Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

Confessions of an English Opium Eater 17
one, is in complete contradiction with my veritable nature, with my
actual nature, and the energy with which I condemn it, the inquisitional
care with which I analyse it and judge it, prove my haughty
and divine aptitudes for virtue. How can one find in the world men
clever enough to judge themselves, severe enough to condemn themselves?”
And not only does he condemn himself, he glorifies himself.
His horrible mind absorbed in the contemplation of a real ideal, of
an ideal charity, of an ideal genius, he delivers himself triumphantly
to his spiritual Debauch. We have seen that counterfeiting in a sacrilegious
fashion the sacrament of Penitence, himself the Penitent and
the Confessor; he has given himself a futile absolution, or, worse still,
he may have derived from his condemnation a new pasturage for his
pride. Now, in the contemplation of his dreams and virtuous projects,
he concludes in his practical aptitude for virtue; the enormous energy
with which he embraces his phantom of virtue seems to him proof
positive, peremptory, of the virility necessary for the accomplishment
of his desires. He confounds completely dream with action, and his
imagination warms itself more and more before the enchanting spectacle
of his corrected and idealised nature, substituting this fascinating
image of himself to his real individuality; so weak in will, so vain in
vanity, he finishes by decreeing his apotheosis in these simple terms
which contain for him a world of abominable Lusts: Je suis le plus
vertueux de tous les hommes!
Does not this remind you of Jean-Jacques Rousseau how, after
having shamelessly confessed himself to the Universe, not without
a certain sensuality, dared utter the same cry of triumph (or at least
the difference doesn’t really count) with the same sincerity and the
same conviction? The enthusiasm with which he admired virtue, the
nervous tenderness which filled his eyes with tears, at the sight of an
excellent action or at the thought of the finer actions he might have
accomplished, were enough for him to give a superlative sense of his
moral value. Jean-Jacques intoxicated himself without Haschisch.
Shall I continue my analysis of this victorious monomania? Shall I
explain how, under the empire of the poison, the man I have imagined
supposes himself to be the centre of the Universe? Shall I explain how
he becomes the living and outrageous expression of the proverb that
declares that passion creates passion? He believes in his virtue and in
his genius: does he not divine the end? All these environing objects
are so many suggestions that agitate a world of thoughts within him,