,
I am for the happiness of _others!
I am for the happiness of _others!
Coleridge - Table Talk
After resuming our journey, I
observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after
many _hums_ and _hahs_, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested
to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue
took place. Guide. "Signor, are you then a Christian? " Coleridge. "I hope
so. " G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians? " C. "I hope and trust they
are. " G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally? " C. "I
trust not, through Christ. " G. "What! you believe in Christ then? " C.
"Certainly. " This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide
again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm
thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are
to be certainly damned? " C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can
prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. " G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests!
what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to
heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what _are_ the differences? " C.
"Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin. " G. "And why not,
Signor? " C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman,
and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God. " G. "But do you not
worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God? " C. "We do. " G. "Then why
not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left? " C. "I did not know she did.
If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship
her. " "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers,
"sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor! ""--ED. ]
_July_ 30. 1831.
ASGILL. --THE FRENCH.
Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet[1] is invaluable. He
undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any
given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly
practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy
and atheism, as was pretended;--really I suspect because he was a staunch
Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen
snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift--an intense
half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon
skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common
sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between
the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument,
and yet each is a diamond in itself.
[Footnote 1:
"An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life,
revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without
passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could
not be thus translated, till he had passed through death. " Asgill died in
the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for
debt thirty years. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the
Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day? [1] Every
other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their
own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to
him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and
boasts of the atmosphere of "_honour_," through which the lie did not
transpire.
Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,--each by itself smutty and
contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.
[Footnote 1:
When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were
reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the
Hotel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville confessed
with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards,
taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. "An
inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in
the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search.
Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative
researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable
to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty
foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a
weakness," &c. --ED. ]
_August_ 1. 1831.
As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and
some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life
never destroyed.
* * * * *
I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on
the ground of Christianity--its precepts and its assurances.
_August_ 6. 1831.
THE GOOD AND THE TRUE. --ROMISH RELIGION.
There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the
truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the
good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman,
love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet; without the latter, the former
may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of
the truth,--the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party
zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is
ultimately identical--is given only to those who love both sincerely and
without any foreign ends.
* * * * *
Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion,
and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed
principle of action--that the end will sanction any means.
_August_ 8. 1831.
ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.
The conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my
judgment, base and unprincipled beyond any thing in our history since the
times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most
important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject
it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the
English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his
body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot
bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a
hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it.
_August_ 8. 1831.
IRON. --GALVANISM. --HEAT.
Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile
metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is
the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost
impossible to purify nickel of iron.
* * * * *
Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being
continuous, it exhibits an image of life;--I say, an image only: it is
life in death.
* * * * *
Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter.
_August_ 14. 1831.
NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER, AND NAVAL DISCIPLINE.
The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an
inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in
the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst
at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less
offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will
degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now
considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves;
of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break
in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In
countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but
those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another
hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always
striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to
their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the
contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to
emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if
they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have
little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and
better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider
themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to
live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the
place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel
attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for
otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it
as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as
possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the
English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified
this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always
done.
Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is
the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of
the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most
oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest;
then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to
be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.
At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of
the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.
[Footnote 1:
This expression needs explanation. It _looks_ as if Mr. Coleridge rated the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, _after_ that of the citizens of
the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the
form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned
more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better
friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with
interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their
present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and
their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the
English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual
freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less
surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in
Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly
expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly
observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were,
of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the
aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better
support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state
documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of
liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the
ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or
modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the
spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of
antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,--the stars of that narrow
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second
Charles's reigns--believed compatible, the one with the safety of the
state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes! for little less than
a century and a half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of
any known republic, past or present. " (p. 120. ) Upon which he subjoins the
following note: "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of
North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock,
language, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an
exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it
will continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which
I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where
every man may take, liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or,
that where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any. " (p. 121. ) See
also a passage to the like effect in the _Friend_, vol. i. p. 129--ED. ]
August 15. 1831.
ENGLAND. --HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.
