* * * * *
Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind.
Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind.
Coleridge - Table Talk
]
* * * * *
I am not enough read in Puritan divinity to know the particular objections
to the surplice, over and above the general prejudice against the _retenta_
of Popery. Perhaps that was the only ground,--a foolish one enough.
In my judgment Bolingbroke's style is not in any respect equal to that of
Cowley or Dryden. Read Algernon Sidney; his style reminds you as little of
books as of blackguards. What a gentleman he was!
* * * * *
Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful seems to me a poor thing; and
what he says upon Taste is neither profound nor accurate.
* * * * *
Well! I am for Ariosto against Tasso; though I would rather praise Aristo's
poetry than his poem.
* * * * *
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose
and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order;--poetry = the
_best_ words in the best order.
* * * * *
I conceive Origen, Jerome, and Augustine to be the three great fathers in
respect of theology, and Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom in
respect of rhetoric.
* * * * *
Rhenferd possessed the immense learning and robust sense of Selden, with
the acuteness and wit of Jortin.
* * * * *
Jacob Behmen remarked, that it was not wonderful that there were separate
languages for England, France, Germany, &c. ; but rather that there was not
a different language for every degree of latitude. In confirmation of
which, see the infinite variety of languages amongst the barbarous tribes
of South America.
_July_ 20. 1827.
NON-PERCEPTION OF COLOURS.
What is said of some persons not being able to distinguish colours, I
believe. It may proceed from general weakness, which will render the
differences imperceptible, just as the dusk or twilight makes all colours
one. This defect is most usual in the blue ray, the negative pole.
* * * * *
I conjecture that when finer experiments have been applied, the red,
yellow, and orange rays will be found as capable of communicating magnetic
action as the other rays, though, perhaps, under different circumstances.
Remember this, if you are alive twenty years hence, and think of me.
_July_ 21. 1827.
RESTORATION. --REFORMATION.
The elements had been well shaken together during the civil wars and
interregnum under the Long Parliament and Protectorate; and nothing but the
cowardliness and impolicy of the Nonconformists, at the Restoration, could
have prevented a real reformation on a wider basis. But the truth is, by
going over to Breda with their stiff flatteries to the hollow-hearted King,
they put Sheldon and the bishops on the side of the constitution.
* * * * *
The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men
began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost.
_July_ 23. 1827.
WILLIAM III. --BERKELEY. --SPINOSA. --GENIUS. --ENVY. --LOVE.
William the Third was a greater and much honester man than any of his
ministers. I believe every one of them, except Shrewsbury, has now been
detected in correspondence with James.
* * * * *
Berkeley can only be confuted, or answered, by one sentence. So it is with
Spinosa. His premiss granted, the deduction is a chain of adamant.
* * * * *
Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, even with crime; but
not long, believe me, with selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious
disposition. Envy is *[Greek: kakistos kai dikaiotatos theos], as I once
saw it expressed somewhere in a page of Stobaeus: it dwarfs and withers its
worshippers.
* * * * *
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other
than for the desire of the man. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"A woman's friendship," I find written by Mr. C. on a page dyed red with an
imprisoned rose-leaf, "a woman's friendship borders more closely on love
than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly
acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs, and more signs and expressions of
attachment. "--ED. ]
August 29. 1827.
JEREMY TAYLOR. --HOOKER. --IDEAS. --KNOWLEDGE.
Jeremy Taylor is an excellent author for a young man to study, for the
purpose of imbibing noble principles, and at the same time of learning to
exercise caution and thought in detecting his numerous errors.
* * * * *
I must acknowledge, with some hesitation, that I think Hooker has been a
little over-credited for his judgment.
Take as an instance of an idea the continuity and coincident distinctness
of nature; or this,--vegetable life is always striving to be something that
it is not; animal life to be itself. [1] Hence, in a plant the parts, as the
root, the stem, the branches, leaves, &c. remain after they have each
produced or contributed to produce a different _status_ of the whole plant:
in an animal nothing of the previous states remains distinct, but is
incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, the very self.
[Footnote 1:
The reader who has never studied Plato, Bacon, Kant, or Coleridge in their
philosophic works, will need to be told that the word Idea is not used in
this passage in the sense adopted by "Dr. Holofernes, who in a lecture on
metaphysics, delivered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes all
_ideas_ but those of sensation; whilst his friend, deputy Costard, has no
_idea_ of a better-flavoured haunch of venison, than he dined off at the
London Tavern last week. He admits (for the deputy has travelled) that the
French have an excellent _idea_ of cooking in general; but holds that their
most accomplished _maitres de cuisine_ have no more _idea_ of dressing a
turtle, than the Parisian gourmands themselves have any _real idea_ of the
true _taste_ and _colour_ of the fat. " Church and State, p. 78. No! what
Mr. Coleridge meant by an idea in this place may be expressed in various
ways out of his own works. I subjoin a sufficient definition from the
Church and State, p. 6. "That which, contemplated _objectively_, (that is,
as existing _externally_ to the mind,) we call a law; the same contemplated
_subjectively_, (that is, as existing in a subject or mind,) is an idea.
Hence Plato often names Ideas, Laws; and Lord Bacon, the British Plato,
describes the laws of the material universe as the ideas in nature. "Quod
in natura _naturata_ Lex, in natura _naturante_ Idea dicitur. " A more
subtle limitation of the word may be found in the last paragraph of Essay
(E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual. --ED. ]
* * * * *
To know any thing for certain is to have a clear insight into the
inseparability of the predicate from the subject (the matter from the
form), and _vice versa_. This is a verbal definition,--a _real_ definition
of a thing absolutely known is impossible. I _know_ a circle, when I
perceive that the equality of all possible radii from the centre to the
circumference is inseparable from the idea of a circle.
_August_ 30. 1827.
PAINTING.
Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.
April 13. 1830.
PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. --MESSIAH. --JEWS. --THE TRINITY.
If the prophecies of the Old Testament are not rightly interpreted of Jesus
our Christ, then there is no prediction whatever contained in it of that
stupendous event--the rise and establishment of Christianity--in comparison
with which all the preceding Jewish history is as nothing. With the
exception of the book of Daniel, which the Jews themselves never classed
among the prophecies, and an obscure text of Jeremiah, there is not a
passage in all the Old Testament which favours the notion of a temporal
Messiah. What moral object was there, for which such a Messiah should come?
What could he have been but a sort of virtuous Sesostris or Buonaparte?
* * * * *
I know that some excellent men--Israelites without guile--do not, in fact,
expect the advent of any Messiah; but believe, or suggest, that it may
possibly have been God's will and meaning, that the Jews should remain a
quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing at the doctrine
of the unity of God. To which I say, that this truth of the essential unity
of God has been preserved, and gloriously preached, by Christianity alone.
