If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial
within him, what is there left for us to refer to it, but the fiendish?
within him, what is there left for us to refer to it, but the fiendish?
Coleridge - Table Talk
]
* * * * *
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.
[Footnote 1:
The Milesiacs were so called, because written or composed by Aristides of
Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most of them was placed in
that rich and luxurious city. Harpocration cites the sixth book of this
collection. Nothing, I believe, is now known of the age or history of this
Aristides, except what may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius
Sisenna translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid:--
Junxit Aristides _Milesia crimina_ secum--
and afterwards,
Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nec obfuit illi
Historiae turpes inseruisse jocos:--
_Fasti_, ii. 412-445.
and also from the incident mentioned in the _Plutarchian_ life of Crassus,
that after the defeat at Carrhae, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was
found in the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by,
if history has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous
in such a case,) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of
Seleucia, and a portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the
Romans, who, even during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal
of such _infamous compositions_,--c. 32. The immoral character of these
tales, therefore, may be considered pretty clearly established; they were
the Decameron and Heptameron of antiquity. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2: Chap. xxxvii. v. 3. ]
_May_ 11. 1830.
SIR T. MONRO. --SIR S. RAFFLES. --CANNING.
Sir Thomas Monro and Sir Stamford Raffles were both great men; but I
recognise more genius in the latter, though, I believe, the world says
otherwise.
* * * * *
I never found what I call an idea in any speech or writing of ----'s.
Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher
intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; ---
rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to
institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my
judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered
the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea
of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the
duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or
in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the
country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but
as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire Westerns!
From what I saw of Homer, I thought him a superior man, in real
intellectual greatness.
* * * * *
Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult
to see the ruins of the fabric through it.
_May_ 12. 1830.
SHAKSPEARE. --MILTON. --HOMER.
Shakspeare is the Spinosistic deity--an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is
the deity of prescience; he stands _ab extra_, and drives a fiery chariot
and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in.
Shakspeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the
individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the
Paradise Lost. Shakspeare's rhymed verses are excessively condensed,--
epigrams with the point every where; but in his blank dramatic verse he is
diffused, with a linked sweetness long drawn out. No one can understand
Shakspeare's superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison, all
that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of
his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare's
own. His rhythm is so perfect, that you may be almost sure that you do not
understand the real force of a line, if it does not run well as you read
it. The necessary mental pause after every hemistich or imperfect line is
always equal to the time that would have been taken in reading the complete
verse.
* * * * *
I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere concrete name for the
rhapsodies of the Iliad. [1] Of course there was _a_ Homer, and twenty
besides. I will engage to compile twelve books with characters just as
distinct and consistent as those in the Iliad, from the metrical ballads,
and other chronicles of England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. I say nothing about moral dignity, but the mere consistency of
character. The different qualities were traditional. Tristram is always
courteous, Lancelot invincible, and so on. The same might be done with the
Spanish romances of the Cid. There is no subjectivity whatever in the
Homeric poetry. There is a subjectivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is
himself before himself in everything he writes; and there is a subjectivity
of the _persona_, or dramatic character, as in all Shakspeare's great
creations, Hamlet, Lear, &c.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge was a decided Wolfian in the Homeric question; but he had
never read a word of the famous Prolegomena, and knew nothing of Wolf's
reasoning, but what I told him of it in conversation. Mr. C. informed me,
that he adopted the conclusion contained in the text upon the first perusal
of Vico's Scienza Nuova; "not," he said, "that Vico has reasoned it out
with such learning and accuracy as you report of Wolf, but Vico struck out
all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out of my own head. "--
ED. ]
_May_ 14. 1830.
REASON AND UNDERSTANDING. --WORDS AND NAMES OF THINGS.
Until you have mastered the fundamental difference, in kind, between the
reason and the understanding as faculties of the human mind, you cannot
escape a thousand difficulties in philosophy. It is pre-eminently the
_Gradus ad Philosophiam_.
* * * * *
The general harmony between the operations of the mind and heart, and the
words which express them in almost all languages, is wonderful; whilst the
endless discrepancies between the names of _things_ is very well deserving
notice. There are nearly a hundred names in the different German dialects
for the alder-tree. I believe many more remarkable instances are to be
found in Arabic. Indeed, you may take a very pregnant and useful
distinction between _words_ and mere arbitrary _names of things_.
_May 15. 1830. _
THE TRINITY. --IRVING.
The Trinity is, 1. the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life.
As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union
must be as transcendant as the distinction.
Mr. Irving's notion is tritheism,--nay, rather in terms, tri-daemonism. His
opinion about the sinfulness of the humanity of our Lord is absurd, if
considered in one point of view; for body is not carcass. How can there be
a sinful carcass? But what he says is capable of a sounder interpretation.
Irving caught many things from me; but he would never attend to any thing
which he thought he could not use in the pulpit. I told him the certain
consequence would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimes he
has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, and then an
outbreak of almost madman's babble. [1]
[Footnote 1:
The admiration and sympathy which Mr. Coleridge felt and expressed towards
the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in London, were great and
sincere; and his grief at the deplorable change which followed was in
proportion. But, long after the tongues shall have failed and been
forgotten, Irving's name will live in the splendid eulogies of his friend.
See _Church and State_, p. 180. n. --ED. ]
_May 16. 1830. _
ABRAHAM. --ISAAC. --JACOB.
How wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of the characters of the three
patriarchs in Genesis! To be sure, if ever man could, without impropriety,
be called, or supposed to be, "the friend of God," Abraham was that man. We
are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so
profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God; in
other respects, he takes fire, like an Arah sheikh, at the injuries
suffered by Lot, and goes to war with the combined kinglings immediately.
