How
inimitably
graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Heaven bless you, and mend your logic! Don't you see that if conscience,
which is in its nature a consequence, were thus anticipated and made an
antecedent--a party instead of a judge--it would dishonour your draft upon
it--it would not pay on demand? Don't you see that, in truth, the very fact
of acting with this motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon
conscience to give you any pleasure at all?
August 22. 1831.
THE TWO MODES OF POLITICAL ACTION.
There are many able and patriotic members in the House of Commons--Sir
Robert Inglis, Sir Robert Peel, and some others. But I grieve that they
never have the courage or the wisdom--I know not in which the failure is--
to take their stand upon duty, and to appeal to all men as men,--to the
Good and the True, which exist for _all_, and of which _all_ have an
apprehension. They always set to work--especially, his great eminence
considered, Sir Robert Peel--by addressing themselves to individual
interests; the measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the
bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on bobbin-net or poplins, and
so forth. Whereas their adversaries--the demagogues--always work on the
opposite principle: they always appeal to men as men; and, as you know,
the most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought by such phrases
as _Rights of Man_, _Sovereignty of the People_, _&c_. , which no one
understands, which apply to no one in particular, but to all in
general. [1]
The devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very clever fellow; I
have no acquaintance with him, but I respect his evident talents.
Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly in the end overcome every
thing; but inconsistent good can never be a match for consistent evil.
Alas! I look in vain for some wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty
in the ears of this generation.
[Footnote 1:
"It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peaceable
times we are quite _practical_; facts only, and cool common sense, are then
in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men begin
to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most
universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy; in
short, to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and
incommensurate with their feelings. "--_Statesman's Manual_, p. 18.
"It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but
the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and
innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been
found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings
of a people, and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the
commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every
tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical
abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public
roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inalienable
sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and
the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights
of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting. "--
_Statesman's Manual_. ]
_August_ 24. 1831.
TRUTHS AND MAXIMS.
The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference
between the reason and the understanding--between a principle and a maxim--
an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of
facts. A man, having seen a million moss roses all red, concludes from his
own experience and that of others that all moss roses are red. That is a
maxim with him--the _greatest_ amount of his knowledge upon the subject.
But it is only true until some gardener has produced a white moss rose,--
after which the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam watching the
sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seized with
gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see
the glorious light again. The next evening, when it declines, his hopes are
stronger, but still mixed with fear; and even at the end of a thousand
years, all that a man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to
preclude anxiety. Now compare this in its highest degree with the assurance
which you have that the two sides of any triangle are together greater than
the third. This, demonstrated of one triangle, is seen to be eternally true
of all imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at once by the
intuitive reason, independently of experience. It is and must ever be so,
multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.
* * * * *
It used to be said that four and five _make_ nine. Locke says, that four
and five _are_ nine. Now I say, that four and five _are not_ nine, but that
they will _make_ nine. When I see four objects which will form a square,
and five which will form a pentagon, I see that they are two different
things; when combined, they will form a third different figure, which we
call nine. When separate they _are not_ it, but will _make_ it.
_September_ 11. 1831.
DRAYTON AND DANIEL.
Drayton is a sweet poet, and Selden's notes to the early part of the
Polyolbion are well worth your perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his
diction is pre-eminently pure,--of that quality which I believe has always
existed somewhere in society. It is just such English, without any
alteration, as Wordsworth or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or
written in the present day.
Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. When deploring the cutting
down of some of our old forests, he says, in language which reminds the
reader of Lear, written subsequently, and also of several passages in Mr.
Wordsworth's poems:--
----"our trees so hack'd above the ground,
That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries
crown'd,
Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand,
_As for revenge to Heaven each held a wither'd hand. _" [1]
That is very fine.
[Footnote 1: Polyol VII.
"He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent; one
who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable
of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass
upon him. " 'Like me that list,' he says,
----'my honest rhymes
Nor care for critics, nor regard the times. '
And though he is not a poet _virum volitarc per ora_, nor one of those
whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted
admirers,--yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its
subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to
ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will
think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for
the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a
feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their
labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing
himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity. "-_The Doctor_, &c.
c. 36. P. I.
I heartily trust that the author or authors, as the case may be, of this
singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time continue it. Let
some people say what they please, there has not been the fellow of it
published for many a long day. --ED. ]
_September_ 12. 1831.
MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY.