The Romans never shut up their temples, nor ceased to worship a hundred or
a thousand gods and goddesses, at the bidding of the Jews; the Persians,
the Hindus, the Chinese, learned nothing of this great truth from the Jews.
But from Christians they did learn it in various degrees, and are still
learning it. The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the
light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but
itself.
* * * * *
It has been objected to me, that the vulgar notions of the Trinity are at
variance with this doctrine; and it was added, whether as flattery or
sarcasm matters not, that few believers in the Trinity thought of it as I
did. To which again humbly, yet confidently, I reply, that my superior
light, if superior, consists in nothing more than this,--that I more
clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity is an absolute truth
transcending my human means of understanding it, or demonstrating it. I may
or may not be able to utter the formula of my faith in this mystery in more
logical terms than some others; but this I say, Go and ask the most
ordinary man, a professed believer in this doctrine, whether he believes in
and worships a plurality of Gods, and he will start with horror at the bare
suggestion. He may not be able to explain his creed in exact terms; but he
will tell you that he _does_ believe in one God, and in one God only,--
reason about it as you may.
* * * * *
What all the churches of the East and West, what Romanist and Protestant
believe in common, that I call Christianity. In no proper sense of the word
can I call Unitarians and Socinians believers in Christ; at least, not in
the only Christ of whom I have read or know any thing.
April 14, 1830.
CONVERSION OF THE JEWS. --JEWS IN POLAND.
There is no hope of converting the Jews in the way and with the spirit
unhappily adopted by our church; and, indeed, by all other modern churches.
In the first age, the Jewish Christians undoubtedly considered themselves
as the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise had been made; and, as such, a
superior order. Witness the account of St. Peter's conduct in the Acts [1],
and the Epistle to the Galatians. [2] St. Paul protested against this, so
far as it went to make Jewish observances compulsory on Christians who were
not of Jewish blood, and so far as it in any way led to bottom the religion
on the Mosaic covenant of works; but he never denied the birthright of the
chosen seed: on the contrary, he himself evidently believed that the Jews
would ultimately be restored; and he says,--If the Gentiles have been so
blest by the rejection of the Jews, how much rather shall they be blest by
the conversion and restoration of Israel! Why do we expect the Jews to
abandon their national customs and distinctions? The Abyssinian church said
that they claimed a descent from Abraham; and that, in virtue of such
ancestry, they observed circumcision: but declaring withal, that they
rejected the covenant of works, and rested on the promise fulfilled in
Jesus Christ. In consequence of this appeal, the Abyssinians were permitted
to retain their customs.
If Rhenferd's Essays were translated--if the Jews were made acquainted with
the real argument--if they were addressed kindly, and were not required to
abandon their distinctive customs and national type, but were invited to
become Christians _as of the seed of Abraham_--I believe there would be a
Christian synagogue in a year's time. As it is, the Jews of the lower
orders are the very lowest of mankind; they have not a principle of honesty
in them; to grasp and be getting money for ever is their single and
exclusive occupation. A learned Jew once said to me, upon this subject:--"O
Sir! make the inhabitants of Hollywell Street and Duke's Place Israelites
first, and then we may debate about making them Christians. "[3]
In Poland, the Jews are great landholders, and are the worst of tyrants.
They have no kind of sympathy with their labourers and dependants. They
never meet them in common worship. Land, in the hand of a large number of
Jews, instead of being, what it ought to be, the organ of permanence, would
become the organ of rigidity, in a nation; by their intermarriages within
their own pale, it would be in fact perpetually entailed. Then, again, if a
popular tumult were to take place in Poland, who can doubt that the Jews
would be the first objects of murder and spoliation?
[Footnote 1: Chap. xv. ]
[Footnote 2 : Chap. ii. ]
[Footnote 3:
Mr. Coleridge had a very friendly acquaintance with several learned Jews in
this country, and he told me that, whenever he had fallen in with a Jew of
thorough education and literary habits, he had always found him possessed
of a strong natural capacity for metaphysical disquisitions. I may mention
here the best known of his Jewish friends, one whom he deeply respected,
Hyman Hurwitz. --ED. ]
April 17. 1830.
MOSAIC MIRACLES. --PANTHEISM.
In the miracles of Moses, there is a remarkable intermingling of acts,
which we should now-a-days call simply providential, with such as we should
still call miraculous. The passing of the Jordan, in the 3d chapter of the
book of Joshua, is perhaps the purest and sheerest miracle recorded in the
Bible; it seems to have been wrought for the miracle's sake, and so thereby
to show to the Jews--the descendants of those who had come out of Egypt--
that the _same_ God who had appeared to their fathers, and who had by
miracles, in many respects providential only, preserved them in the
wilderness, was _their_ God also. The manna and quails were ordinary
provisions of Providence, rendered miraculous by certain laws and qualities
annexed to them in the particular instance. The passage of the Red Sea was
effected by a strong wind, which, we are told, drove hack the waters; and
so on. But then, again, the death of the first-born was purely miraculous.
Hence, then, both Jews and Egyptians might take occasion to learn, that it
was _one and the same God_ who interfered specially, and who governed all
generally.
* * * * *
Take away the first verse of the hook of Genesis, and then what immediately
follows is an exact history or sketch of Pantheism. Pantheism was taught in
the mysteries of Greece; of which the Samothracian or Cabeiric were
probably the purest and the most ancient.
_April_ 18. 1830.
POETIC PROMISE.
In the present age it is next to impossible to predict from specimens,
however favourable, that a young man will turn out a great poet, or rather
a poet at all. Poetic taste, dexterity in composition, and ingenious
imitation, often produce poems that are very promising in appearance. But
genius, or the power of doing something new, is another thing. Mr.
Tennyson's sonnets, such as I have seen, have many of the characteristic
excellencies of those of Wordsworth and Southey.
_April 19. 1830. _
It is a small thing that the patient knows of his own state; yet some
things he _does_ know better than his physician.
* * * * *
I never had, and never could feel, any horror at death, simply as death.
* * * * *
Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.
_April 30. 1830. _
NOMINALISTS AND REALISTS. --BRITISH SCHOOLMEN. --SPINOSA.
The result of my system will be, to show, that, so far from the world being
a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat.
* * * * *
The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and
most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right, and
both wrong. They each maintained opposite poles of the same truth; which
truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was
the head of the Realists; Ockham,[1] his own disciple, of the Nominalists.
Ockham, though certainly very prolix, is a most extraordinary writer.
[Footnote 1:
John Duns Scotus was born in 1274, at Dunstone in the parish of Emildune,
near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton College, and Professor of Divinity
at Oxford. After acquiring an uncommon reputation at his own university, he
went to Paris, and thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, at the early
age of thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and found time
to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. See the Lyons
edition, by Luke Wadding, in 1639.
William Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347; but the place and
year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. He was styled the Invincible
Doctor, and wrote bitterly against Pope John XXII. We all remember Butler's
account of these worthies:--
"He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly;
In school divinity as able
As he that hight Irrefragable,
A second Thomas, or at once
To name them all, another _Dunse_;
Profound in all the Nominal
And Real ways beyond them all;
For he a rope of sand could twist
As tough as learned Sorbonist. "
HUDIBRAS. Part I. Canto I. v. 149.
The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Gloucestershire,
who died in 1245. Amongst his pupils at Paris, was Fidanza, better known by
the name of Bonaventura, the Seraphic Doctor. The controversy of the
Realists and the Nominalists cannot he explained in a note; but in
substance the original point of dispute may be thus stated. The Realists
held _generally_ with Aristotle, that there were universal _ideas_ or
essences impressed upon matter, and coveal with, and inherent in, their
objects. Plato held that these universal forms existed as exemplars in the
divine mind previously to, and independently of, matter; but both
maintained, under one shape or other, the real existence of universal
forms. On the other hand, Zeno and the old Stoics denied the existence of
these universals, and contended that they were no more than mere tenms and
nominal representatives of their particular objects. The Nominalists were
the followers of Zeno, and held that universal forms are merely modes of
conception, and exist solely in and for the mind. It does not require much
reflection to see how great an influence these different systems might have
upon the enunciation of the higher doctrines of Christianity. --ED. ]
* * * * *
It is remarkable, that two thirds of the eminent schoolmen were of British
birth. It was the schoolmen who made the languages of Europe what they now
are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now, but, in truth, these
quiddities are just the parts of their language which we have rejected;
whilst we never think of the mass which we have adopted, and have in daily
use.
* * * * *
One of the scholastic definitions of God is this,--_Deus est, cui omne quod
est est esse omne quod est:_ as long a sentence made up of as few words,
and those as oligosyllabic, as any I remember. By the by, that
_oligosyllabic_ is a word happily illustrative of its own meaning, _ex
opposito_.
* * * * *
Spinosa, at the very end of his life, seems to have gained a glimpse of the
truth. In the last letter published in his works, it appears that he began
to suspect his premiss. His _unica substantia_ is, in fact, a mere notion,
--a _subject_ of the mind, and no _object_ at all.
* * * * *
Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind. He leads you to see,
that propositions involving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are
nevertheless true; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher logic--
that of ideas. They are contradictory only in the Aristotelian logic, which
is the instrument of the understanding. I have read most of the works of
Plato several times with profound attention, but not all his writings. In
fact, I soon found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was a
consummate genius. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (--a truth of the
reason, an Idea)--that in its own proper form it is _inconceivable_. For to
_conceive_, is a function of the understanding, which can he exercised only
on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding
all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection,
and to be rendered _expressible_. And here we have a second test and sign
of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the
understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each
of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes
the representative or _expression_ (--the _exponent_) of a truth beyond
conception and inexpressible. Examples: _before_ Abraham WAS, I AM. God is
a circle, the centre of which is every where, and the circumference no
where. The soul is all in every part. " Aids to Reflection, n. 224. n. See
also _Church and State_, p. 12. --ED. ]
* * * * *
My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to animal magnetism. Von
Spix, the eminent naturalist, makes no doubt of the matter, and talks
coolly of giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or external
object, by an exertion of its own will: such a power is not properly
electrical; for electricity acts invariably under the same circumstances. A
steady gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush deeply.
Account for that. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301. vol. i. of the richly
annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed as
his "darling book and the favourite of his library" to its great and
honoured author and donor:--
"The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the
Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this
sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is
common to almost all the _magnetic_ patients in Denmark, Germany, France,
and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not
apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in
different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, and
where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the
testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attesters are to be found names of
men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of
intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their
competence in respect of physio- and psychological insight and attainments
incomparably greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a
Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c. ? Were I asked, what
_I_ think, my answer would be,--that the evidence enforces scepticism and a
_non liquet_;--too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be
satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvibility on the supposition of
imposture or casual coincidence;--too fugacious and unfixable to support
any theory that supposes the always potential, and, under certain
conditions and circumstances, occasionally active, existence of a
correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an
hypothesis would be adequate to the _satisfactory_ explanation of the
facts;--though that of a _metastasis_ of specific functions of the nervous
energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, _plus_ some
delusion, _plus_ some illusion, _plus_ some imposition, _plus_ some chance
and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the
scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been
before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in
French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have
never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, _ex. gr. _
Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical
celebrity, and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Klug's
work had left me, without having moved an inch backward or forward. The
reply of Treviranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is
worth recording:--'Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht wurde
geglaubt haben auf _ihren_ erzahlung,' &c. 'I have seen what I am certain I
would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore, I
can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on _mine_. '"--ED. ]
_May_ 1. 1830.
FALL OF MAN. --MADNESS. --BROWN AND DARWIN. --NITROUS OXIDE.
A Fall of some sort or other--the creation, as it were, of the non-
absolute--is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without
this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is
explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.
* * * * *
Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the sleep of the spirit with
certain conditions of wakefulness; that is to say, lucid intervals. During
this sleep, or recession of the spirit, the lower or bestial states of life
rise up into action and prominence. It is an awful thing to be eternally
tempted by the perverted senses. The reason may resist--it does resist--for
a long time; but too often, at length, it yields for a moment, and the man
is mad for ever. An act of the will is, in many instances, precedent to
complete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler who said, that he was "all
his life struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses," which
would have maddened him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his
reason for a single moment.
* * * * *
Brown's and Darwin's theories are both ingenious; but the first will not
account for sleep, and the last will not account for death: considerable
defects, you must allow.
* * * * *
It is said that every excitation is followed by a commensurate exhaustion.
That is not so. The excitation caused by inhaling nitrous oxide is an
exception at least; it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the bubble.
The operation of this gas is to prevent the decarbonating of the blood;
and, consequently, if taken excessively, it would produce apoplexy. The
blood becomes black as ink. The voluptuous sensation attending the
inhalation is produced by the compression and resistance.
_May_ 2. 1830.
PLANTS. --INSECTS. --MEN. --DOG. --ANT AND BEE.
Plants exist _in_ themselves. Insects _by_, or by means of, themselves.
Men, _for_ themselves. The perfection of irrational animals is that which
is best for _them_; the perfection of man is that which is absolutely best.
There is growth only in plants; but there is irritability, or, a better
word, instinctivity, in insects.
* * * * *
You may understand by _insect_, life in sections--diffused generally over
all the parts.
* * * * *
The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a [*Greek: storgae], or affection
_upwards_ to man.
* * * * *
The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man in the understanding or
faculty of adapting means to proximate ends than the elephant. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant, as the most
intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational
creatures, so far as our present acquaintance with the facts of natural
history enables us to judge. --ED. ]
_May_ 3. 1830.