* * * * *
Isaac is, as it were, a faint shadow of his father Abraham. Born in
possession of the power and wealth which his father had acquired, he is
always peaceful and meditative; and it is curious to observe his timid and
almost childish imitation of Abraham's stratagem about his wife. [1] Isaac
does it before-hand, and without any apparent necessity.
[Footnote 1: Gen. xxvi. 6. ]
* * * * *
Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises all sorts of tricks and wiles, which,
according to our modern notions of honour, we cannot approve. But you will
observe that all these tricks are confined to matters of prudential
arrangement, to worldly success and prosperity (for such, in fact, was the
essence of the birthright); and I think we must not exact from men of an
imperfectly civilized age the same conduct as to mere temporal and bodily
abstinence which we have a right to demand from Christians. Jacob is always
careful not to commit any violence; he shudders at bloodshed. See his
demeanour after the vengeance taken on the Schechemites. [1] He is the
exact compound of the timidity and gentleness of Isaac, and of the
underhand craftiness of his mother Rebecca. No man could be a bad man who
loved as he loved Rachel. I dare say Laban thought none the worse of Jacob
for his plan of making the ewes bring forth ring-streaked lambs.
[Footnote 1: Gen. xxxiv. ]
_May 17. 1830. _
ORIGIN OF ACTS. --LOVE.
If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial
within him, what is there left for us to refer to it, but the fiendish?
Passion without any appetite is fiendish.
* * * * *
The best way to bring a clever young man, who has become sceptical and
unsettled, to reason, is to make him _feel_ something in any way. Love, if
sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a
sense and assurance of something real and actual; and that sense alone will
make him _think_ to a sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is
thinking.
* * * * *
"Never marry but for love," says William Penn in his Reflexions and Maxims;
"but see that thou lovest what is lovely. "
_May 18. 1830. _
LORD ELDON'S DOCTRINE AS TO GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. --DEMOCRACY.
Lord Eldon's doctrine, that grammar schools, in the sense of the reign of
Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, must necessarily mean schools for teaching
Latin and Greek, is, I think, founded on an insufficient knowledge of the
history and literature of the sixteenth century. Ben Jonson uses the term
"grammar" without any reference to the learned languages.
* * * * *
It is intolerable when men, who have no other knowledge, have not even a
competent understanding of that world in which they are always living, and
to which they refer every thing.
* * * * *
Although contemporary events obscure past events in a living man's life,
yet as soon as he is dead, and his whole life is a matter of history, one
action stands out as conspicuously as another.
A democracy, according to the prescript of pure reason, would, in fact, be
a church. There would he focal points in it, but no superior.
_May 20. 1830. _
THE EUCHARIST. --ST. JOHN, xix. 11. --GENUINENESS OF BOOKS OF MOSES. --
DIVINITY OF CHRIST. --MOSAIC PROPHECIES.
No doubt, Chrysostom, and the other rhetorical fathers, contributed a good
deal, by their rash use of figurative language, to advance the
superstitious notion of the eucharist; but the beginning had been much
earlier. [1] In Clement, indeed, the mystery is treated as it was treated
by Saint John and Saint Paul; but in Hermas we see the seeds of the error,
and more clearly in Irenaeus; and so it went on till the idea was changed
into an idol.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge made these remarks upon my quoting Selden's well-known saying
(Table Talk), "that transubstantiation was nothing but rhetoric turned into
logic. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
The errors of the Sacramentaries, on the one hand, and of the Romanists on
the other, are equally great. The first have volatilized the eucharist into
a metaphor; the last have condensed it into an idol.
Jeremy Taylor, in his zeal against transubstantiation, contends that the
latter part of the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel has no reference to
the eucharist. If so, St. John wholly passes over this sacred mystery; for
he does not include it in his notice of the last supper. Would not a total
silence of this great apostle and evangelist upon this mystery be strange?
A mystery, I say; for it _is_ a mystery; it is the only mystery in our
religious worship. When many of the disciples left our Lord, and apparently
on the very ground that this saying was hard, he does not attempt to detain
them by any explanation, but simply adds the comment, that his words were
spirit. If he had really meant that the eucharist should he a mere
commemorative celebration of his death, is it conceivable that he would let
these disciples go away from him upon such a gross misunderstanding? Would
he not have said, "You need not make a difficulty; I only mean so and so? "
* * * * *
Arnauld, and the other learned Romanists, are irresistible against the low
sacramentary doctrine.
* * * * *
The sacrament of baptism applies itself, and has reference to the faith or
conviction, and is, therefore, only to be performed once;--it is the light
of man. The sacrament of the eucharist is a symbol of _all_ our religion;--
it is the life of man. It is commensurate with our will, and we must,
therefore, want it continually.
* * * * *
The meaning of the expression, [Greek: ei m_e _en soi didomenon an_othen],
"except it were given thee _from above_," in the 19th chapter of St. John,
ver. 11. , seems to me to have been generally and grossly mistaken. It is
commonly understood as importing that Pilate could have no power to deliver
Jesus to the Jews, unless it had been given him _by God_, which, no doubt,
is true; but if that is the meaning, where is the force or connection of
the following clause, [Greek: dia touto], "_therefore_ he that delivered me
unto thee hath the greater sin? " In what respect were the Jews more sinful
in delivering Jesus up, _because_ Pilate could do nothing except by God's
leave? The explanation of Erasmus and Clarke, and some others, is very dry-
footed. I conceive the meaning of our Lord to have been simply this, that
Pilate would have had no power or jurisdiction--[Greek: exousian]--over
him, if it had not been given by the Sanhedrin, the [Greek: an_o boul_e],
and _therefore_ it was that the Jews had the greater sin. There was also
this further peculiar baseness and malignity in the conduct of the Jews.
