now, it happens not to have been Syria in which Vespasian was saluted emperor by the legions, but Alexandria ; a city which in that age, was in no sense either in Syria or in Egypt. So that the great prophecy, if it is once suffered to be desecrated by Josephus, fails even of a literal fulfilment. IV. — Meantime, all this is a matter of personal false hood in a case of trying personal interest.

Even under such a temptation, it is true that a man of generosity, to say nothing of principle, would not have been capable of founding his own defence upon the defamation of his nobler compatriots. But in fact it is ever thus : he, who has sunk deepest in treason, is generally possessed by a double measure of rancor against the loyal and the faithful. What follows, how ever, has respect — not to truth personal, truth of fact, truth momentary — but to truth absolute, truth doc trinal, truth eternal. Let us preface what we are going to say, by directing the reader's attention to this fact : how easy it is to observe any positive feature in a man's writings or conversation — how rare to observe the negative features ; the presence of this or that characteristic is noticed in an hour, the absence shall often escape notice for years.

That a friend, for instance, talks habitually on this or that literature, we know as familiarly as our own constitutional tastes ; that he does not talk of any given literature, (the Greek suppose,) maj fail to strike us through a whole life, until somebody happens to point our attention in that direc tion, and then perhaps we notice it in every hour of our intercourse. This only can excuse the various editors, commentators, and translators of Josephus, for having overlooked one capital omission in this author ; it is this — never in one instance does Josephus allude to the great prophetic doctrine of a Messiah. To suppose him ignorant of this doctrine is impossible ; it was so mixed up with the typical part of the Jewish religion, so involved in the ceremonies of Judaism, even waiving all the Jewish writers, that no Jew what ever, much less a master in Israel, a Pharisee, a doctor of the law, a priest, all which Josephus proclaims himself, could fail to know of such a doctrine, even if he failed to understand it, or failed to appreciate its importance.

Why, then, has Josephus suppressed it ? For this reason : the doctrine offers a dilemma — a choice be tween two interpretations — one being purely spiritual, one purely political. The first was offensive and unintelligible (as was everything else in his native religion beyond the merely ceremonial) to his own worldly heart ; the other would have been offensive to the Romans. The mysterious idea of a Redeemer, of a Deliverer, if it were taken in a vast spiritual sense, was a music like the fabled Arabian voices in the desert — utterly inaudible when the heart is deaf, and the sympathies untuned. The fleshly mind of Josephus everywhere shows its incapacity for any truths, but those of sense. On the other hand, the idea of a political deliverer — that was comprehensible enough ; but unfortunately, it was too comprehensible.