philosophy, I have purposely omitted, though in strictness not to be
insulated or dislocated from the faithful exposition even of that
which I have given. It is the doctrine of Space and Time. These
profound themes, so confounding to the human understanding, are
treated by Kant under two aspects--1st, as Anchauungen, or
_Intuitions_ (so the German word is usually translated for want of a
better); 2ndly, as forms, _à priori_, of all our other intuitions.
Often have I laughed internally at the characteristic exposure of
Kant's style of thinking--that he, a man of so much worldly sagacity,
could think of offering, and of the German scholastic habits, that any
modern nation could think of accepting such cabalistical phrases, such
a true and very '_Ignotium per Ignotius_,' in part payment of an
explanatory account of Time and Space. Kant repeats these words--as a
charm before which all darkness flies; and he supposes continually the
case of a man denying his explanations or demanding proofs of them,
never once the sole imaginable case--viz. of all men demanding an
explanation of these explanations. Deny them! Combat them! How should
a man deny, why should he combat, what might, for anything to the
contrary appearing, contain a promissory note at two months after date
for 100 guineas? No; it will cost a little preliminary work before
_such_ explanations will much avail any scheme of philosophy, either
for the _pro_ or the _con_. And yet I do myself really profess to
understand the dark words; and a great service it would be to sound
philosophy amongst us, if this one word _anschauung_ were adequately
unfolded and naturalised (as naturalised it might be) in the English
philosophic dictionary, by some full Grecian equivalent. Strange that
no man acquainted with German philosophy, should yet have been struck
by the fact--or, being struck, should not have felt it important to
call public attention to the fact of our inevitable feebleness in a
branch of study for which as yet we want the indispensable words. Our
feebleness is at once argued by this want, and partly caused.
Meantime, as respects the Kantian way of viewing space, by much the
most important innovation which it makes upon the old doctrines
is--that it considers space as a _subjective_ not an _objective_
aliquid; that is, as having its whole available foundation lying
ultimately in ourselves, not in any external or alien tenure. This one
distinction, as applied to space, for ever secures (what nothing else
_can_ secure or explain) the cogency of geometrical evidence. Whatever
is true for any determinations of a space originally included in
ourselves, must be true for such determinations for ever, since they
cannot become objects of consciousness to us but in and by that very
mode of conceiving space, that very form of schematism which
originally presented us with these determinations of space, or any
whatever. In the uniformity of our own space-conceiving faculty, we
have a pledge of the absolute and _necessary_ uniformity (or internal
agreement among themselves) of all future or possible determinations
of space; because they could not otherwise become to us conceivable
forms of space, than by adapting themselves to the known conditions of
our conceiving faculty. Here we have the _necessity_ which is
indispensable to all geometrical demonstration: it is a necessity
founded in our human organ, which cannot admit or conceive a space,
unless as preconforming to these original forms or schematisms.
Whereas, on the contrary, if space were something _objective_, and
consequently being a separate existence, independent of a human organ,
then it is altogether impossible to find any intelligible source of
_obligation_ or cogency in the evidence--such as is indispensable to
the very nature of geometrical demonstration. Thus we will suppose
that a regular demonstration has gradually, from step to step
downwards, through a series of propositions--No. 8 resting upon 7,
that upon 5, 5 upon 3--at length reduced you to the elementary axiom,
that Two straight lines cannot enclose a space. Now, if space be
_subjective_ originally--that is to say, founded (as respects us and
our geometry) in ourselves--then it is impossible that two such lines
can enclose a space, because the possibility of anything whatever
relating to the determinations of space is exactly co-extensive with
(and exactly expressed by) our power to conceive it. Being thus able
to affirm its impossibility universally, we can build a demonstration
upon it. But, on the other hypothesis, of space being _objective_, it
is impossible to guess whence we are to draw our proof of the alleged
inaptitude in two straight lines for enclosing a space. The most we
could say is, that hitherto no instance has been found of an enclosed
space circumscribed by two straight lines. It would not do to allege
our human inability to conceive, or in imagination to draw, such a
circumscription. For, besides that such a mode of argument is exactly
the one supposed to have been rejected, it is liable to this
unanswerable objection, so long as space is assumed to have an
_objective_ existence, viz. that the human inability to conceive such
a possibility, only argues (what in fact is often found in other
cases) that the _objective_ existence of space--_i. e._ the existence
of space in itself, and in its absolute nature--is far larger than its
subjective existence--_i. e._ than its mode of existing _quoad_ some
particular subject. A being more limited than man might be so framed
as to be unable to conceive curve lines; but this subjective
inaptitude for those determinations of space would not affect the
objective reality of curves, or even their subjective reality for a
higher intelligence. Thus, on the hypothesis of an objective existence
for space, we should be thrown upon an ocean of possibilities, without
a test for saying what was--what was not possible. But, on the other
hypothesis, having always in the last resort what is _subjectively_
possible or impossible (_i. e._ what is conceivable or not by us, what
can or cannot be drawn or circumscribed by a human imagination), we
have the means of demonstration in our power, by having the ultimate
appeals in our power to a known uniform test--viz. a known human
faculty.