The mere assumption of Messiahship, as such, was no crime in the eyes of
the Jews; they hated Jesus, because he would not be _their sort_ of
Messiah: on the other hand, the Romans cared not for his declaration that
he was the Son of God; the crime in _their_ eyes was his assuming to be a
king. Now, here were the Jews accusing Jesus before the Roman governor of
_that_ which, in the first place, they knew that Jesus denied in the sense
in which they urged it, and which, in the next place, had the charge been
true, would have been so far from a crime in their eyes, that the very
gospel history itself, as well as all the history to the destruction of
Jerusalem, shows it would have been popular with the whole nation. They
wished to destroy him, and for that purpose charge him falsely with a crime
which yet was no crime in their own eyes, if it had been true; but only so
as against the Roman domination, which they hated with all their souls, and
against which they were themselves continually conspiring!
* * * * *
Observe, I pray, the manner and sense in which the high-priest understands
the plain declaration of our Lord, that he was the Son of God. [Footnote:
Matt. xxvi. v. 63. Mark, xiv. 61. ] "I adjure thee by the living God, that
thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God," or "the Son of
the Blessed," as it is in Mark. Jesus said, "I am,--and hereafter ye shall
see the Son of man (or me) sitting on the right hand of power, and coming
in the clouds of heaven. " Does Caiaphas take this explicit answer as if
Jesus meant that he was full of God's spirit, or was doing his commands, or
walking in his ways, in which sense Moses, the prophets, nay, all good men,
were and are the sons of God? No, no! He tears his robes in sunder, and
cries out, "He hath spoken blasphemy. What further need have we of
witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. " What blasphemy, I
should like to know, unless the assuming to be the "Son of God" was
assuming to be of the _divine nature_?
* * * * *
One striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic books is this,--they
contain precise prohibitions--by way of predicting the consequences of
disobedience--of all those things which David and Solomon actually did, and
gloried in doing,--raising cavalry, making a treaty with Egypt, laying up
treasure, and polygamising. Now, would such prohibitions have been
fabricated in those kings' reigns, or afterwards? Impossible.
* * * * *
The manner of the predictions of Moses is very remarkable. He is like a man
standing on an eminence, and addressing people below him, and pointing to
things which he can, and they cannot, see. He does not say, You will act in
such and such a way, and the consequences will be so and so; but, So and so
will take place, because you will act in such a way!
May 21. 1830.
TALENT AND GENIUS. --MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the
action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
* * * * *
Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil and temptation. The
angelic nature would act from impulse alone. A due mean of motive and
impulse is the only practicable object of our moral philosophy.
_May_ 23. 1830.
CONSTITUTIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL LIFE. --HYSTERIA. --HYDRO-CARBONIC GAS. --
BITTERS AND TONICS. --SPECIFIC MEDICINES.
It is a great error in physiology not to distinguish between what may be
called the general or fundamental life--the _principium vitae_, and the
functional life--the life in the functions. Organization must presuppose
life as anterior to it: without life, there could not be or remain any
organization; but then there is also _a_ life in the organs, or functions,
distinct from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes,--demands the existence
of a musician as anterior to it, without whom no flute could ever have
existed; and yet again, without the instrument there can be no music.
* * * * *
It often happens that, on the one hand, the _principium vitae_, or
constitutional life, may be affected without any, or the least imaginable,
affection of the functions; as in inoculation, where one pustule only has
appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and yet this has so entered
into the constitution, as to indispose it to infection under the most
accumulated and intense contagion; and, on the other hand, hysteria,
hydrophobia, and gout will disorder the functions to the most dreadful
degree, and yet often leave the life untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is
quite sound; but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life forcibly
removed from under the control of his will.
* * * * *
Hysteria may be fitly called _mimosa_, from its counterfeiting so many
diseases,--even death itself.
* * * * *
Hydro-carbonic gas produces the most death-like exhaustion, without any
previous excitement. I think this gas should be inhaled by way of
experiment in cases of hydrophobia.
There is a great difference between bitters and tonics. Where weakness
proceeds from excess of irritability, there bitters act beneficially;
because all bitters are poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing,
and lethargizing the irritability. But where weakness proceeds from the
opposite cause of relaxation, there tonics are good; because they brace up
and tighten the loosened string. Bracing is a correct metaphor. Bark goes
near to be a combination of a bitter and a tonic; but no perfect medical
combination of the two properties is yet known.
* * * * *
The study of specific medicines is too much disregarded now. No doubt the
hunting after specifics is a mark of ignorance and weakness in medicine,
yet the neglect of them is proof also of immaturity; for, in fact, all
medicines will be found specific in the perfection of the science.
_May_ 25. 1830.
EPISTLES TO THE EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. --OATHS.
The Epistle to the Ephesians is evidently a catholic epistle, addressed to
the whole of what might be called St. Paul's diocese. It is one of the
divinest compositions of man. It embraces every doctrine of Christianity;--
first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity, and then those precepts
common to it with natural religion. The Epistle to the Colossians is the
overflowing, as it were, of St. Paul's mind upon the same subject.
* * * * *
The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to
make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in
my judgment, a sin to do so. The Jews' oath is an adjuration by the judge
to the witness: "In the name of God, I ask you. " There is an express
instance of it in the high-priest's adjuring or exorcising Christ by the
living God, in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, and you will observe
that our Lord answered the appeal. [1]
You may depend upon it, the more oath-taking, the more lying, generally
among the people.
