Produced by Charles Franks, Leonard D. Johnson, Susan Goble and PG
Distributed Proofreaders
It is the intention of the publishers to issue, at intervals, a completecollection of Mr. De Quincey's Writings, uniform with this volume. Thefirst four volumes of the series will contain,—
I. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria De Profundis.
II. Biographical Essays.
III. Miscellaneous Essays.
IV. The Cæsars.
From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point inMacbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to themurder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never couldaccount. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiarawfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavoredwith my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could seewhy it should produce such an effect.
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay anyattention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to anyother faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful andindispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most tobe distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else;which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of thisout of ten thousand instances that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask ofany person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand bya knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonestappearance which depends upon the laws of that science; as for instance, torepresent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other,or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by aperson looking down the street from one extremity. Now in all cases, unlessthe person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artistsproduce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallestapproximation to it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every dayof his life. The reason is—that he allows his understanding to overrulehis eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of thelaws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is knownand can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a horizontalline; a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a rightangle, would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling downtogether. Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line,and fails of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is oneinstance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed tooverrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed toobliterate the eyes as it were, for not only does the man believe theevidence of his understanding in opposit