Томас Де Квинси - Autobiographic Sketches

1 . ESSENISM—The essay on this, where mentioned at all in print, has been mentioned as dealing with a question of pure speculative curiosity: so little suspicion is abroad of that real question which lies below. Essenism means simply this—Christianity before Christ, and consequently without Christ. If, therefore, Essenism could make good its pretensions, there at one blow would be an end of Christianity, which in that case is not only superseded as an idle repetition of a religious system already published, but also as a criminal plagiarism. Nor can the wit of man evade that conclusion. But even that is not the worst. When we contemplate the total orb of Christianity, we see it divide into two hemispheres: first, an ethical system, differing centrally from any previously made known to man; secondly, a mysterious and divine machinery for reconciling man to God; a teaching to be taught, but also a work to be worked. Now, the first we find again in the ethics of the counterfeit Essenes—which ought not to surprise us at all; since it is surely an easy thing for him who pillages my thoughts ad libitum to reproduce a perfect resemblance in his own: 3 3 The crime of Josephus in relation to Christianity is the same, in fact, as that of Lauder in respect to Milton. It was easy enough to detect plagiarisms in the "Paradise Lost" from Latin passages fathered upon imaginary writers, when these passages had previously been forged by Lauder himself for the purpose of sustaining such a charge. but what has become of the second, viz., not the teaching, but the operative working of Christianity? The ethical system is replaced by a stolen system; but what replaces the mysterious agencies of the Christian faith? In Essenism we find again a saintly scheme of ethics; but where is the scheme of mediation?

In the Roman church, there have been some theologians who have also seen reason to suspect the romance of "Essenismus." And I am not sure that the knowledge of this fact may not have operated to blunt the suspicions of the Protestant churches. I do not mean that such a fact would have absolutely deafened Protestant ears to the grounds of suspicion when loudly proclaimed; but it is very likely to have indisposed them towards listening. Meantime, so far as I am acquainted with these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference between them and my own is broad. They, without suspecting any subtle, fraudulent purpose, simply recoil from the romantic air of such a statement—which builds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an important sect, such as could not possibly have escaped the notice of Christ and his apostles. I, on the other hand, insist not only upon the revolting incompatibility of such a sect with the absence of all attention to it in the New Testament, but (which is far more important) the incompatibility of such a sect (as a sect elder than Christ) with the originality and heavenly revelation of Christianity. Here is my first point of difference from the Romish objectors. The second is this: not content with exposing the imposture, I go on, and attempt to show in what real circumstances, fraudulently disguised, it might naturally have arisen. In the real circumstances of the Christian church, when struggling with Jewish persecution at some period of the generation between the crucifixion and the siege of Jerusalem, arose probably that secret defensive society of Christians which suggested to Josephus his knavish forgery. We must remember that Josephus did not write until after the great ruins effected by the siege; that he wrote at Rome, far removed from the criticism of those survivors who could have exposed, or had a motive for exposing, his malicious frauds; and, finally, that he wrote under the patronage of the Flavian family: by his sycophancy he had won their protection, which would have overawed any Christian whatever from coming forward to unmask him, in the very improbable case of a work so large, costly, and, by its title, merely archaeological, finding its way, at such a period, into the hands of any poor hunted Christian. 4 4 It is a significant fact, that Dr. Strauss, whose sceptical spirit, left to its own disinterested motions, would have looked through and through this monstrous fable of Essenism, coolly adopted it, no questions asked, as soon as he perceived the value of it as an argument against Christianity.

2 . THE CAESARS.—This, though written hastily, and in a situation where I had no aid from books, is yet far from being what some people have supposed it—a simple recapitulation, or resumé , of the Roman imperatorial history. It moves rapidly over the ground, but still with an exploring eye, carried right and left into the deep shades that have gathered so thickly over the one solitary road 5 5 " Solitary road ."—The reader must remember that, until the seventh century of our era, when Mahometanism arose, there was no collateral history. Why there was none, why no Gothic, why no Parthian history, it is for Rome to explain. We tax ourselves, and are taxed by others, with many an imaginary neglect as regards India; but assuredly we cannot be taxed with that neglect. No part of our Indian empire, or of its adjacencies, but has occupied the researches of our Oriental scholars. traversing that part of history. Glimpses of moral truth, or suggestions of what may lead to it; indications of neglected difficulties, and occasionally conjectural solutions of such difficulties,—these are what this essay offers. It was meant as a specimen of fruits, gathered hastily and without effort, by a vagrant but thoughtful mind: through the coercion of its theme, sometimes it became ambitious; but I did not give to it an ambitious title. Still I felt that the meanest of these suggestions merited a valuation: derelicts they were, not in the sense of things willfully abandoned by my predecessors on that road, but in the sense of things blindly overlooked. And, summing up in one word the pretensions of this particular essay, I will venture to claim for it so much, at least, of originality as ought not to have been left open to any body in the nineteenth century.

3 . CICERO.—This is not, as might be imagined, any literary valuation of Cicero; it is a new reading of Roman history in the most dreadful and comprehensive of her convulsions, in that final stage of her transmutations to which Cicero was himself a party—and, as I maintain, a most selfish and unpatriotic party. He was governed in one half by his own private interest as a novus homo dependent upon a wicked oligarchy, and in the other half by his blind hatred of Caesar; the grandeur of whose nature he could not comprehend, and the real patriotism of whose policy could never be appreciated by one bribed to a selfish course. The great mob of historians have but one way of constructing the great events of this era—they succeed to it as to an inheritance, and chiefly under the misleading of that prestige which is attached to the name of Cicero; on which account it was that I gave this title to my essay. Seven years after it was published, this essay, slight and imperfectly developed as is the exposition of its parts, began to receive some public countenance.

I was going on to abstract the principle involved in some other essays. But I forbear. These specimens are sufficient for the purpose of informing the reader that I do not write without a thoughtful consideration of my subject; and also, that to think reasonably upon any question has never been allowed by me as a sufficient ground for writing upon it, unless I believed myself able to offer some considerable novelty. Generally I claim (not arrogantly, but with firmness) the merit of rectification applied to absolute errors or to injurious limitations of the truth.