[Footnote 1:
See this instance cited, and the whole history and moral policy of the
common system of judicial swearing examined with clearness and good
feeling, in Mr. Tyler's late work on Oaths. --ED. ]
May 27. 1830.
FLOGGING. --ELOQUENCE OF ABUSE.
I had _one_ just flogging. When I was about thirteen, I went to a
shoemaker, and begged him to take me as his apprentice. He, being an honest
man, immediately brought me to Bowyer, who got into a great rage, knocked
me down, and even pushed Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me
why I had made myself such a fool? to which I answered, that I had a great
desire to be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought of being a
clergyman. "Why so? " said he. --"Because, to tell you the truth, sir," said
I, "I am an infidel! " For this, without more ado, Bowyer flogged me,--
wisely, as I think,--soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would
have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it was, I
was laughed at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly.
* * * * *
How rich the Aristophanic Greek is in the eloquence of abuse! --
[Greek:
'O Bdelyre, kanaischunte, kai tolmaere su,
Kai miare, kai pammiare, kai miarotate. ][1]
We are not behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting
occasion,--Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead,
clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl,
loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop,
fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed,
Jackan-apes! Why I could go on for a minute more!
[Footnote 1: In The Frogs. --ED. ]
_May_ 28. 1830.
THE AMERICANS.
I deeply regret the anti-American articles of some of the leading reviews.
The Americans regard what is said of them in England a thousand times more
than they do any thing said of them in any other country. The Americans are
excessively pleased with any kind or favourable expressions, and never
forgive or forget any slight or abuse. It would be better for them if they
were a trifle thicker-skinned.
* * * * *
The last American war was to us only something to talk or read about; but
to the Americans it was the cause of misery in their own homes.
* * * * *
I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language,
religion, laws, government, blood,--identity in these makes men of one
country.
_May_ 29. 1830.
BOOK OF JOB.
The Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to the Mosaic dispensation. It
represents the mind of a good man not enlightened by an actual revelation,
but seeking about for one. In no other book is the desire and necessity for
a Mediator so intensely expressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the
Hebrews, is most vividly impressed on the book, in opposition to pantheism.
* * * * *
I now think, after many doubts, that the passage, "I know that my Redeemer
liveth," &c. may fairly be taken as a burst of determination, a _quasi_
prophecy. [1] "I know not _how_ this can be; but in spite of all my
difficulties, this I _do_ know, that I shall be recompensed. "
[Footnote 1: Chap. xix. 25, 26. ]
* * * * *
It should be observed, that all the imagery in the speeches of the men is
taken from the East, and is no more than a mere representation of the forms
of material nature. But when God speaks, the tone is exalted; and almost
all the images are taken from Egypt, the crocodile, the war-horse, and so
forth. Egypt was then the first monarchy that had a splendid court.
* * * * *
Satan, in the prologue, does not mean the devil, our Diabolus. There is no
calumny in his words. He is rather the _circuitor_, the accusing spirit, a
dramatic attorney-general. But after the prologue, which was necessary to
bring the imagination into a proper state for the dialogue, we hear no more
of this Satan.
* * * * *
Warburton's notion, that the Book of Job was of so late a date as Ezra, is
wholly groundless. His only reason is this appearance of Satan.
_May_ 30. 1830.
TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS.
I wish the Psalms were translated afresh; or, rather, that the present
version were revised. Scores of passages are utterly incoherent as they now
stand. If the primary visual images had been oftener preserved, the
connection and force of the sentences would have been better perceived. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge, like so many of the elder divines of the Christian church,
had an _affectionate_ reverence for the moral and evangelical portion of
the Book of Psalms. He told me that, after having studied every page of the
Bible with the deepest attention, he had found no other part of Scripture
come home so closely to his inmost yearnings and necessities. During many
of his latter years he used to read ten or twelve verses every evening,
ascertaining (for his knowledge of Hebrew was enough for that) the exact
visual image or first radical meaning of every noun substantive; and he
repeatedly expressed to me his surprise and pleasure at finding that in
nine cases out of ten the bare primary sense, if literally rendered, threw
great additional light on the text. He was not disposed to allow the
prophetic or allusive character so largely as is done by Horne and others;
but he acknowledged it in some instances in the fullest manner. In
particular, he rejected the local and temporary reference which has been
given to the 110th Psalm, and declared his belief in its deep mystical
import with regard to the Messiah. Mr. C. once gave me the following note
upon the _22d_ Psalm written by him, I believe, many years previously, but
which, he said, he approved at that time. It will find as appropriate a
niche here as any where else:--
"I am much delighted and instructed by the hypothesis, which I think
probable, that our Lord in repeating _Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani_, really
recited the whole or a large part of the 22d Psalm. It is impossible to
read that psalm without the liveliest feelings of love, gratitude, and
sympathy. It is, indeed, a wonderful prophecy, whatever might or might not
have been David's notion when he composed it. Whether Christ did audibly
repeat the whole or not, it is certain. I think, that he did it mentally,
and said aloud what was sufficient to enable his followers to do the same.
Even at this day to repeat in the same manner but the first line of a
common hymn would be understood as a reference to the whole. Above all, I
am thankful for the thought which suggested itself to my mind, whilst I was
reading this beautiful psalm, namely, that we should not exclusively think
of Christ as the Logos united to human nature, but likewise as a perfect
man united to the Logos.
* * * * *
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.