My system, if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt,
I know, ever made to reduce all knowledges into harmony. It opposes no
other system, but shows what was true in each; and how that which was true
in the particular, in each of them became error, _because_ it was only half
the truth. I have endeavoured to unite the insulated fragments of truth,
and therewith to frame a perfect mirror. I show to each system that I fully
understand and rightfully appreciate what that system means; but then I
lift up that system to a higher point of view, from which I enable it to
see its former position, where it was, indeed, but under another light and
with different relations;--so that the fragment of truth is not only
acknowledged, but explained. Thus the old astronomers discovered and
maintained much that was true; but, because they were placed on a false
ground, and looked from a wrong point of view, they never did, they never
could, discover the truth--that is, the whole truth. As soon as they left
the earth, their false centre, and took their stand in the sun, immediately
they saw the whole system in its true light, and their former station
remaining, but remaining as a part of the prospect. I wish, in short, to
connect by a moral _copula_ natural history with political history; or, in
other words, to make history scientific, and science historical--to take
from history its accidentality, and from science its fatalism.
* * * * *
I never from a boy could, under any circumstances, feel the slightest dread
of death as such. In all my illnesses I have ever had the most intense
desire to be released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish,
namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. Not that I have any
author's vanity on the subject: God knows that I should be absolutely glad,
if I could hear that the thing had already been done before me.
* * * * *
Illness never in the smallest degree affects my intellectual powers. I can
_think_ with all my ordinary vigour in the midst of pain; but I am beset
with the most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrinking from action.
I could not upon such occasions take the pen in hand to write down my
thoughts for all the wide world.
_October 26. _ 1831.
KEENNESS AND SUBTLETY.
Few men of genius are keen; but almost every man of genius is subtle. If
you ask me the difference between keenness and subtlety, I answer that it
is the difference between a point and an edge. To split a hair is no proof
of subtlety; for subtlety acts in distinguishing differences--in showing
that two things apparently one are in fact two; whereas, to split a hair is
to cause division, and not to ascertain difference.
_October_ 27. 1831.
DUTIES AND NEEDS OF AN ADVOCATE.
There is undoubtedly a limit to the exertions of an advocate for his
client. He has a right, it is his bounden duty, to do every thing which his
client might honestly do, and to do it with all the effect which any
exercise of skill, talent, or knowledge of his own may be able to produce.
But the advocate has no right, nor is it his duty, to do that for his
client which his client _in foro conscientiae_ has no right to do for
himself; as, for a gross example, to put in evidence a forged deed or will,
knowing it to be so forged. As to mere confounding of witnesses by skilful
cross-examination, I own I am not disposed to be very strict. The whole
thing is perfectly well understood on all hands, and it is little more in
general than a sort of cudgel-playing between the counsel and the witness,
in which, I speak with submission to you, I think I have seen the witness
have the best of it as often as his assailant. It is of the utmost
importance in the administration of justice that knowledge and intellectual
power should be as far as possible equalized between the crown and the
prisoner, or plaintiff and defendant. Hence especially arises the necessity
for an order of advocates,--men whose duty it ought to be to know what the
law allows and disallows; but whose interests should be wholly indifferent
as to the persons or characters of their clients. If a certain latitude in
examining witnesses is, as experience seems to have shown, a necessary mean
towards the evisceration of the truth of matters of fact, I have no doubt,
as a moralist, in saying, that such latitude within the bounds, now
existing is justifiable. We must be content with a certain quantum in this
life, especially in matters of public cognizance; the necessities of
society demand it; we must not be righteous overmuch, or wise overmuch;
and, as an old father says, in what vein may there not be a plethora, when
the Scripture tells us that there may under circumstances be too much of
virtue and of wisdom?
Still I think that, upon the whole, the advocate is placed in a position
unfavourable to his moral being, and, indeed, to his intellect also, in its
higher powers. Therefore I would recommend an advocate to devote a part of
his leisure time to some study of the metaphysics of the mind, or
metaphysics of theology; something, I mean, which shall call forth all his
powers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of truth alone, without
reference to a side to be supported. No studies give such a power of
distinguishing as metaphysical, and in their natural and unperverted
tendency they are ennobling and exalting. Some such studies are wanted to
counteract the operation of legal studies and practice, which sharpen,
indeed, but, like a grinding-stone, narrow whilst they sharpen.
_November_ 19. 1831.
ABOLITION OF THE FRENCH HEREDITARY PEERAGE.