This is no trifling matter, and therefore no trifling advantage on the
side of Kant and his philosophy, to all who are acquainted with the
disagreeable controversies of late years among French geometricians of
the first rank, and sometimes among British ones, on the question of
mathematical evidence. Legendre and Professor Leslie took part in one
such a dispute; and the temper in which it was managed was worthy of
admiration, as contrasted with the angry controversies of elder days,
if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and
too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But think as we may of
the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to
witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The
whole aerial superstructure--the heaven-aspiring pyramid of
geometrical synthesis--all tottered under the palsying logic of
evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And
wherefore?--From the want of any philosophic account of space, to
which they might have made a common appeal, and which might have so
far discharged its debt to truth, as at least to reconcile its theory
with the great outstanding phenomena in the most absolute of sciences.
Geometry is the _science_ of space: therefore, in any _philosophy_ of
space, geometry is entitled to be peculiarly considered, and used as a
court of appeal. Geometry has these two further claims to
distinction--that, 1st, It is the most perfect of the sciences, so far
as it has gone; and, 2ndly, That it has gone the farthest. A
philosophy of space, which does not consider and does not reconcile to
its own doctrines the facts of geometry, which, in the two points of
beauty and of vast extent, is more like a work of nature than of man,
is, _primâ facie_, of no value. A philosophy of space _might_ be
false, which should harmonise with the facts of geometry--it _must_ be
false, if it contradict them. Of Kant's philosophy it is a capital
praise, that its very opening section--that section which treats the
question of space, not only quadrates with the facts of geometry, but
also, by the _subjective_ character which it attributes to space, is
the very first philosophic scheme which explains and accounts for the
cogency of geometrical evidence.
These are the two primary merits of the transcendental theory--1st,
Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its
doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical
evidence; 2ndly, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of
categories, the great _hiatus_ in all schemes of the human
understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to
the part which concerns the _practical_ reason (or will), is of more
questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend,
that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying
a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human
understanding--namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain
large and indispensable ideas--it would have claimed the gratitude of
all profound inquiries. To a reader still disposed to undervalue
Kant's service in this respect, I put one parting question--Wherefore
he values Locke? What has _he_ done, even if value is allowed in full
to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himself _that_? He gave a
_negative_ solution at the most. He told his reader that certain
disputed ideas were _not_ deduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other
hand, has given him at the least a _positive_ solution. He teaches
him, in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most
absolute sense on record, and the most entirely a single act--without
parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other
quarters--that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the
experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves
_previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible_:
he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but
are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions, or, forms of his
own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and
a charter of authority, to certain modes of _nexus_, without which the
sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand.
In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may
mention that in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when
visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that,
after five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from
it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same
confession to another friend of my own.