[Footnote 1:
The Milesiacs were so called, because written or composed by Aristides of
Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most of them was placed in
that rich and luxurious city. Harpocration cites the sixth book of this
collection. Nothing, I believe, is now known of the age or history of this
Aristides, except what may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius
Sisenna translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid:--
Junxit Aristides _Milesia crimina_ secum--
and afterwards,
Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nec obfuit illi
Historiae turpes inseruisse jocos:--
_Fasti_, ii. 412-445.
and also from the incident mentioned in the _Plutarchian_ life of Crassus,
that after the defeat at Carrhae, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was
found in the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by,
if history has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous
in such a case,) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of
Seleucia, and a portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the
Romans, who, even during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal
of such _infamous compositions_,--c. 32. The immoral character of these
tales, therefore, may be considered pretty clearly established; they were
the Decameron and Heptameron of antiquity. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2: Chap. xxxvii. v. 3. ]
_May_ 11. 1830.
SIR T. MONRO. --SIR S. RAFFLES. --CANNING.
Sir Thomas Monro and Sir Stamford Raffles were both great men; but I
recognise more genius in the latter, though, I believe, the world says
otherwise.
* * * * *
I never found what I call an idea in any speech or writing of ----'s.
Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher
intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; ---
rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to
institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my
judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered
the idea of the use of an institution. How fine, for example, is the idea
of the unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking together the
duke to the country gentleman in the primary distribution of justice, or
in the preservation of order and execution of law at least throughout the
country! Yet some men never seem to have thought of it for one moment, but
as connected with brewers, and barristers, and tyrannical Squire Westerns!
From what I saw of Homer, I thought him a superior man, in real
intellectual greatness.
* * * * *
Canning flashed such a light around the constitution, that it was difficult
to see the ruins of the fabric through it.
_May_ 12. 1830.
SHAKSPEARE. --MILTON. --HOMER.
Shakspeare is the Spinosistic deity--an omnipresent creativeness. Milton is
the deity of prescience; he stands _ab extra_, and drives a fiery chariot
and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in.
Shakspeare's poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the
individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the
Paradise Lost. Shakspeare's rhymed verses are excessively condensed,--
epigrams with the point every where; but in his blank dramatic verse he is
diffused, with a linked sweetness long drawn out. No one can understand
Shakspeare's superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison, all
that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of
his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare's
own. His rhythm is so perfect, that you may be almost sure that you do not
understand the real force of a line, if it does not run well as you read
it. The necessary mental pause after every hemistich or imperfect line is
always equal to the time that would have been taken in reading the complete
verse.
* * * * *
I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere concrete name for the
rhapsodies of the Iliad. [1] Of course there was _a_ Homer, and twenty
besides. I will engage to compile twelve books with characters just as
distinct and consistent as those in the Iliad, from the metrical ballads,
and other chronicles of England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table. I say nothing about moral dignity, but the mere consistency of
character. The different qualities were traditional. Tristram is always
courteous, Lancelot invincible, and so on. The same might be done with the
Spanish romances of the Cid. There is no subjectivity whatever in the
Homeric poetry. There is a subjectivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is
himself before himself in everything he writes; and there is a subjectivity
of the _persona_, or dramatic character, as in all Shakspeare's great
creations, Hamlet, Lear, &c.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge was a decided Wolfian in the Homeric question; but he had
never read a word of the famous Prolegomena, and knew nothing of Wolf's
reasoning, but what I told him of it in conversation. Mr. C. informed me,
that he adopted the conclusion contained in the text upon the first perusal
of Vico's Scienza Nuova; "not," he said, "that Vico has reasoned it out
with such learning and accuracy as you report of Wolf, but Vico struck out
all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out of my own head. "--
ED. ]
_May_ 14. 1830.
REASON AND UNDERSTANDING. --WORDS AND NAMES OF THINGS.
Until you have mastered the fundamental difference, in kind, between the
reason and the understanding as faculties of the human mind, you cannot
escape a thousand difficulties in philosophy. It is pre-eminently the
_Gradus ad Philosophiam_.
* * * * *
The general harmony between the operations of the mind and heart, and the
words which express them in almost all languages, is wonderful; whilst the
endless discrepancies between the names of _things_ is very well deserving
notice. There are nearly a hundred names in the different German dialects
for the alder-tree. I believe many more remarkable instances are to be
found in Arabic. Indeed, you may take a very pregnant and useful
distinction between _words_ and mere arbitrary _names of things_.
_May 15. 1830. _
THE TRINITY. --IRVING.
The Trinity is, 1. the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life.
As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union
must be as transcendant as the distinction.
Mr. Irving's notion is tritheism,--nay, rather in terms, tri-daemonism. His
opinion about the sinfulness of the humanity of our Lord is absurd, if
considered in one point of view; for body is not carcass. How can there be
a sinful carcass? But what he says is capable of a sounder interpretation.
Irving caught many things from me; but he would never attend to any thing
which he thought he could not use in the pulpit. I told him the certain
consequence would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimes he
has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, and then an
outbreak of almost madman's babble. [1]
[Footnote 1:
The admiration and sympathy which Mr. Coleridge felt and expressed towards
the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in London, were great and
sincere; and his grief at the deplorable change which followed was in
proportion. But, long after the tongues shall have failed and been
forgotten, Irving's name will live in the splendid eulogies of his friend.
See _Church and State_, p. 180. n. --ED. ]
_May 16. 1830. _
ABRAHAM. --ISAAC. --JACOB.
How wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of the characters of the three
patriarchs in Genesis! To be sure, if ever man could, without impropriety,
be called, or supposed to be, "the friend of God," Abraham was that man. We
are not surprised that Abimelech and Ephron seem to reverence him so
profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his conscious relation to God; in
other respects, he takes fire, like an Arah sheikh, at the injuries
suffered by Lot, and goes to war with the combined kinglings immediately.