I cannot say what the French peers _will_ do; but I can tell you what they
_ought_ to do. "So far," they might say, "as our feelings and interests, as
individuals, are concerned in this matter--if it really be the prevailing
wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy the hereditary peerage--we shall,
without regret, retire into the ranks of private citizens: but we are bound
by the provisions of the existing constitution to consider ourselves
collectively as essential to the well-being of France: we have been placed
here to defend what France, a short time ago at least, thought a vital part
of its government; and, if we did not defend it, what answer could we make
hereafter to France itself, if she should come to see, what we think to be
an error, in the light in which we view it? We should be justly branded as
traitors and cowards, who had deserted the post which we were specially
appointed to maintain. As a House of Peers, therefore,--as one substantive
branch of the legislature, we can never, in honour or in conscience,
consent to a measure of the impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we
are convinced.
"If, therefore, this measure is demanded by the country, let the king and
the deputies form themselves into a constituent assembly; and then,
assuming to act in the name of the total nation, let them decree the
abolition. In that case we yield to a just, perhaps, but revolutionary,
act, in which we do not participate, and against which we are, upon the
supposition, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, consider themselves
so completely in the character of delegates as to be at present absolutely
pledged to vote without freedom of deliberation, let a concise, but
perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments that can be adduced on either
side be drawn up, and printed, and circulated throughout the country; and
then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh instructions upon
this point. One thing, as men of honour, we declare beforehand--that, come
what will, none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage created
_de novo_ for life. "
_November_ 20. 1831.
CONDUCT OF MINISTERS ON THE REFORM BILL. --THE MULTITUDE.
The present ministers have, in my judgment, been guilty of two things
preeminently wicked, _sensu politico_, in their conduct upon this Reform
Bill. First, they have endeavoured to carry a fundamental change in the
material and mode of action of the government of the country by so
exciting the passions, and playing upon the necessary ignorance of the
numerical majority of the nation, that all freedom and utility of
discussion, by competent heads, in the proper place, should be precluded.
In doing this they have used, or sanctioned the use of, arguments which
may he applied with equal or even greater force to the carrying of any
measure whatever, no matter how atrocious in its character or destructive
in its consequences. They have appealed directly to the argument of the
greater number of voices, no matter whether the utterers were drunk or
sober, competent or not competent; and they have done the utmost in their
power to rase out the sacred principle in politics of a representation of
interests, and to introduce the mad and barbarizing scheme of a delegation
of individuals. And they have done all this without one word of
thankfulness to God for the manifold blessings of which the constitution
as settled at the Revolution, imperfect as it may be, has been the source
or vehicle or condition to this great nation,--without one honest
statement of the manner in which the anomalies in the practice grew up, or
any manly declaration of the inevitable necessities of government which
those anomalies have met. With no humility, nor fear, nor reverence, like
Ham the accursed, they have beckoned, with grinning faces, to a vulgar
mob, to come and insult over the nakedness of a parent; when it had become
them, if one spark of filial patriotism had burnt within their breasts, to
have marched with silent steps and averted faces to lay their robes upon
his destitution!
Secondly, they have made the _king_ the prime mover in all this political
wickedness: they have made the _king_ tell his people that they were
deprived of their rights, and, by direct and necessary implication, that
they and their ancestors for a century past had been slaves: they have made
the king vilify the memory of his own brother and father. Rights! There are
no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the
growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon
any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an
abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our
parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man. No!
they were too wise for that. They took good care to refer their claims to
custom and prescription, and boldly--sometimes very impudently--asserted
them upon traditionary and constitutional grounds. The Bill is bad enough,
God knows; but the arguments of its advocates, and the manner of their
advocacy, are a thousand times worse than the Bill itself; and you will
live to think so.
I am far, very far, from wishing to indulge in any vulgar abuse of the
vulgar. I believe that the feeling of the multitude will, in most cases, be
in favour of something good; but this it is which I perceive, that they are
always under the domination of some one feeling or view;--whereas truth,
and, above all, practical wisdom, must be the result of a wide
comprehension of the more and the less, the balance and the counter-
balance.
_December_ 3. 1831.
RELIGION.
A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both;
not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy;--
nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are the symbols, or
out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would
be mere History.
_December_ 17. 1831.
UNION WITH IRELAND. --IRISH CHURCH.
I am quite sure that no dangers are to be feared by England from the
disannexing and independence of Ireland at all comparable with the evils
which have been, and will yet be, caused to England by the Union. We have
never received one particle of advantage from our association with Ireland,
whilst we have in many most vital particulars violated the principles of
the British constitution solely for the purpose of conciliating the Irish
agitators, and of endeavouring--a vain endeavour--to find room for them
under the same government. Mr. Pitt has received great credit for effecting
the Union; but I believe it will sooner or later be discovered that the
manner in which, and the terms upon which, he effected it, made it the most
fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and prosperity of
England. From it came the Catholic Bill. From the Catholic Bill has come
this Reform Bill! And what next?