It is not usual for men to meet with their capital disappointments in
early life, at least not in youth. For, as to disappointments in love,
which are doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort, though
otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in this way made
impossible at a very early age, that no man can be in love to the
whole extent of his capacity, until he is in full possession of all
his faculties, and with the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect
love, such as is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappointment,
presumes also for its object not a mere girl, but woman, mature both
in person and character, and womanly dignity. This sort of
disappointment, in a degree which could carry its impression through
life, I cannot therefore suppose occurring earlier than at twenty-five
or twenty-seven. My disappointment--the profound shock with which I
was repelled from German philosophy, and which thenceforwards tinged
with cynical disgust towards man in certain aspects, a temper which,
originally, I will presume to consider the most benign that can ever
have been created--occurred when I was yet in my twentieth year. In a
poem under the title of _Saul_, written many years ago by Mr. Sotheby,
and perhaps now forgotten, having never been popular, there occurs a
passage of some pathos, in which Saul is described as keeping amongst
the splendid equipments of a royal wardrobe, that particular pastoral
habit which he had worn in his days of earliest manhood, whilst yet
humble and undistinguished by honour, but also yet innocent and happy.
There, also, with the same care, he preserved his shepherd's crook,
which, in hands of youthful vigour, had been connected with
remembrances of heroic prowess. These memorials, in after times of
trouble or perplexity, when the burthen of royalty, its cares, or its
feverish temptations, pointed his thoughts backwards, for a moment's
relief, to scenes of pastoral gaiety and peace, the heart-wearied
prince would sometimes draw from their repository, and in solitude
would apostrophise them separately, or commune with the bitter-sweet
remembrances which they recalled. In something of the same spirit--but
with a hatred to the German philosopher such as men are represented as
feeling towards the gloomy enchanter, Zamiel or whomsoever, by whose
hateful seductions they have been placed within a circle of malign
influences--did I at times revert to Kant: though for me his power had
been of the very opposite kind; not an enchanter's, but the power of a
disenchanter--and a disenchanter the most profound. As often as I
looked into his works, I exclaimed in my heart, with the widowed queen
of Carthage, using her words in an altered application--
'Quæsivit lucem--_ingemuitque repertâ_.'
Had the transcendental philosophy corresponded to my expectations,
and had it left important openings for further pursuit, my purpose
then was, to have retired, after a few years spent in Oxford, to the
woods of Lower Canada. I had even marked out the situation for a
cottage and a considerable library, about seventeen miles from Quebec.
I planned nothing so ambitious as a scheme of _Pantisocracy_. My
object was simply profound solitude, such as cannot now be had in any
part of Great Britain--with two accessary advantages, also peculiar to
countries situated in the circumstances and under the climate of
Canada: viz. the exalting presence in an under-consciousness of
forests endless and silent, the everlasting sense of living amongst
forms so ennobling and impressive, together with the pleasure attached
to natural agencies, such as frost, more powerfully manifested than in
English latitudes, and for a much longer period. I hope there is
nothing fanciful in all this. It is certain that, in England, and in
all moderate climates, we are too slightly reminded of nature or the
focus of nature. Great heats, or great colds (and in Canada there are
both), or great hurricanes, as in the West Indian latitudes, recall us
continually to the sense of a powerful presence, investing our paths
on every side; whereas, in England, it is possible to forget that we
live amongst greater agencies than those of men and human
institutions. Man, in fact, 'too much man,' as Timon complained most
reasonably in Athens, was then, and is now, our greatest grievance in
England. Man is a weed everywhere too rank. A strange place must that
be with us, from which the sight of a hundred men is not before us, or
the sound of a thousand about us.
Nevertheless, being in this hotbed of man inevitably for some years,
no sooner had I dismissed my German philosophy than I relaxed a little
that spirit of German abstraction which it had prompted; and, though
never mixing freely with society, I began to look a little abroad. It
may interest the reader, more than anything else which I can record of
this period, to recall what I saw within the ten first years of the
century, that was at all noticeable or worthy of remembrance amongst
the literati, the philosophers, or the poets of the time. For, though
I am not in my academic period from 1804 to 1808, my knowledge of
literary men--or men distinguished in some way or other, either by
their opinions, their accomplishments, or their position and the
accidents of their lives--began from the first year of the century,
or, more accurately, from the year 1800; which, with some difficulty
and demurs, and with some arguments from the Laureate Pye, the world
was at length persuaded to consider the last year of the eighteenth
century.[23]
[Footnote 23: Those who look back to the newspapers of 1799 and 1800,
will see that considerable discussion went on at that time upon the
question, whether the year 1800 was entitled to open the 19th century,
or to close the 18th. Mr. Laureate Pye wrote a poem, with a long and
argumentative preface on the point.]
MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS.
(_May, 1822._)
In revolutionary times, as when a civil war prevails in a country, men
are much worse, as moral beings, than in quiet and untroubled states
of peace. So much is matter of history. The English, under Charles
II., after twenty years' agitation and civil tumults; the Romans after
Sylla and Marius, and the still more bloody proscriptions of the
Triumvirates; the French, after the Wars of the League and the storms
of the Revolution--were much changed for the worse, and exhibited
strange relaxations of the moral principle. But why? What is the
philosophy of the case? Some will think it sufficiently explained by
the necessity of witnessing so much bloodshed--the hearths and the
very graves of their fathers polluted by the slaughter of their
countrymen--the _acharnement_ which characterises civil contests (as
always the quarrels of friends are the fiercest)--and the license of
wrong which is bred by war and the majesties of armies. Doubtless this
is part of the explanation. But is this all? Mr. Coleridge has
referred to this subject in _The friend_; but, to the best of my
remembrance, only noticing it as a fact. Fichte, the celebrated German
philosopher, has given us his view of it (_Idea of War_); and it is
so ingenious, that it deserves mention. It is this--'Times of
revolution force men's minds inwards: hence they are led amongst other
things to meditate on morals with reference to their own conduct. But
to subtilise too much upon this subject must always be ruinous to
morality, with all understandings that are not very powerful, _i. e._
with the majority, because it terminates naturally in a body of maxims
a specious and covert self-interest. Whereas, when men meditate less,
they are apt to act more from natural feeling, in which the natural
goodness of the heart often interferes to neutralise or even to
overbalance its errors.'
PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS.[24]
(_April, 1823._)
With a total disbelief in all the vulgar legends of supernatural
agency, and _that_ upon firmer principles than I fear most people
could assign for their incredulity, I must yet believe that the 'soul
of the world' has in some instances sent forth mysterious types of the
cardinal events, in the great historic drama of our planet. One has
been noticed by a German author, and it is placed beyond the limits of
any rational scepticism; I mean the coincidence between the augury
derived from the flight of the twelve vultures as types of the
duration of the Roman empire, _i. e._ Western Empire, for twelve
centuries, and the actual event. This augury we know to have been
recorded many centuries before its consummation; so that no juggling
or collusion between the prophets and the witnesses to the final event
can be suspected. Some others might be added. At present I shall
notice a coincidence from our own history, which, though not so
important as to come within the class of prefigurations I have been
alluding to, is yet curious enough to deserve mention. The oak of
Boscobel and its history are matter of household knowledge. It is not
equally well known, that in a medal, struck to commemorate the
installation (about 1636) of Charles II., then Prince of Wales, as a
Knight of the Garter, amongst the decorations was introduced an
oak-tree with the legend--'Seris factura nepotibus umbram.'
[Footnote 24: This is only signed Z in _The London Magazine_, but is
clearly labelled 'DE QUINCEY' in ARCHDEACON HESSEY'S marked copy.--H.]
MEASURE OF VALUE.[25]
(_December, 1823._)
To the reader.--This article was written and printed before the author
heard of the lamented death of Mr. Ricardo.
It is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to whom Political
Economy is so much indebted in one chapter (viz. the chapter of
Population), should in every other chapter have stumbled at every
step. On a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His failures and
his errors have arisen in all cases from the illogical structure of
his understanding; his success was in a path which required no logic.