* * * * *
Isaac is, as it were, a faint shadow of his father Abraham. Born in
possession of the power and wealth which his father had acquired, he is
always peaceful and meditative; and it is curious to observe his timid and
almost childish imitation of Abraham's stratagem about his wife. [1] Isaac
does it before-hand, and without any apparent necessity.
[Footnote 1: Gen. xxvi. 6. ]
* * * * *
Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises all sorts of tricks and wiles, which,
according to our modern notions of honour, we cannot approve. But you will
observe that all these tricks are confined to matters of prudential
arrangement, to worldly success and prosperity (for such, in fact, was the
essence of the birthright); and I think we must not exact from men of an
imperfectly civilized age the same conduct as to mere temporal and bodily
abstinence which we have a right to demand from Christians. Jacob is always
careful not to commit any violence; he shudders at bloodshed. See his
demeanour after the vengeance taken on the Schechemites. [1] He is the
exact compound of the timidity and gentleness of Isaac, and of the
underhand craftiness of his mother Rebecca. No man could be a bad man who
loved as he loved Rachel. I dare say Laban thought none the worse of Jacob
for his plan of making the ewes bring forth ring-streaked lambs.
[Footnote 1: Gen. xxxiv. ]
_May 17. 1830. _
ORIGIN OF ACTS. --LOVE.
If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial
within him, what is there left for us to refer to it, but the fiendish?
Passion without any appetite is fiendish.
* * * * *
The best way to bring a clever young man, who has become sceptical and
unsettled, to reason, is to make him _feel_ something in any way. Love, if
sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a
sense and assurance of something real and actual; and that sense alone will
make him _think_ to a sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is
thinking.
* * * * *
"Never marry but for love," says William Penn in his Reflexions and Maxims;
"but see that thou lovest what is lovely. "
_May 18. 1830. _
LORD ELDON'S DOCTRINE AS TO GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. --DEMOCRACY.
Lord Eldon's doctrine, that grammar schools, in the sense of the reign of
Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, must necessarily mean schools for teaching
Latin and Greek, is, I think, founded on an insufficient knowledge of the
history and literature of the sixteenth century. Ben Jonson uses the term
"grammar" without any reference to the learned languages.
* * * * *
It is intolerable when men, who have no other knowledge, have not even a
competent understanding of that world in which they are always living, and
to which they refer every thing.
* * * * *
Although contemporary events obscure past events in a living man's life,
yet as soon as he is dead, and his whole life is a matter of history, one
action stands out as conspicuously as another.
A democracy, according to the prescript of pure reason, would, in fact, be
a church. There would he focal points in it, but no superior.
_May 20. 1830. _
THE EUCHARIST. --ST. JOHN, xix. 11. --GENUINENESS OF BOOKS OF MOSES. --
DIVINITY OF CHRIST. --MOSAIC PROPHECIES.
No doubt, Chrysostom, and the other rhetorical fathers, contributed a good
deal, by their rash use of figurative language, to advance the
superstitious notion of the eucharist; but the beginning had been much
earlier. [1] In Clement, indeed, the mystery is treated as it was treated
by Saint John and Saint Paul; but in Hermas we see the seeds of the error,
and more clearly in Irenaeus; and so it went on till the idea was changed
into an idol.
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge made these remarks upon my quoting Selden's well-known saying
(Table Talk), "that transubstantiation was nothing but rhetoric turned into
logic. "--ED. ]
* * * * *
The errors of the Sacramentaries, on the one hand, and of the Romanists on
the other, are equally great. The first have volatilized the eucharist into
a metaphor; the last have condensed it into an idol.
Jeremy Taylor, in his zeal against transubstantiation, contends that the
latter part of the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel has no reference to
the eucharist. If so, St. John wholly passes over this sacred mystery; for
he does not include it in his notice of the last supper. Would not a total
silence of this great apostle and evangelist upon this mystery be strange?
A mystery, I say; for it _is_ a mystery; it is the only mystery in our
religious worship. When many of the disciples left our Lord, and apparently
on the very ground that this saying was hard, he does not attempt to detain
them by any explanation, but simply adds the comment, that his words were
spirit. If he had really meant that the eucharist should he a mere
commemorative celebration of his death, is it conceivable that he would let
these disciples go away from him upon such a gross misunderstanding? Would
he not have said, "You need not make a difficulty; I only mean so and so? "
* * * * *
Arnauld, and the other learned Romanists, are irresistible against the low
sacramentary doctrine.
* * * * *
The sacrament of baptism applies itself, and has reference to the faith or
conviction, and is, therefore, only to be performed once;--it is the light
of man. The sacrament of the eucharist is a symbol of _all_ our religion;--
it is the life of man. It is commensurate with our will, and we must,
therefore, want it continually.
* * * * *
The meaning of the expression, [Greek: ei m_e _en soi didomenon an_othen],
"except it were given thee _from above_," in the 19th chapter of St. John,
ver. 11. , seems to me to have been generally and grossly mistaken. It is
commonly understood as importing that Pilate could have no power to deliver
Jesus to the Jews, unless it had been given him _by God_, which, no doubt,
is true; but if that is the meaning, where is the force or connection of
the following clause, [Greek: dia touto], "_therefore_ he that delivered me
unto thee hath the greater sin? " In what respect were the Jews more sinful
in delivering Jesus up, _because_ Pilate could do nothing except by God's
leave? The explanation of Erasmus and Clarke, and some others, is very dry-
footed. I conceive the meaning of our Lord to have been simply this, that
Pilate would have had no power or jurisdiction--[Greek: exousian]--over
him, if it had not been given by the Sanhedrin, the [Greek: an_o boul_e],
and _therefore_ it was that the Jews had the greater sin. There was also
this further peculiar baseness and malignity in the conduct of the Jews.