* * * * *
The case of the Irish Church is certainly anomalous, and full of practical
difficulties. On the one hand, it is the only church which the constitution
can admit; on the other, such are the circumstances, it is a church that
cannot act as a church towards five sixths of the persons nominally and
legally within its care.
_December_ 18. 1831.
A STATE. --PERSONS AND THINGS. --HISTORY.
The difference between an inorganic and an organic body lies in this:--In
the first--a sheaf of corn--the whole is nothing more than a collection of
the individual parts or phenomena. In the second--a man--the whole is the
effect of, or results from, the parts; it--the whole--is every thing, and
the parts are nothing.
A State is an idea intermediate between the two--the whole being a result
from, and not a mere total of, the parts, and yet not so merging the
constituent parts in the result, but that the individual exists integrally
within it. Extremes, especially in politics, meet. In Athens each
individual Athenian was of no value; but taken altogether, as Demus, they
were every thing in such a sense that no individual citizen was any thing.
In Turkey there is the sign of unity put for unity. The Sultan seems
himself the State; but it is an illusion: there is in fact in Turkey no
State at all: the whole consists of nothing but a vast collection of
neighbourhoods.
* * * * *
When the government and the aristocracy of this country had subordinated
_persons to things_, and treated the one like the other,--the poor, with
some reason, and almost in self-defence, learned to set up _rights_ above
_duties_. The code of a Christian society is, _Debeo, et tu debes_--of
Heathens or Barbarians, _Teneo, teneto et tu, si potes_. [1]
[Footnote 1:
"And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher idea of _person_ in
contradistinction from _thing_, all social law and justice being grounded
on the principle that a person can never, but by his own fault, become a
thing, or, without grievous wrong, be treated as such; and the distinction
consisting in this, that a thing may be used altogether, and merely as the
_means_ to an end; but the person must always be included in the _end_; his
interest must always form a part of the object,--a _mean_ to which he, by
consent, that is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a tree, and we
fell it; we breed the sheep, and we shear, or we kill it,--in both cases
wholly as means to _our_ ends: for trees and animals are things. The
woodcutter and the hind are likewise employed as _means_; but on agreement,
and that too an agreement of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as
well as their employer in the _end_; for they are persons. And the
government under which the contrary takes place is not worthy to be called
a state, if, as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unprogressive; or only by
anticipation, where, as in Russia, it is in advance to a better and more
_manworthy_ order of things. "--_Church and State_, p. 10. ]
* * * * *
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But
passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a
lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!
_December_ 27. 1831.
BEAUTY. --GENIUS.
The old definition of beauty in the Roman school of painting was, _il piu
nell' uno_--multitude in unity; and there is no doubt that such is the
principle of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and infallible
criteria of the different ranks of men's intellects, observe the
instinctive habit which all superior minds have of endeavouring to bring,
and of never resting till they have brought, into unity the scattered facts
which occur in conversation, or in the statements of men of business. To
attempt to argue any great question upon facts only, is absurd; you cannot
state any fact before a mixed audience, which an opponent as clever as
yourself cannot with ease twist towards another bearing, or at least meet
by a contrary fact, as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called
stubborn things: I am sure they have been found pliable enough lately in
the House of Commons and elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they
are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and
parts of premisses. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a
legitimate deduction from _all_ the facts which are truly material.
* * * * *
_December_ 28. 1831.
CHURCH. --STATE. --DISSENTERS.
Even to a church,--the only pure democracy, because in it persons are alone
considered, and one person _a priori_ is equal to another person,--even to
a church, discipline is an essential condition. But a state regards
classes, and classes as they represent classified property; and to
introduce a system of representation which must inevitably render all
discipline impossible, what is it but madness-the madness of ignorant
vanity, and reckless obstinacy?
* * * * *
I have known, and still know, many Dissenters, who profess to have a zeal
for Christianity; and I dare say they have. But I have known very few
Dissenters indeed, whose hatred to the Church of England was not a much
more active principle of action with them than their love for Christianity.
The Wesleyans, in uncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only
exceptions. There never was an age since the days of the apostles, in which
the catholic spirit of religion was so dead, and put aside for love of
sects and parties, as at present.
* * * * *
_January_ 1. 1832.
GRACEFULNESS OF CHILDREN. --DOGS.