BLACK COLONEL.
What an excellent character is the black Colonel in Mrs. Bennett's "Beggar
Girl! "[1]
If an inscription be put upon my tomb, it may be that I was an enthusiastic
lover of the church; and as enthusiastic a hater of those who have betrayed
it, be they who they may. [2]
[Footnote 1:
This character was frequently a subject of pleasant description and
enlargement with Mr. Coleridge, and he generally passed from it to a high
commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being in their way perfectly
genuine and individual productions. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. A better and a
truer character would be, that Coleridge was a lover of the church, and a
defender of the faith! This last expression is the utterance of a
conviction so profound that it can patiently wait for time to prove its
truth. --ED. ]
_May_ 4. 1830.
HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH.
Holland and the Netherlands ought to be seen once, because no other country
is like them. Every thing is artificial. You will be struck with the
combinations of vivid greenery, and water, and building; but every thing is
so distinct and rememberable, that you would not improve your conception by
visiting the country a hundred times over. It is interesting to see a
country and a nature _made_, as it were, by man, and to compare it with
God's nature. [1]
If you go, remark, (indeed you will be forced to do so in spite of
yourself,) remark, I say, the identity (for it is more than proximity) of a
disgusting dirtiness in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence
for, the human person; and a persecuting painted cleanliness in every thing
connected with property. You must not walk in their gardens; nay, you must
hardly look into them.
[Footnote 1:
In the summer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion with Mr. Wordsworth
in Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine, as far as Bergen. He came back
delighted, especially with his stay near Bonn, but with an abiding disgust
at the filthy habits of the people. Upon Cologne, in particular, he avenged
himself in two epigrams. See Poet. Works, vol. ii. p. 144. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, certainly; but it is the
happiness of _animals_. In vain do you look for the sweet breath of hope
and advancement among them. [1]In fact, as to their villas and gardens,
they are not to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box.
[Footnote 1:
"For every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath. "
_Wordsworth. _]
_May 5. 1830. _
RELIGION GENTILIZES. --WOMEN AND MEN. --BIBLICAL COMMENTATORS. --WALKERITE
CREED.
You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly
thing in the world. It will _alone_ gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I
know nothing else that will, _alone_. Certainly not the army, which is
thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.
* * * * *
A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. Man seems to have been
designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think
women are generally better creatures than men. They have, taken
universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much
stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a
strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever.
* * * * *
I never could get much information out of the biblical commentators.
Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable
trick of passing _siccissimis pedibus_ over the parts which puzzle a man of
reflection.
The Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New Church, as it is called,
appears to be a miscellany of Calvinism and Quakerism; but it is hard to
understand it.
* * * * *
_May_ 7, 1830.
HORNE TOOKE. ----DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY. ----GENDER OF THE SUN IN GERMAN.
Horne Tooke was pre-eminently a ready-witted man. He had that clearness
which is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, gave
you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness. His voice
was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no
progression or developement. All that is worth any thing (and that is but
little) in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter
which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, hut
there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto
volume, 1 believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting newspaper lampoons
and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the
pamphlet, It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so
divine, a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political
squibs. All that is true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who
gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system
of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language
by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history of one language,
or one or two languages. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair.
Harris, in the Hermes, was dealing--not very profoundly, it is true,--with
the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, and metaphysical causes
and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of
words only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, which is
a very different thing. In point of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic
dialects. I must say, all that _decantata fabula_ about the genders of the
sun and moon in German seems to me great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in
the _Platt-Deutsch_ of the north of Germany there were only two definite
articles--_die_ for masculine and feminine, and _das_ for neuter. Then it
was _die sonne_, in a masculine sense, as we say with the same word as
article, _the_ sun. Luther, in constructing the _Hoch-Deutsch_ (for really
his miraculous and providential translation of the Bible was the
fundamental act of construction of the literary German), took for his
distinct masculine article the _der_ of the _Ober-Deutsch_, and thus
constituted the three articles of the present High German, _der, die, das_.
Naturally, therefore, it would then have been, _der sonne_; but here the
analogy of the Greek grammar prevailed, and as _sonne_ had the arbitrary
feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its old article _die_,
which, originally including masculine and feminine both, had grown to
designate the feminine only. To the best of my recollection, the
Minnesingers and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine; and,
since Luther's time, the poets feel the awkwardness of the classical gender
affixed to the sun so much, that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or
some other synonyme instead. I must acknowledge my doubts, whether, upon
more accurate investigation, it can be shown that there ever was a nation
that considered the sun in itself, and apart from language, as the feminine
power. The moon does not so clearly demand a feminine as the sun does a
masculine sex: it might be considered negatively or neuter;--yet if the
reception of its light from the sun were known, that would have been a good
reason for making her feminine, as being the recipient body.
* * * * *
As our _the_ was the German _die_, so I believe our _that_ stood for _das_,
and was used as a neuter definite article.
The _Platt-Deutsch_ was a compact language like the English, not admitting
much agglutination. The _Ober-Deutsch_ was fuller and fonder of
agglutinating words together, although it was not so soft in its sounds.
_May 8. 1830. _
HORNE TOOKE. --JACOBINS.
Horne Tooke said that his friends might, if they pleased, go as far as
Slough,--he should go no farther than Hounslow; but that was no reason why
he should not keep them company so far as their roads were the same. The
answer is easy. Suppose you know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit
a robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be his accomplice, have you
a moral right to walk arm in arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving
him your countenance, prevent his being taken up? The history of all the
world tells us, that immoral means will ever intercept good ends.
* * * * *
Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the
cause of political liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will
be irresistible; but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, and
morals, and domestic happiness into the hands of the aristocrats. Thank
God! that they did so. England was saved from civil war by their enormous,
their providential, blundering.
* * * * *
Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings and the convictions of
the whole matronage of his country? The women are as influential upon such
national interests as the men.
* * * * *
Horne Tooke was always making a butt of Mr. Godwin; who, nevertheless, had
that in him which Tooke could never have understood. I saw a good deal of
Tooke at one time: he left upon me the impression of his being a keen, iron
man.
_May_ 9. 1830.
PERSIAN AND ARABIC POETRY. --MILESIAN TALES.
I must acknowledge I never could see much merit in the Persian poetry,
which I have read in translation. There is not a ray of imagination in it,
and but a glimmering of fancy. It is, in fact, so far as I know, deficient
in truth. Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must
be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but
it must be a house, at least. The Arabian Nights' Tales are a different
thing --they are delightful, but I cannot help surmising that there is a
good deal of Greek fancy in them. No doubt we have had a great loss in the
Milesian Tales. [1] The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and
most antique cast.
Think of the sublimity, I should rather say the profundity, of that
passage in Ezekiel, [2]"Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered,
O Lord God, thou knowest. " I know nothing like it.