The mere assumption of Messiahship, as such, was no crime in the eyes of
the Jews; they hated Jesus, because he would not be _their sort_ of
Messiah: on the other hand, the Romans cared not for his declaration that
he was the Son of God; the crime in _their_ eyes was his assuming to be a
king. Now, here were the Jews accusing Jesus before the Roman governor of
_that_ which, in the first place, they knew that Jesus denied in the sense
in which they urged it, and which, in the next place, had the charge been
true, would have been so far from a crime in their eyes, that the very
gospel history itself, as well as all the history to the destruction of
Jerusalem, shows it would have been popular with the whole nation. They
wished to destroy him, and for that purpose charge him falsely with a crime
which yet was no crime in their own eyes, if it had been true; but only so
as against the Roman domination, which they hated with all their souls, and
against which they were themselves continually conspiring!
* * * * *
Observe, I pray, the manner and sense in which the high-priest understands
the plain declaration of our Lord, that he was the Son of God. [Footnote:
Matt. xxvi. v. 63. Mark, xiv. 61. ] "I adjure thee by the living God, that
thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God," or "the Son of
the Blessed," as it is in Mark. Jesus said, "I am,--and hereafter ye shall
see the Son of man (or me) sitting on the right hand of power, and coming
in the clouds of heaven. " Does Caiaphas take this explicit answer as if
Jesus meant that he was full of God's spirit, or was doing his commands, or
walking in his ways, in which sense Moses, the prophets, nay, all good men,
were and are the sons of God? No, no! He tears his robes in sunder, and
cries out, "He hath spoken blasphemy. What further need have we of
witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. " What blasphemy, I
should like to know, unless the assuming to be the "Son of God" was
assuming to be of the _divine nature_?
* * * * *
One striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic books is this,--they
contain precise prohibitions--by way of predicting the consequences of
disobedience--of all those things which David and Solomon actually did, and
gloried in doing,--raising cavalry, making a treaty with Egypt, laying up
treasure, and polygamising. Now, would such prohibitions have been
fabricated in those kings' reigns, or afterwards? Impossible.
* * * * *
The manner of the predictions of Moses is very remarkable. He is like a man
standing on an eminence, and addressing people below him, and pointing to
things which he can, and they cannot, see. He does not say, You will act in
such and such a way, and the consequences will be so and so; but, So and so
will take place, because you will act in such a way!
May 21. 1830.
TALENT AND GENIUS. --MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the
action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
* * * * *
Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil and temptation. The
angelic nature would act from impulse alone. A due mean of motive and
impulse is the only practicable object of our moral philosophy.
_May_ 23. 1830.
CONSTITUTIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL LIFE. --HYSTERIA. --HYDRO-CARBONIC GAS. --
BITTERS AND TONICS. --SPECIFIC MEDICINES.
It is a great error in physiology not to distinguish between what may be
called the general or fundamental life--the _principium vitae_, and the
functional life--the life in the functions. Organization must presuppose
life as anterior to it: without life, there could not be or remain any
organization; but then there is also _a_ life in the organs, or functions,
distinct from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes,--demands the existence
of a musician as anterior to it, without whom no flute could ever have
existed; and yet again, without the instrument there can be no music.
* * * * *
It often happens that, on the one hand, the _principium vitae_, or
constitutional life, may be affected without any, or the least imaginable,
affection of the functions; as in inoculation, where one pustule only has
appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and yet this has so entered
into the constitution, as to indispose it to infection under the most
accumulated and intense contagion; and, on the other hand, hysteria,
hydrophobia, and gout will disorder the functions to the most dreadful
degree, and yet often leave the life untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is
quite sound; but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life forcibly
removed from under the control of his will.
* * * * *
Hysteria may be fitly called _mimosa_, from its counterfeiting so many
diseases,--even death itself.
* * * * *
Hydro-carbonic gas produces the most death-like exhaustion, without any
previous excitement. I think this gas should be inhaled by way of
experiment in cases of hydrophobia.
There is a great difference between bitters and tonics. Where weakness
proceeds from excess of irritability, there bitters act beneficially;
because all bitters are poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing,
and lethargizing the irritability. But where weakness proceeds from the
opposite cause of relaxation, there tonics are good; because they brace up
and tighten the loosened string. Bracing is a correct metaphor. Bark goes
near to be a combination of a bitter and a tonic; but no perfect medical
combination of the two properties is yet known.
* * * * *
The study of specific medicines is too much disregarded now. No doubt the
hunting after specifics is a mark of ignorance and weakness in medicine,
yet the neglect of them is proof also of immaturity; for, in fact, all
medicines will be found specific in the perfection of the science.
_May_ 25. 1830.
EPISTLES TO THE EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. --OATHS.
The Epistle to the Ephesians is evidently a catholic epistle, addressed to
the whole of what might be called St. Paul's diocese. It is one of the
divinest compositions of man. It embraces every doctrine of Christianity;--
first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity, and then those precepts
common to it with natural religion. The Epistle to the Colossians is the
overflowing, as it were, of St. Paul's mind upon the same subject.
* * * * *
The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It is awfully absurd to
make a man invoke God's wrath upon himself, if he speaks false; it is, in
my judgment, a sin to do so. The Jews' oath is an adjuration by the judge
to the witness: "In the name of God, I ask you. " There is an express
instance of it in the high-priest's adjuring or exorcising Christ by the
living God, in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, and you will observe
that our Lord answered the appeal. [1]
You may depend upon it, the more oath-taking, the more lying, generally
among the people.