How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!
* * * * *
There seems a sort of sympathy between the more generous dogs and little
children. I believe an instance of a little child being attacked by a large
dog is very rare indeed.
_January_ 28. 1832.
IDEAL TORY AND WHIG.
The ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such there have really been)
agreed in the necessity and benefit of an exact balance of the three
estates: but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being deranged by the
people; the Whig, of its being deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit,
a jealousy only; they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the
balance; and accordingly they might each, under certain circumstances,
without the slightest inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as
the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did at the Revolution, but
remained Tories as before.
I have half a mind to write a critical and philosophical essay on Whiggism,
from Dryden's Achitophel (Shaftesbury), the first Whig, (for, with Dr.
Johnson's leave, the devil is no such cattle,) down to ----, who, I trust,
in God's mercy to the interests of peace, union, and liberty in this
nation, will be the last. In it I would take the last years of Queen Anne's
reign as the zenith, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its divinest _avatar_
of common sense, or of the understanding, vigorously exerted in the right
direction on the right and proper objects of the understanding; and would
then trace the rise, the occasion, the progress, and the necessary
degeneration of the Whig spirit of compromise, even down to the profound
ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever fellow might make
something of this hint. How Asgill would have done it!
_February_ 22. 1832.
THE CHURCH.
The church is the last relic of our nationality. Would to God that the
bishops and the clergy in general could once fully understand that the
Christian church and the national church are as little to be confounded as
divided! I think the fate of the Reform Bill, in itself, of comparatively
minor importance; the fate of the national church occupies my mind with
greater intensity.
_February_ 24. 1832.
MINISTERS AND THE REFORM BILL.
I could not help smiling, in reading the report of Lord Grey's speech in
the House of Lords, the other night, when he asked Lord Wicklow whether he
seriously believed that he, Lord Grey, or any of the ministers, intended to
subvert the institutions of the country. Had I been in Lord Wicklow's
place, I should have been tempted to answer this question something in the
following way:--"Waiving the charge in an offensive sense of personal
consciousness against the noble earl, and all but one or two of his
colleagues, upon my honour, and in the presence of Almighty God, I answer,
Yes! You have destroyed the freedom of parliament; you have done your best
to shut the door of the House of Commons to the property, the birth, the
rank, the wisdom of the people, and have flung it open to their passions
and their follies. You have disfranchised the gentry, and the real
patriotism of the nation: you have agitated and exasperated the mob, and
thrown the balance of political power into the hands of that class (the
shopkeepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has been, is now, and
ever will be, the least patriotic and the least conservative of any. You
are now preparing to destroy for ever the constitutional independence of
the House of Lords; you are for ever displacing it from its supremacy as a
co-ordinate estate of the realm; and whether you succeed in passing your
bill by actually swamping our votes by a batch of new peers, or by
frightening a sufficient number of us out of our opinions by the threat of
one,--equally you will have superseded the triple assent which the
constitution requires to the enactment of a valid law, and have left the
king alone with the delegates of the populace! "
_March_ 3. 1832.
DISFRANCHISEMENT.
I am afraid the Conservative party see but one half of the truth. The mere
extension of the franchise is not the evil; I should be glad to see it
greatly extended;--there is no harm in that _per se_; the mischief is that
the franchise is nominally extended, but to such classes, and in such a
manner, that a practical disfranchisement of all above, and a discontenting
of all below, a favoured class are the unavoidable results.
_March_ 17. 1832.
GENIUS FEMININE. ----PIRATES.
----'s face is almost the only exception I know to the observation, that
something feminine--not _effeminate_, mind--is discoverable in the
countenances of all men of genius. Look at that face of old Dampier, a
rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft is the air of his
countenance, how delicate the shape of his temples!
* * * * *
I think it very absurd and misplaced to call Raleigh and Drake, and others
of our naval heroes of Elizabeth's age, pirates. No man is a _pirate_,
unless his contemporaries agree to call him so. Drake said,--"The subjects
of the king of Spain have done their best to ruin my country: _ergo_, I
will try to ruin the king of Spain's country. " Would it not be silly to
call the Argonauts pirates in our sense of the word?
_March_ 18. 1832.
ASTROLOGY. --ALCHEMY.