* * * * *
I am not enough read in Puritan divinity to know the particular objections
to the surplice, over and above the general prejudice against the _retenta_
of Popery. Perhaps that was the only ground,--a foolish one enough.
In my judgment Bolingbroke's style is not in any respect equal to that of
Cowley or Dryden. Read Algernon Sidney; his style reminds you as little of
books as of blackguards. What a gentleman he was!
* * * * *
Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful seems to me a poor thing; and
what he says upon Taste is neither profound nor accurate.
* * * * *
Well! I am for Ariosto against Tasso; though I would rather praise Aristo's
poetry than his poem.
* * * * *
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose
and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order;--poetry = the
_best_ words in the best order.
* * * * *
I conceive Origen, Jerome, and Augustine to be the three great fathers in
respect of theology, and Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom in
respect of rhetoric.
* * * * *
Rhenferd possessed the immense learning and robust sense of Selden, with
the acuteness and wit of Jortin.
* * * * *
Jacob Behmen remarked, that it was not wonderful that there were separate
languages for England, France, Germany, &c. ; but rather that there was not
a different language for every degree of latitude. In confirmation of
which, see the infinite variety of languages amongst the barbarous tribes
of South America.
_July_ 20. 1827.
NON-PERCEPTION OF COLOURS.
What is said of some persons not being able to distinguish colours, I
believe. It may proceed from general weakness, which will render the
differences imperceptible, just as the dusk or twilight makes all colours
one. This defect is most usual in the blue ray, the negative pole.
* * * * *
I conjecture that when finer experiments have been applied, the red,
yellow, and orange rays will be found as capable of communicating magnetic
action as the other rays, though, perhaps, under different circumstances.
Remember this, if you are alive twenty years hence, and think of me.
_July_ 21. 1827.
RESTORATION. --REFORMATION.
The elements had been well shaken together during the civil wars and
interregnum under the Long Parliament and Protectorate; and nothing but the
cowardliness and impolicy of the Nonconformists, at the Restoration, could
have prevented a real reformation on a wider basis. But the truth is, by
going over to Breda with their stiff flatteries to the hollow-hearted King,
they put Sheldon and the bishops on the side of the constitution.
* * * * *
The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men
began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost.
_July_ 23. 1827.
WILLIAM III. --BERKELEY. --SPINOSA. --GENIUS. --ENVY. --LOVE.
William the Third was a greater and much honester man than any of his
ministers. I believe every one of them, except Shrewsbury, has now been
detected in correspondence with James.
* * * * *
Berkeley can only be confuted, or answered, by one sentence. So it is with
Spinosa. His premiss granted, the deduction is a chain of adamant.
* * * * *
Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, even with crime; but
not long, believe me, with selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious
disposition. Envy is *[Greek: kakistos kai dikaiotatos theos], as I once
saw it expressed somewhere in a page of Stobaeus: it dwarfs and withers its
worshippers.
* * * * *
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other
than for the desire of the man. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"A woman's friendship," I find written by Mr. C. on a page dyed red with an
imprisoned rose-leaf, "a woman's friendship borders more closely on love
than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly
acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs, and more signs and expressions of
attachment. "--ED. ]
August 29. 1827.
JEREMY TAYLOR. --HOOKER. --IDEAS. --KNOWLEDGE.
Jeremy Taylor is an excellent author for a young man to study, for the
purpose of imbibing noble principles, and at the same time of learning to
exercise caution and thought in detecting his numerous errors.
* * * * *
I must acknowledge, with some hesitation, that I think Hooker has been a
little over-credited for his judgment.
Take as an instance of an idea the continuity and coincident distinctness
of nature; or this,--vegetable life is always striving to be something that
it is not; animal life to be itself. [1] Hence, in a plant the parts, as the
root, the stem, the branches, leaves, &c. remain after they have each
produced or contributed to produce a different _status_ of the whole plant:
in an animal nothing of the previous states remains distinct, but is
incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, the very self.
[Footnote 1:
The reader who has never studied Plato, Bacon, Kant, or Coleridge in their
philosophic works, will need to be told that the word Idea is not used in
this passage in the sense adopted by "Dr. Holofernes, who in a lecture on
metaphysics, delivered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes all
_ideas_ but those of sensation; whilst his friend, deputy Costard, has no
_idea_ of a better-flavoured haunch of venison, than he dined off at the
London Tavern last week. He admits (for the deputy has travelled) that the
French have an excellent _idea_ of cooking in general; but holds that their
most accomplished _maitres de cuisine_ have no more _idea_ of dressing a
turtle, than the Parisian gourmands themselves have any _real idea_ of the
true _taste_ and _colour_ of the fat. " Church and State, p. 78. No! what
Mr. Coleridge meant by an idea in this place may be expressed in various
ways out of his own works. I subjoin a sufficient definition from the
Church and State, p. 6. "That which, contemplated _objectively_, (that is,
as existing _externally_ to the mind,) we call a law; the same contemplated
_subjectively_, (that is, as existing in a subject or mind,) is an idea.
Hence Plato often names Ideas, Laws; and Lord Bacon, the British Plato,
describes the laws of the material universe as the ideas in nature. "Quod
in natura _naturata_ Lex, in natura _naturante_ Idea dicitur. " A more
subtle limitation of the word may be found in the last paragraph of Essay
(E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual. --ED. ]
* * * * *
To know any thing for certain is to have a clear insight into the
inseparability of the predicate from the subject (the matter from the
form), and _vice versa_. This is a verbal definition,--a _real_ definition
of a thing absolutely known is impossible. I _know_ a circle, when I
perceive that the equality of all possible radii from the centre to the
circumference is inseparable from the idea of a circle.
_August_ 30. 1827.
PAINTING.
Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.
April 13. 1830.
PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. --MESSIAH. --JEWS. --THE TRINITY.
If the prophecies of the Old Testament are not rightly interpreted of Jesus
our Christ, then there is no prediction whatever contained in it of that
stupendous event--the rise and establishment of Christianity--in comparison
with which all the preceding Jewish history is as nothing. With the
exception of the book of Daniel, which the Jews themselves never classed
among the prophecies, and an obscure text of Jeremiah, there is not a
passage in all the Old Testament which favours the notion of a temporal
Messiah. What moral object was there, for which such a Messiah should come?
What could he have been but a sort of virtuous Sesostris or Buonaparte?
* * * * *
I know that some excellent men--Israelites without guile--do not, in fact,
expect the advent of any Messiah; but believe, or suggest, that it may
possibly have been God's will and meaning, that the Jews should remain a
quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing at the doctrine
of the unity of God. To which I say, that this truth of the essential unity
of God has been preserved, and gloriously preached, by Christianity alone.
The Romans never shut up their temples, nor ceased to worship a hundred or
a thousand gods and goddesses, at the bidding of the Jews; the Persians,
the Hindus, the Chinese, learned nothing of this great truth from the Jews.