What is the brief abstract of his success? It is this: _he took an
obvious and familiar truth, which until his time had been a barren
truism, and showed that it teemed with consequences_. Out of this
position--_That in the ground which limited human food lay the ground
which limited human increase_--united with this other position--_That
there is a perpetual nisus in the principle of population to pass
that limit_, he unfolded a body of most important corollaries. I have
remarked in another article on this subject--how entirely these
corollaries had escaped all Mr. Malthus's[26] predecessors in the same
track. Perhaps the most striking instance of this, which I could have
alleged, is that of the celebrated French work--_L'Ami des Hommes, ou
Traité de la Population_ (written about the middle of the last
century), which sets out deliberately from this principle, expressed
almost in the very words of Mr. Malthus,--'_Que la mésure de la
Subsistance est celle de la Population_;'--beats the bushes in every
direction about it; and yet (with the exception of one corollary on
the supposed depopulating tendency of war and famine) deduces from it
none but erroneous and Anti-Malthusian doctrines. That from a truth
apparently so barren any corollaries were deducible--was reserved for
Mr. Malthus to show. _As_ corollaries, it may be supposed that they
imply a logical act of the understanding. In some small degree, no
doubt; but no more than necessarily accompanies every exercise of
reason. Though inferences, they are not remote inferences, but
immediate and proximate; and not dependent upon each other, but
collateral. Not logic but a judicious choice of his ground placed Mr.
Malthus at once in a station from which he commanded the whole truth
at a glance--with a lucky dispensation from all necessity of
continuous logical processes. But such a dispensation is a privilege
indulged to few other parts of Political Economy, and least of all to
that which is the foundation of all Political Economy, viz. the
doctrine of value. Having therefore repeatedly chosen to tamper with
this difficult subject, Mr. Malthus has just made so many exposures of
his intellectual infirmities--which, but for this volunteer display,
we might never have known. Of all the men of talents, whose writings I
have read up to this hour, Mr. Malthus has the most perplexed
understanding. He is not only confused himself, but is the cause that
confusion is in other men. Logical perplexity is shockingly
contagious: and he, who takes Mr. Malthus for his guide through any
tangled question, ought to be able to box the compass very well; or
before he has read ten pages he will find himself (as the Westmorland
guides express it) 'maffled,'--and disposed to sit down and fall a
crying with his guide at the sad bewilderment into which they have
both strayed. It tends much to heighten the sense of Mr. Malthus's
helplessness in this particular point--that of late years he has given
himself the air too much of teasing Mr. Ricardo, one of the 'ugliest
customers' in point of logic that ever entered the ring. Mr. Ricardo
is a most 'dangerous' man; and Mr. Malthus would do well not to meddle
with so 'vicious' a subject, whose arm (like Neate's) gives a blow
like the kick of a horse. He has hitherto contented himself very
good-naturedly with gently laying Mr. Malthus on his back; but, if he
should once turn round with a serious determination to 'take the
conceit' out of him, Mr. Malthus would assuredly be 'put into
chancery,' and suffer a 'punishment' that must distress his
friends.--Amongst those whom Mr. Malthus has perplexed by his logic, I
am not one: in matter of logic, I hold myself impeccable; and, to say
nothing of my sober days, I defy the devil and all the powers of
darkness to get any advantage over me, even on those days when I am
drunk, in relation to 'Barbara, Celarent, Darii, or Ferio.'
[Footnote 25: MR. JOHN STUART MILL in his _Principles of Political
Economy,_ Book III chaps, i. and ii., makes some interesting and
appreciative remarks on De Quincey's settlement of 'the phraseology of
value;' also, concerning his illustrations of 'demand and supply, in
their relation to value.']
[Footnote 26: In a slight article on Mr. Malthus, lately published, I
omitted to take any notice of the recent controversy between this
gentleman--Mr. Godwin--and Mr. Booth; my reason for which was--that I
have not yet found time to read it. But, if Mr. Lowe has rightly
represented this principle of Mr. Booth's argument in his late work on
the Statistics of England, it is a most erroneous one: for Mr. Booth
is there described as alleging against Mr. Malthus that, in his view
of the tendencies of the principle of population, he has relied too
much on the case of the United States--which Mr. Booth will have to be
an extreme case, and not according to the general rule. But of what
consequence is this to Mr. Malthus? And how is he interested in
relying on the case of America rather than that of the oldest European
country? Because he assumes a perpetual nisus in the principle of
human increase to pass a certain limit, he does not therefore hold
that this limit ever _is_ passed either in the new countries or in old
(or only for a moment, and inevitably to be thrown back within it).
Let this limit be placed where it may, it can no more be passed in
America than in Europe; and America is not at all more favourable to
Mr. Malthus's theory than Europe. Births, it must be remembered, are
more in excess in Europe than in America: though they do not make so
much positive addition to the population.]