It is curious to mark how instinctively the reason has always pointed out
to men the ultimate end of the various sciences, and how immediately
afterwards they have set to work, like children, to realize that end by
inadequate means. Now they applied to their appetites, now to their
passions, now to their fancy, now to the understanding, and lastly, to the
intuitive reason again. There is no doubt but that astrology of some sort
or other would be the last achievement of astronomy: there must he chemical
relations between the planets; the difference of their magnitudes compared
with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise; but this, though,
as it were, blindly and unconsciously seen, led immediately to fortune-
telling and other nonsense. So alchemy is the theoretic end of chemistry:
there must be a common law, upon which all can become each and each all;
but then the idea was turned to the coining of gold and silver.
_March_ 20. 1832.
REFORM BILL. --CRISIS.
I have heard but two arguments of any weight adduced in favour of passing
this Reform Bill, and they are in substance these:--1. We will blow your
brains out if you don't pass it. 2. We will drag you through a horsepond if
you don't pass it; and there is a good deal of force in both.
* * * * *
Talk to me of your pretended crisis! Stuff! A vigorous government would in
one month change all the data for your reasoning. Would you have me believe
that the events of this world are fastened to a revolving cycle with God at
one end and the Devil at the other, and that the Devil is now uppermost!
Are you a Christian, and talk about a crisis in that fatalistic sense!
_March_ 31. 1832.
JOHN, CHAP. III. VER. 4. --DICTATION AND INSPIRATION. --GNOSIS--NEW
TESTAMENT CANON.
I certainly understand the [Greek: ti emoi kai soi gynai] in the second
chapter[1] of St. John's Gospel, as having a _liquid increpationis_ in it--
a mild reproof from Jesus to Mary for interfering in his ministerial acts
by requests on her own account.
I do not think that [Greek: gynai] was ever used by child to parent as a
common mode of address: between husband and wife it was; but I cannot think
that [Greek: m_eter] and [Greek: gynai] were equivalent terms in the mouth
of a son speaking to his mother. No part of the Christopaedia is found in
John or Paul; and after the baptism there is no recognition of any maternal
authority in Mary. See the two passages where she endeavours to get access
to him when he is preaching:--"Whosoever shall do the will of God, the
same is my brother, and my sister, and my mother"[2] and also the
recommendation of her to the care of John at the crucifixion.
[Footnote 1: Verse 4. ]
[Footnote 2: Mark, ch. iii. ver. 35. ]
* * * * *
There may be dictation without inspiration, and inspiration without
dictation; they have been and continue to be grievously confounded. Balaam
and his ass were the passive organs of dictation; but no one, I suppose,
will venture to call either of those worthies inspired. It is my profound
conviction that St. John and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally
disbelieve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or argument throughout
their writings. Observe, there was revelation. All religion is revealed;--
_revealed_ religion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Revelations of
facts were undoubtedly made to the prophets; revelations of doctrines were
as undoubtedly made to John and Paul;--but is it not a mere matter of our
very senses that John and Paul each dealt with those revelations, expounded
them, insisted on them, just exactly according to his own natural strength
of intellect, habit of reasoning, moral, and even physical temperament? We
receive the books ascribed to John and Paul as their books on the judgment
of men, for whom no miraculous discernment is pretended; nay, whom, in
their admission and rejection of other books, we believe to have erred.
Shall we give less credence to John and Paul themselves? Surely the heart
and soul of every Christian give him sufficient assurance that, in all
things that concern him as a _man_, the words that he reads are spirit and
truth, and could only proceed from Him who made both heart and soul. --
Understand the matter so, and all difficulty vanishes: you read without
fear, lest your faith meet with some shock from a passage here and there
which you cannot reconcile with immediate dictation, by the Holy Spirit of
God, without an absurd violence offered to the text. You read the Bible as
the best of all books, but still as a book; and make use of all the means
and appliances which learning and skill, under the blessing of God, can
afford towards rightly apprehending the general sense of it--not solicitous
to find out doctrine in mere epistolary familiarity, or facts in clear _ad
hominem et pro tempore_ allusions to national traditions.
* * * * *
Tertullian, I think, says he had seen the autograph copies of some of the
apostles' writings. The truth is, the ancient Church was not guided by the
mere fact of the genuineness of a writing in pronouncing it canonical;--
its catholicity was the test applied to it. I have not the smallest doubt
that the Epistle of Barnabas is genuine; but it is not catholic; it is
full of the [Greek: gn_osis], though of the most simple and pleasing sort.
I think the same of Hermas. The Church would never admit either into the
canon, although the Alexandrians always read the Epistle of Barnabas in
their churches for three hundred years together. It was upwards of three
centuries before the Epistle to the Hebrews was admitted, and this on
account of its [Greek: gn_osis]; at length, by help of the venerable
prefix of St. Paul's name, its admirers, happily for us, succeeded.
