Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

4
Thomas De Quincey
phenomena, such as the apparitions of ghosts, of dark demons, as
manifestations of the divine will, attentive in awakening in man’s spirit
the memory of invisible realities.
Besides, this charming and singular state where all the forces are
in equilibrium, where the imagination, marvellous as it is, cannot
drag after it the moral sense in its most perilous adventures, where
an exquisite sensibility is no longer tortured by diseased nerves, these
criminal advocates of crime and of despair, this marvellous state, as I
have said, has no premonitory symptoms. It is as unexpected as one’s
ghost might be. It is an hallucination, but an intermittent hallucination,
from which—were we wise—we might derive the certainty of
a better world and the hope of attaining it by a daily exercise of our
will. This activity of one’s thought, this excitement of the senses and
of the spirit, must have, for all time, appeared to man as perhaps the
best of his belongings; that is why, considering only one’s immediate
sensuality, he has, without attempting to violate the laws of his
constitution, sought to find in physical science, in pharmacopoeia,
in the grossest liqueurs, in the most subtle perfumes, under all the
climates and in all times, the means of escaping, were it only for a few
hours, from its dunghill dominion, and, as the writer of Lazare said:
“D’emporter le paradis d’un seul coup.” Alas! Men’s vices, horrible
as they are supposed to be, contain the proof positive (were this no
more than its infinite expansion!) of his taste of the Infinite; only,
this is a taste which often goes astray. One can take in a metaphorical
sense the vulgar proverb: Every road leads to Rome, and apply it to
the moral world; all leads either to recompense or to chastisement,
two forms of Eternity. Man’s mind is the abode of passions; he has to
sell them over again, if I may use a trivial expression; but this miserable
spirit, whose natural degradation is so immense that his sudden
aptitude, half paradoxical, in regard to the most ardent virtues and
charities, is pregnant in Paradoxes, which permit him to employ for
what is evil what is most excessive, in this overwhelming passion. Il
ne croit jamais se vendre en bloc. He forgets, in his infatuation, that he
gambles toward an end finer and more formidable than himself, and
that the spirit of Evil, even if one gives him no more than one single
hair, has only one desire: that is, to carry away his head. This visible
lord of visible nature (I speak of man) desires to create Paradise by
pharmacy, by fermented drinks, exactly like a maniac who wants to
replace his solid furniture and veritable gardens with decorations