[Footnote 1:
See this instance cited, and the whole history and moral policy of the
common system of judicial swearing examined with clearness and good
feeling, in Mr. Tyler's late work on Oaths. --ED. ]
May 27. 1830.
FLOGGING. --ELOQUENCE OF ABUSE.
I had _one_ just flogging. When I was about thirteen, I went to a
shoemaker, and begged him to take me as his apprentice. He, being an honest
man, immediately brought me to Bowyer, who got into a great rage, knocked
me down, and even pushed Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me
why I had made myself such a fool? to which I answered, that I had a great
desire to be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought of being a
clergyman. "Why so? " said he. --"Because, to tell you the truth, sir," said
I, "I am an infidel! " For this, without more ado, Bowyer flogged me,--
wisely, as I think,--soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would
have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it was, I
was laughed at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly.
* * * * *
How rich the Aristophanic Greek is in the eloquence of abuse! --
[Greek:
'O Bdelyre, kanaischunte, kai tolmaere su,
Kai miare, kai pammiare, kai miarotate. ][1]
We are not behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting
occasion,--Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead,
clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl,
loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop,
fop-doodle; a maggot-pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed,
Jackan-apes! Why I could go on for a minute more!
[Footnote 1: In The Frogs. --ED. ]
_May_ 28. 1830.
THE AMERICANS.
I deeply regret the anti-American articles of some of the leading reviews.
The Americans regard what is said of them in England a thousand times more
than they do any thing said of them in any other country. The Americans are
excessively pleased with any kind or favourable expressions, and never
forgive or forget any slight or abuse. It would be better for them if they
were a trifle thicker-skinned.
* * * * *
The last American war was to us only something to talk or read about; but
to the Americans it was the cause of misery in their own homes.
* * * * *
I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language,
religion, laws, government, blood,--identity in these makes men of one
country.
_May_ 29. 1830.
BOOK OF JOB.
The Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to the Mosaic dispensation. It
represents the mind of a good man not enlightened by an actual revelation,
but seeking about for one. In no other book is the desire and necessity for
a Mediator so intensely expressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the
Hebrews, is most vividly impressed on the book, in opposition to pantheism.
* * * * *
I now think, after many doubts, that the passage, "I know that my Redeemer
liveth," &c. may fairly be taken as a burst of determination, a _quasi_
prophecy. [1] "I know not _how_ this can be; but in spite of all my
difficulties, this I _do_ know, that I shall be recompensed. "
[Footnote 1: Chap. xix. 25, 26. ]
* * * * *
It should be observed, that all the imagery in the speeches of the men is
taken from the East, and is no more than a mere representation of the forms
of material nature. But when God speaks, the tone is exalted; and almost
all the images are taken from Egypt, the crocodile, the war-horse, and so
forth. Egypt was then the first monarchy that had a splendid court.
* * * * *
Satan, in the prologue, does not mean the devil, our Diabolus. There is no
calumny in his words. He is rather the _circuitor_, the accusing spirit, a
dramatic attorney-general. But after the prologue, which was necessary to
bring the imagination into a proper state for the dialogue, we hear no more
of this Satan.
* * * * *
Warburton's notion, that the Book of Job was of so late a date as Ezra, is
wholly groundless. His only reason is this appearance of Satan.
_May_ 30. 1830.
TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS.
I wish the Psalms were translated afresh; or, rather, that the present
version were revised. Scores of passages are utterly incoherent as they now
stand. If the primary visual images had been oftener preserved, the
connection and force of the sentences would have been better perceived. [1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge, like so many of the elder divines of the Christian church,
had an _affectionate_ reverence for the moral and evangelical portion of
the Book of Psalms. He told me that, after having studied every page of the
Bible with the deepest attention, he had found no other part of Scripture
come home so closely to his inmost yearnings and necessities. During many
of his latter years he used to read ten or twelve verses every evening,
ascertaining (for his knowledge of Hebrew was enough for that) the exact
visual image or first radical meaning of every noun substantive; and he
repeatedly expressed to me his surprise and pleasure at finding that in
nine cases out of ten the bare primary sense, if literally rendered, threw
great additional light on the text. He was not disposed to allow the
prophetic or allusive character so largely as is done by Horne and others;
but he acknowledged it in some instances in the fullest manner. In
particular, he rejected the local and temporary reference which has been
given to the 110th Psalm, and declared his belief in its deep mystical
import with regard to the Messiah. Mr. C. once gave me the following note
upon the _22d_ Psalm written by him, I believe, many years previously, but
which, he said, he approved at that time. It will find as appropriate a
niche here as any where else:--
"I am much delighted and instructed by the hypothesis, which I think
probable, that our Lord in repeating _Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani_, really
recited the whole or a large part of the 22d Psalm. It is impossible to
read that psalm without the liveliest feelings of love, gratitude, and
sympathy. It is, indeed, a wonderful prophecy, whatever might or might not
have been David's notion when he composed it. Whether Christ did audibly
repeat the whole or not, it is certain. I think, that he did it mentally,
and said aloud what was sufficient to enable his followers to do the same.
Even at this day to repeat in the same manner but the first line of a
common hymn would be understood as a reference to the whole. Above all, I
am thankful for the thought which suggested itself to my mind, whilst I was
reading this beautiful psalm, namely, that we should not exclusively think
of Christ as the Logos united to human nature, but likewise as a perfect
man united to the Logos.