* * * * *
So little did the early bishops and preachers think their Christian faith
wrapped up in, and solely to be learned from, the New Testament,--indeed,
can it be said that there was any such collection for three hundred years?
--that I remember a letter from ----[1] to a friend of his, a bishop in the
East, in which he most evidently speaks of the _Christian_ Scriptures as of
works of which the bishop knew little or nothing.
[Footnote 1: I have lost the name which Mr. Coleridge mentioned. --ED. ]
_April_ 4. 1832.
UNITARIANISM. --MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
I make the greatest difference between _ans_ and _isms_. I should deal
insincerely with you, if I said that I thought Unitarianism was
Christianity. No; as I believe and have faith in the doctrine, it is not
the truth in Jesus Christ; but God forbid that I should doubt that you, and
many other Unitarians, as you call yourselves, are, in a practical sense,
very good Christians. We do not win heaven by logic.
By the by, what do you mean by exclusively assuming the title of
Unitarians? As if Tri-Unitarians were not necessarily Unitarians, as much
(pardon the illustration) as an apple-pie must of course be a pie! The
schoolmen would, perhaps, have called you Unicists; but your proper name is
Psilanthropists--believers in the mere human nature of Christ.
Upon my word, if I may say so without offence, I really think many forms of
Pantheistic Atheism more agreeable to an imaginative mind than Unitarianism
as it is professed in terms: in particular, I prefer the Spinosistic scheme
infinitely. The early Socinians were, to be sure, most unaccountable
logicians; but, when you had swallowed their bad reasoning, you came to a
doctrine on which the _heart_, at least, might rest for some support. They
adored Jesus Christ. Both Laelius and Faustus Socinus laid down the
adorability of Jesus in strong terms. I have nothing, you know, to do with
their logic. But Unitarianism is, in effect, the worst of one kind of
Atheism, joined to the worst of one kind of Calvinism, like two asses tied
tail to tail. It has no covenant with God; and looks upon prayer as a sort
of self-magnetizing--a getting of the body and temper into a certain
_status_, desirable _per se_, but having no covenanted reference to the
Being to whom the prayer is addressed.
* * * * *
The sum total of moral philosophy is found in this one question, Is _Good_
a superfluous word,--or mere lazy synonyme for the pleasurable, and its
causes;--at most, a mere modification to express degree, and comparative
duration of pleasure? --Or the question may be more unanswerably stated
thus, Is _good_ superfluous as a word exponent of a _kind_? --If it be, then
moral philosophy is but a subdivision of physics. If not, then the writings
of Paley and all his predecessors and disciples are false and _most_
pernicious; and there is an emphatic propriety in the superlative, and in a
sense which of itself would supply and exemplify the difference between
_most_ and _very_.
_April_ 5. 1832.
MORAL LAW OF POLARITY.
It is curious to trace the operation of the moral law of polarity in the
history of politics, religion, &c. When the maximum of one tendency has
been attained, there is no gradual decrease, but a direct transition to its
minimum, till the opposite tendency has attained its maximum; and then you
see another corresponding revulsion. With the Restoration came in all at
once the mechanico-corpuscular philosophy, which, with the increase of
manufactures, trade, and arts, made every thing in philosophy, religion,
and poetry objective; till, at length, attachment to mere external
worldliness and forms got to its maximum,--when out burst the French
revolution; and with it every thing became immediately subjective, without
any object at all. The Rights of Man, the Sovereignty of the People, were
subject and object both. We are now, I think, on the turning point again.
This Reform seems the _ne plus ultra_ of that tendency of the public mind
which substitutes its own undefined notions or passions for real objects
and historical actualities. There is not one of the ministers--except the
one or two revolutionists among them--who has ever given us a hint,
throughout this long struggle, as to _what_ he really does believe will be
the product of the bill; what sort of House of Commons it will make for the
purpose of governing this empire soberly and safely. No; they have
actualized for a moment a wish, a fear, a passion, but not an idea.
_April_ 1. 1832.
EPIDEMIC DISEASE. --QUARANTINE.
There are two grand divisions under which all contagious diseases may be
classed:--1. Those which spring from organized living beings, and from the
life in them, and which enter, as it were, into the life of those in whom
they reproduce themselves--such as small-pox and measles. These become so
domesticated with the habit and system, that they are rarely received
twice. 2. Those which spring from dead organized, or unorganized matter,
and which may be comprehended under the wide term _malaria_.