But from Christians they did learn it in various degrees, and are still
learning it. The religion of the Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the
light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but
itself.
* * * * *
It has been objected to me, that the vulgar notions of the Trinity are at
variance with this doctrine; and it was added, whether as flattery or
sarcasm matters not, that few believers in the Trinity thought of it as I
did. To which again humbly, yet confidently, I reply, that my superior
light, if superior, consists in nothing more than this,--that I more
clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity is an absolute truth
transcending my human means of understanding it, or demonstrating it. I may
or may not be able to utter the formula of my faith in this mystery in more
logical terms than some others; but this I say, Go and ask the most
ordinary man, a professed believer in this doctrine, whether he believes in
and worships a plurality of Gods, and he will start with horror at the bare
suggestion. He may not be able to explain his creed in exact terms; but he
will tell you that he _does_ believe in one God, and in one God only,--
reason about it as you may.
* * * * *
What all the churches of the East and West, what Romanist and Protestant
believe in common, that I call Christianity. In no proper sense of the word
can I call Unitarians and Socinians believers in Christ; at least, not in
the only Christ of whom I have read or know any thing.
April 14, 1830.
CONVERSION OF THE JEWS. --JEWS IN POLAND.
There is no hope of converting the Jews in the way and with the spirit
unhappily adopted by our church; and, indeed, by all other modern churches.
In the first age, the Jewish Christians undoubtedly considered themselves
as the seed of Abraham, to whom the promise had been made; and, as such, a
superior order. Witness the account of St. Peter's conduct in the Acts [1],
and the Epistle to the Galatians. [2] St. Paul protested against this, so
far as it went to make Jewish observances compulsory on Christians who were
not of Jewish blood, and so far as it in any way led to bottom the religion
on the Mosaic covenant of works; but he never denied the birthright of the
chosen seed: on the contrary, he himself evidently believed that the Jews
would ultimately be restored; and he says,--If the Gentiles have been so
blest by the rejection of the Jews, how much rather shall they be blest by
the conversion and restoration of Israel! Why do we expect the Jews to
abandon their national customs and distinctions? The Abyssinian church said
that they claimed a descent from Abraham; and that, in virtue of such
ancestry, they observed circumcision: but declaring withal, that they
rejected the covenant of works, and rested on the promise fulfilled in
Jesus Christ. In consequence of this appeal, the Abyssinians were permitted
to retain their customs.
If Rhenferd's Essays were translated--if the Jews were made acquainted with
the real argument--if they were addressed kindly, and were not required to
abandon their distinctive customs and national type, but were invited to
become Christians _as of the seed of Abraham_--I believe there would be a
Christian synagogue in a year's time. As it is, the Jews of the lower
orders are the very lowest of mankind; they have not a principle of honesty
in them; to grasp and be getting money for ever is their single and
exclusive occupation. A learned Jew once said to me, upon this subject:--"O
Sir! make the inhabitants of Hollywell Street and Duke's Place Israelites
first, and then we may debate about making them Christians. "[3]
In Poland, the Jews are great landholders, and are the worst of tyrants.
They have no kind of sympathy with their labourers and dependants. They
never meet them in common worship. Land, in the hand of a large number of
Jews, instead of being, what it ought to be, the organ of permanence, would
become the organ of rigidity, in a nation; by their intermarriages within
their own pale, it would be in fact perpetually entailed. Then, again, if a
popular tumult were to take place in Poland, who can doubt that the Jews
would be the first objects of murder and spoliation?
[Footnote 1: Chap. xv. ]
[Footnote 2 : Chap. ii. ]
[Footnote 3:
Mr. Coleridge had a very friendly acquaintance with several learned Jews in
this country, and he told me that, whenever he had fallen in with a Jew of
thorough education and literary habits, he had always found him possessed
of a strong natural capacity for metaphysical disquisitions. I may mention
here the best known of his Jewish friends, one whom he deeply respected,
Hyman Hurwitz. --ED. ]
April 17. 1830.
MOSAIC MIRACLES. --PANTHEISM.
In the miracles of Moses, there is a remarkable intermingling of acts,
which we should now-a-days call simply providential, with such as we should
still call miraculous. The passing of the Jordan, in the 3d chapter of the
book of Joshua, is perhaps the purest and sheerest miracle recorded in the
Bible; it seems to have been wrought for the miracle's sake, and so thereby
to show to the Jews--the descendants of those who had come out of Egypt--
that the _same_ God who had appeared to their fathers, and who had by
miracles, in many respects providential only, preserved them in the
wilderness, was _their_ God also. The manna and quails were ordinary
provisions of Providence, rendered miraculous by certain laws and qualities
annexed to them in the particular instance. The passage of the Red Sea was
effected by a strong wind, which, we are told, drove hack the waters; and
so on. But then, again, the death of the first-born was purely miraculous.
Hence, then, both Jews and Egyptians might take occasion to learn, that it
was _one and the same God_ who interfered specially, and who governed all
generally.
* * * * *
Take away the first verse of the hook of Genesis, and then what immediately
follows is an exact history or sketch of Pantheism. Pantheism was taught in
the mysteries of Greece; of which the Samothracian or Cabeiric were
probably the purest and the most ancient.
_April_ 18. 1830.
POETIC PROMISE.
In the present age it is next to impossible to predict from specimens,
however favourable, that a young man will turn out a great poet, or rather
a poet at all. Poetic taste, dexterity in composition, and ingenious
imitation, often produce poems that are very promising in appearance. But
genius, or the power of doing something new, is another thing. Mr.
Tennyson's sonnets, such as I have seen, have many of the characteristic
excellencies of those of Wordsworth and Southey.
_April 19. 1830. _
It is a small thing that the patient knows of his own state; yet some
things he _does_ know better than his physician.
* * * * *
I never had, and never could feel, any horror at death, simply as death.
* * * * *
Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.
_April 30. 1830. _
NOMINALISTS AND REALISTS. --BRITISH SCHOOLMEN. --SPINOSA.
The result of my system will be, to show, that, so far from the world being
a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat.
* * * * *
The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and
most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right, and
both wrong. They each maintained opposite poles of the same truth; which
truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was
the head of the Realists; Ockham,[1] his own disciple, of the Nominalists.
Ockham, though certainly very prolix, is a most extraordinary writer.
[Footnote 1:
John Duns Scotus was born in 1274, at Dunstone in the parish of Emildune,
near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton College, and Professor of Divinity
at Oxford. After acquiring an uncommon reputation at his own university, he
went to Paris, and thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, at the early
age of thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and found time
to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. See the Lyons
edition, by Luke Wadding, in 1639.
William Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347; but the place and
year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. He was styled the Invincible
Doctor, and wrote bitterly against Pope John XXII. We all remember Butler's
account of these worthies:--
"He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly;
In school divinity as able
As he that hight Irrefragable,
A second Thomas, or at once
To name them all, another _Dunse_;
Profound in all the Nominal
And Real ways beyond them all;
For he a rope of sand could twist
As tough as learned Sorbonist. "
HUDIBRAS. Part I. Canto I. v. 149.
The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Gloucestershire,
who died in 1245. Amongst his pupils at Paris, was Fidanza, better known by
the name of Bonaventura, the Seraphic Doctor. The controversy of the
Realists and the Nominalists cannot he explained in a note; but in
substance the original point of dispute may be thus stated. The Realists
held _generally_ with Aristotle, that there were universal _ideas_ or
essences impressed upon matter, and coveal with, and inherent in, their
objects. Plato held that these universal forms existed as exemplars in the
divine mind previously to, and independently of, matter; but both
maintained, under one shape or other, the real existence of universal
forms. On the other hand, Zeno and the old Stoics denied the existence of
these universals, and contended that they were no more than mere tenms and
nominal representatives of their particular objects. The Nominalists were
the followers of Zeno, and held that universal forms are merely modes of
conception, and exist solely in and for the mind. It does not require much
reflection to see how great an influence these different systems might have
upon the enunciation of the higher doctrines of Christianity. --ED. ]
* * * * *
It is remarkable, that two thirds of the eminent schoolmen were of British
birth. It was the schoolmen who made the languages of Europe what they now
are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now, but, in truth, these
quiddities are just the parts of their language which we have rejected;
whilst we never think of the mass which we have adopted, and have in daily
use.
* * * * *
One of the scholastic definitions of God is this,--_Deus est, cui omne quod
est est esse omne quod est:_ as long a sentence made up of as few words,
and those as oligosyllabic, as any I remember. By the by, that
_oligosyllabic_ is a word happily illustrative of its own meaning, _ex
opposito_.
* * * * *
Spinosa, at the very end of his life, seems to have gained a glimpse of the
truth. In the last letter published in his works, it appears that he began
to suspect his premiss. His _unica substantia_ is, in fact, a mere notion,
--a _subject_ of the mind, and no _object_ at all.
* * * * *
Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind. He leads you to see,
that propositions involving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are
nevertheless true; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher logic--
that of ideas. They are contradictory only in the Aristotelian logic, which
is the instrument of the understanding. I have read most of the works of
Plato several times with profound attention, but not all his writings. In
fact, I soon found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was a
consummate genius. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (--a truth of the
reason, an Idea)--that in its own proper form it is _inconceivable_. For to
_conceive_, is a function of the understanding, which can he exercised only
on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding
all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection,
and to be rendered _expressible_. And here we have a second test and sign
of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the
understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each
of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes
the representative or _expression_ (--the _exponent_) of a truth beyond
conception and inexpressible. Examples: _before_ Abraham WAS, I AM. God is
a circle, the centre of which is every where, and the circumference no
where. The soul is all in every part. " Aids to Reflection, n. 224. n. See
also _Church and State_, p. 12. --ED. ]
* * * * *
My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to animal magnetism. Von
Spix, the eminent naturalist, makes no doubt of the matter, and talks
coolly of giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or external
object, by an exertion of its own will: such a power is not properly
electrical; for electricity acts invariably under the same circumstances. A
steady gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush deeply.
Account for that. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301. vol. i. of the richly
annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed as
his "darling book and the favourite of his library" to its great and
honoured author and donor:--
"The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the
Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this
sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is
common to almost all the _magnetic_ patients in Denmark, Germany, France,
and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not
apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in
different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, and
where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the
testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attesters are to be found names of
men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of
intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their
competence in respect of physio- and psychological insight and attainments
incomparably greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a
Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c. ? Were I asked, what
_I_ think, my answer would be,--that the evidence enforces scepticism and a
_non liquet_;--too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be
satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvibility on the supposition of
imposture or casual coincidence;--too fugacious and unfixable to support
any theory that supposes the always potential, and, under certain
conditions and circumstances, occasionally active, existence of a
correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an
hypothesis would be adequate to the _satisfactory_ explanation of the
facts;--though that of a _metastasis_ of specific functions of the nervous
energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, _plus_ some
delusion, _plus_ some illusion, _plus_ some imposition, _plus_ some chance
and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the
scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been
before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in
French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have
never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, _ex. gr. _
Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical
celebrity, and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Klug's
work had left me, without having moved an inch backward or forward. The
reply of Treviranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is
worth recording:--'Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht wurde
geglaubt haben auf _ihren_ erzahlung,' &c. 'I have seen what I am certain I
would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore, I
can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on _mine_. '"--ED. ]
_May_ 1. 1830.
FALL OF MAN. --MADNESS. --BROWN AND DARWIN. --NITROUS OXIDE.
A Fall of some sort or other--the creation, as it were, of the non-
absolute--is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without
this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is
explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.
* * * * *
Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the sleep of the spirit with
certain conditions of wakefulness; that is to say, lucid intervals. During
this sleep, or recession of the spirit, the lower or bestial states of life
rise up into action and prominence. It is an awful thing to be eternally
tempted by the perverted senses. The reason may resist--it does resist--for
a long time; but too often, at length, it yields for a moment, and the man
is mad for ever. An act of the will is, in many instances, precedent to
complete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler who said, that he was "all
his life struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses," which
would have maddened him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his
reason for a single moment.
* * * * *
Brown's and Darwin's theories are both ingenious; but the first will not
account for sleep, and the last will not account for death: considerable
defects, you must allow.
* * * * *
It is said that every excitation is followed by a commensurate exhaustion.
That is not so. The excitation caused by inhaling nitrous oxide is an
exception at least; it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the bubble.
The operation of this gas is to prevent the decarbonating of the blood;
and, consequently, if taken excessively, it would produce apoplexy. The
blood becomes black as ink. The voluptuous sensation attending the
inhalation is produced by the compression and resistance.
_May_ 2. 1830.
PLANTS. --INSECTS. --MEN. --DOG. --ANT AND BEE.
Plants exist _in_ themselves. Insects _by_, or by means of, themselves.
Men, _for_ themselves. The perfection of irrational animals is that which
is best for _them_; the perfection of man is that which is absolutely best.
There is growth only in plants; but there is irritability, or, a better
word, instinctivity, in insects.
* * * * *
You may understand by _insect_, life in sections--diffused generally over
all the parts.
* * * * *
The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a [*Greek: storgae], or affection
_upwards_ to man.
* * * * *
The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man in the understanding or
faculty of adapting means to proximate ends than the elephant. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant, as the most
intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational
creatures, so far as our present acquaintance with the facts of natural
history enables us to judge. --ED. ]
_May_ 3. 1830.
BLACK COLONEL.
