INTERCHAPTER VI.

CONTINGENT CAUSES. PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS INDUCED BY REFLECTING ON THEM. THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST.

Vereis que no hay lazada desasida
    De nudo y de pendencia soberana;
Ni a poder trastornar la orden del cielo
    Las fuerzas llegan, ni el saber del suelo.
                                                            BALBUENA.

“There is no action of man in this life,” says Thomas of Malmesbury, “which is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences, as that no human providence is high enough to give us a prospect to the end.” The chain of causes however is as long as the chain of consequences,—peradventure longer; and when I think of the causes which have combined to procreate this book, and the consequences which of necessity it must produce, I am lost in admiration.

How many accidents might for ever have impossibilitated the existence of this incomparable work! If, for instance, I the Unknown, had been born in any other part of the world than in the British dominions; or in any other age than one so near the time in which the venerable subject of these memoirs flourished; or in any other place than where these localities could have been learnt, and all these personalities were remembered; or if I had not counted it among my felicities like the philosopher of old, and the Polish Jews of this day, (who thank God for it in their ritual), to have been born a male instead of a female; or if I had been born too poor to obtain the blessings of education, or too rich to profit by them: or if I had not been born at all. If indeed in the course of six thousand years which have elapsed since the present race of intellectual inhabitants were placed upon this terraqueous globe, any chance had broken off one marriage among my innumerable married progenitors, or thwarted the courtship of those my equally innumerable ancestors who lived before that ceremony was instituted, or in countries where it was not known,—where, or how would my immortal part have existed at this time, or in what shape would these bodily elements have been compounded with which it is invested? A single miscarriage among my millions of grandmothers might have cut off the entail of my mortal being!

Quid non evertit primordia frivola vitæ?
    Nec mirum, vita est integra pene nihil.
Nunc perit, ah! tenui pereuntis odore lucernæ,
    Et fumum hunc fumus fortior ille fugat.
Totum aquilis Cæsar rapidis circumvolet orbem,
    Collegamque sibi vix ferat esse Jovem.
Quantula res quantos potuisset inepta triumphos,
    Et magnum nasci vel prohibere Deum!
Exhæredasset moriente lucernula flammâ
    Tot dominis mundum numinibusque novis.
Tu quoque tantilli, juvenis Pellæe, perisses,
    (Quam gratus terris ille fuisset odor!)
Tu tantùm unius qui pauper regulus orbis,
    Et prope privatus visus es esse tibi.
Nec tu tantùm, idem potuisset tollere casus
    Teque Jovis fili, Bucephalumque tuum:
Dormitorque urbem malè delevisset agaso
    Bucephalam è vestris, Indica Fata, libris. 1

The snuff of a candle,—a fall,—a fright,—nay, even a fit of anger! Such things are happening daily,—yea, hourly, upon this peopled earth. One such mishap among so many millions of cases, millions ten million times told, centillions multiplied beyond the vocabulary of numeration, and ascending to ψαμμακοσὶα,—which word having been coined by a certain Alexis (perhaps no otherwise remembered,) and latinized arenaginta by Erasmus, is now Anglicized sandillions by me;—one such among them all!—I tremble to think of it!

1 COWLEY.

Again. How often has it depended upon political events! If the Moors had defeated Charles Martel; if William instead of Harold had fallen in the Battle of Hastings; if bloody Queen Mary had left a child; or if blessed Queen Mary had not married the Prince of Orange! In the first case the English might now have been Musselmen; in the second they would have continued to use the Saxon tongue, and in either of those cases the Ego could not have existed; for if Arabian blood were put in, or Norman taken out, the whole chain of succession would have been altered. The two latter cases perhaps might not have affected the bodily existence of the Ego; but the first might have entailed upon him the curse of Popery, and the second if it had not subjected him to the same curse, would have made him the subject of a despotic government. In neither case could he have been capable of excogitating lucubrations, such as this high history contains: for either of these misfortunes would have emasculated his mind, unipsefying and unegofying the Ipsissimus Ego.

Another chance must be mentioned. One of my ancestors was, as the phrase is, out in a certain rebellion. His heart led him into the field and his heels got him out of it. Had he been less nimble,—or had he been taken and hanged, and hanged he would have been if taken,— there would have been no Ego at this day, no history of Dr. Daniel Dove. The Doctor would have been like the heroes who lived before Agamemnon, and his immortalizer would never have lived at all.