You may have passed a stagnant pond a hundred times without injury: you
happen to pass it again, in low spirits and chilled, precisely at the
moment of the explosion of the gas: the malaria strikes on the cutaneous or
veno-glandular system, and drives the blood from the surface; the shivering
fit comes on, till the musculo-arterial irritability re-acts, and then the
hot fit succeeds; and, unless bark or arsenic--particularly bark, because
it is a bitter as well as a tonic--be applied to strengthen the veno-
glandular, and to moderate the musculo-arterial, system, a man may have the
ague for thirty years together.
But if, instead of being exposed to the solitary malaria of a pond, a man,
travelling through the Pontine Marshes, permits his animal energies to
flag, and surrenders himself to the drowsiness which generally attacks him,
then blast upon blast strikes upon the cutaneous system, and passes through
it to the musculo-arterial, and so completely overpowers the latter that it
cannot re-act, and the man dies at once, instead of only catching an ague.
There are three factors of the operation of an epidemic or atmospheric
disease. The first and principal one is the predisposed state of the body;
secondly, the specific _virus_ in the atmosphere; and, thirdly, the
accidental circumstances of weather, locality, food, occupation, &c.
Against the second of these we are powerless: its nature, causes, and
sympathies are too subtle for our senses to find data to go upon. Against
the first, medicine may act profitably. Against the third, a wise and
sagacious medical police ought to be adopted; but, above all, let every man
act like a Christian, in all charity, and love, and brotherly kindness, and
sincere reliance on God's merciful providence.
Quarantine cannot keep out an atmospheric disease; but it can, and does
always, increase the predisposing causes of its reception.
_April_ 10. 1832.
HARMONY.
All harmony is founded on a relation to rest--on relative rest. Take a
metallic plate, and strew sand on it; sound an harmonic chord over the
sand, and the grains will whirl about in circles, and other geometrical
figures, all, as it were, depending on some point of sand relatively at
rest. Sound a discord, and every grain will whisk about without any order
at all, in no figures, and with no points of rest.
The clerisy of a nation, that is, its learned men, whether poets, or
philosophers, or scholars, are these points of relative rest. There could
be no order, no harmony of the whole, without them.
April 21. 1832.
INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS. --MODERN STYLE.
There have been three silent revolutions in England:--first, when the
professions fell off from the church; secondly, when literature fell off
from the professions; and, thirdly, when the press fell off from
literature.
* * * * *
Common phrases are, as it were, so stereotyped now by conventional use,
that it is really much easier to write on the ordinary politics of the day
in the common newspaper style, than it is to make a good pair of shoes.
An apprentice has as much to learn now to be a shoemaker as ever he had;
but an ignorant coxcomb, with a competent want of honesty, may very
effectively wield a pen in a newspaper office, with infinitely less pains
and preparation than were necessary formerly.
_April_ 23. 1832.
GENIUS OF THE SPANISH AND ITALIANS. --VICO. --SPINOSA.
The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at
all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their
literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute,
profound, and sensual, but not subtle; hence what they think to be humorous
is merely witty.
* * * * *
To estimate a man like Vico, or any great man who has made discoveries and
committed errors, you ought to say to yourself--"He did so and so in the
year 1720, a Papist, at Naples. Now, what would he not have done if he had
lived now, and could have availed himself of all our vast acquisitions in
physical science? "
* * * * *
After the _Scienza Nuova_[1] read Spinosa, _De Monarchia ex rationis
praescripto_[2]. They differed--Vico in thinking that society tended to
monarchy; Spinosa in thinking it tended to democracy. Now, Spinosa's ideal
democracy was realized by a contemporary--not in a nation, for that is
impossible, but in a sect--I mean by George Fox and his Quakers. [3]
[Footnote 1:
See Michelet's Principes de la Philosophie de l'Histoire, &c. Paris, 1827.
An admirable analysis of Vico. --ED. ]
[Footnote 2: Tractatus Politici, c. vi. ]
[Footnote 3: Spinosa died in 1677; Fox in 1681. --ED. ]
_April_ 24. 1832.
COLOURS.
Colours may best be expressed by a heptad, the largest possible formula for
things finite, as the pentad is the smallest possible form. Indeed, the
heptad of things finite is in all cases reducible to the pentad. The
adorable tetractys, or tetrad, is the formula of God; which, again, is
reducible into, and is, in reality, the same with, the Trinity. Take
colours thus:--
Prothesis,
Red, or Colour [Greek: kat exoch_en].
^
/1\
/ \
Mesothesis, or Indifference of / \
Red and Yellow = Orange.