What an excellent character is the black Colonel in Mrs. Bennett's "Beggar
Girl! "[1]
If an inscription be put upon my tomb, it may be that I was an enthusiastic
lover of the church; and as enthusiastic a hater of those who have betrayed
it, be they who they may. [2]
[Footnote 1:
This character was frequently a subject of pleasant description and
enlargement with Mr. Coleridge, and he generally passed from it to a high
commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being in their way perfectly
genuine and individual productions. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2:
This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. A better and a
truer character would be, that Coleridge was a lover of the church, and a
defender of the faith! This last expression is the utterance of a
conviction so profound that it can patiently wait for time to prove its
truth. --ED. ]
_May_ 4. 1830.
HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH.
Holland and the Netherlands ought to be seen once, because no other country
is like them. Every thing is artificial. You will be struck with the
combinations of vivid greenery, and water, and building; but every thing is
so distinct and rememberable, that you would not improve your conception by
visiting the country a hundred times over. It is interesting to see a
country and a nature _made_, as it were, by man, and to compare it with
God's nature. [1]
If you go, remark, (indeed you will be forced to do so in spite of
yourself,) remark, I say, the identity (for it is more than proximity) of a
disgusting dirtiness in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence
for, the human person; and a persecuting painted cleanliness in every thing
connected with property. You must not walk in their gardens; nay, you must
hardly look into them.
[Footnote 1:
In the summer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion with Mr. Wordsworth
in Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine, as far as Bergen. He came back
delighted, especially with his stay near Bonn, but with an abiding disgust
at the filthy habits of the people. Upon Cologne, in particular, he avenged
himself in two epigrams. See Poet. Works, vol. ii. p. 144. --ED. ]
* * * * *
The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, certainly; but it is the
happiness of _animals_. In vain do you look for the sweet breath of hope
and advancement among them. [1]In fact, as to their villas and gardens,
they are not to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box.
[Footnote 1:
"For every gift of noble origin
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath. "
_Wordsworth. _]
_May 5. 1830. _
RELIGION GENTILIZES. --WOMEN AND MEN. --BIBLICAL COMMENTATORS. --WALKERITE
CREED.
You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly
thing in the world. It will _alone_ gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I
know nothing else that will, _alone_. Certainly not the army, which is
thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.
* * * * *
A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. Man seems to have been
designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think
women are generally better creatures than men. They have, taken
universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much
stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a
strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever.
* * * * *
I never could get much information out of the biblical commentators.
Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable
trick of passing _siccissimis pedibus_ over the parts which puzzle a man of
reflection.
The Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New Church, as it is called,
appears to be a miscellany of Calvinism and Quakerism; but it is hard to
understand it.
* * * * *
_May_ 7, 1830.
HORNE TOOKE. ----DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY. ----GENDER OF THE SUN IN GERMAN.
Horne Tooke was pre-eminently a ready-witted man. He had that clearness
which is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, gave
you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness. His voice
was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no
progression or developement. All that is worth any thing (and that is but
little) in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter
which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, hut
there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto
volume, 1 believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting newspaper lampoons
and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the
pamphlet, It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so
divine, a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political
squibs. All that is true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who
gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system
of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language
by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history of one language,
or one or two languages. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair.
Harris, in the Hermes, was dealing--not very profoundly, it is true,--with
the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, and metaphysical causes
and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of
words only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, which is
a very different thing. In point of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic
dialects. I must say, all that _decantata fabula_ about the genders of the
sun and moon in German seems to me great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in
the _Platt-Deutsch_ of the north of Germany there were only two definite
articles--_die_ for masculine and feminine, and _das_ for neuter. Then it
was _die sonne_, in a masculine sense, as we say with the same word as
article, _the_ sun. Luther, in constructing the _Hoch-Deutsch_ (for really
his miraculous and providential translation of the Bible was the
fundamental act of construction of the literary German), took for his
distinct masculine article the _der_ of the _Ober-Deutsch_, and thus
constituted the three articles of the present High German, _der, die, das_.
Naturally, therefore, it would then have been, _der sonne_; but here the
analogy of the Greek grammar prevailed, and as _sonne_ had the arbitrary
feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its old article _die_,
which, originally including masculine and feminine both, had grown to
designate the feminine only. To the best of my recollection, the
Minnesingers and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine; and,
since Luther's time, the poets feel the awkwardness of the classical gender
affixed to the sun so much, that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or
some other synonyme instead. I must acknowledge my doubts, whether, upon
more accurate investigation, it can be shown that there ever was a nation
that considered the sun in itself, and apart from language, as the feminine
power. The moon does not so clearly demand a feminine as the sun does a
masculine sex: it might be considered negatively or neuter;--yet if the
reception of its light from the sun were known, that would have been a good
reason for making her feminine, as being the recipient body.
* * * * *
As our _the_ was the German _die_, so I believe our _that_ stood for _das_,
and was used as a neuter definite article.
The _Platt-Deutsch_ was a compact language like the English, not admitting
much agglutination. The _Ober-Deutsch_ was fuller and fonder of
agglutinating words together, although it was not so soft in its sounds.
_May 8. 1830. _
HORNE TOOKE. --JACOBINS.
Horne Tooke said that his friends might, if they pleased, go as far as
Slough,--he should go no farther than Hounslow; but that was no reason why
he should not keep them company so far as their roads were the same. The
answer is easy. Suppose you know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit
a robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be his accomplice, have you
a moral right to walk arm in arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving
him your countenance, prevent his being taken up? The history of all the
world tells us, that immoral means will ever intercept good ends.
* * * * *
Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the
cause of political liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will
be irresistible; but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, and
morals, and domestic happiness into the hands of the aristocrats. Thank
God! that they did so. England was saved from civil war by their enormous,
their providential, blundering.
* * * * *
Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings and the convictions of
the whole matronage of his country? The women are as influential upon such
national interests as the men.
* * * * *
Horne Tooke was always making a butt of Mr. Godwin; who, nevertheless, had
that in him which Tooke could never have understood. I saw a good deal of
Tooke at one time: he left upon me the impression of his being a keen, iron
man.
_May_ 9. 1830.
PERSIAN AND ARABIC POETRY. --MILESIAN TALES.
I must acknowledge I never could see much merit in the Persian poetry,
which I have read in translation. There is not a ray of imagination in it,
and but a glimmering of fancy. It is, in fact, so far as I know, deficient
in truth. Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must
be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but
it must be a house, at least. The Arabian Nights' Tales are a different
thing --they are delightful, but I cannot help surmising that there is a
good deal of Greek fancy in them. No doubt we have had a great loss in the
Milesian Tales. [1] The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and
most antique cast.
Think of the sublimity, I should rather say the profundity, of that
passage in Ezekiel, [2]"Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered,
O Lord God, thou knowest. " I know nothing like it.