I cannot contain my indignation at the conduct of our government towards
Holland. They have undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognized
policy of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the war faction
in France to take possession of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese
upon so flimsy--indeed, false--a pretext[1] yet, in this instance,
something may be said for them.
Miguel is such a wretch, that I acknowledge a sort of morality in leaving
him to be cuffed and insulted; though, of course, this is a poor answer to
a statesman who alleges the interest and policy of the country. But, as to
the Dutch and King William: the first, as a nation, the most ancient ally,
the _alter idem_ of England, the best deserving of the cause of freedom
and religion and morality of any people in Europe; and the second, the
very best sovereign now in Christendom, with, perhaps, the single
exception of the excellent king of Sweden[2]--was ever any thing so mean
and cowardly as the behaviour of England!
The Five Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated exclusively
by a selfish desire to preserve peace--I should rather say, to smother war
--at the expense of a most valuable but inferior power. They have over and
over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch claims, and the absurdity
of the Belgian pretences; but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they
were iniquitous,--as they would not yield _their_ point, why then--that
peace may be preserved--the Dutch must yield theirs! A foreign prince comes
into Belgium, pending these negotiations, and takes an unqualified oath to
maintain the Belgian demands:--what could King William or the Dutch do, if
they ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, but resist and
resent this outrage to the uttermost? It was a crisis in which every
consideration of state became inferior to the strong sense and duty of
national honour. When, indeed, the French appear in the field, King William
retires. "I now see," he may say, "that the powers of Europe are determined
to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a proceeding I leave to their
conscience and the decision of history. It is now no longer a question
whether I am tamely to submit to rebels and a usurper; it is no longer a
quarrel between Holland and Belgium: it is an alliance of all Europe
against Holland,--in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice my
people. "
[Footnote 1:
Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a
Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of
common decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in
Passion Week. --ED. ];
[Footnote 2:
"Every thing that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed
to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy
to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic
race. "--_Church and State_, p. 125. n. --ED. ]
* * * * *
When Leopold said that he was called to "_reign over_ four millions of
noble Belgians," I thought the phrase would have been more germane to the
matter, if he had said that he was called to "_rein in_ four million
restive asses. "
_August_ 20. 1831.
GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE. ----HOBBISM.
O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever fellow. He is for the
greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the
longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will
venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q.
mean by the word _happiness_? and, secondly, how does he propose to make
other persons agree in _his_ definition of the term? Don't you see the
ridiculous absurdity of setting up _that_ as a principle or motive of
action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very
nature--an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures
susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness? But,
_what_ happiness? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping
his fallen enemy, pursues _his_ happiness naturally and adequately. A
Chickasaw, or Pawnee Bentham, or O. P. Q. , would necessarily hope for the
most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible
number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this
absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty,
imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q.
,
I am for the happiness of _others! _ Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I
happen to be one of those _others_, and, so far as I can judge from what
you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your
banquet of happiness. _Your_ mode of happiness would make _me_ miserable.
To go about doing as much _good_ as possible to as many men as possible,
is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then,
in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others
to your particular views, which may be quite different from your
neighbour's, you must do _that_ good to others which the reason, common to
all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so
very true as to be a mere truism.
* * * * *
So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions _for_ the pleasure
of a good conscience; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist!
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.
observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after
many _hums_ and _hahs_, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested
to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue
took place. Guide. "Signor, are you then a Christian? " Coleridge. "I hope
so. " G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians? " C. "I hope and trust they
are. " G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally? " C. "I
trust not, through Christ. " G. "What! you believe in Christ then? " C.
"Certainly. " This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide
again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm
thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are
to be certainly damned? " C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can
prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. " G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests!
what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to
heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what _are_ the differences? " C.
"Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin. " G. "And why not,
Signor? " C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman,
and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God. " G. "But do you not
worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God? " C. "We do. " G. "Then why
not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left? " C. "I did not know she did.
If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship
her. " "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers,
"sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor! ""--ED. ]
_July_ 30. 1831.
ASGILL. --THE FRENCH.
Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet[1] is invaluable. He
undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any
given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly
practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy
and atheism, as was pretended;--really I suspect because he was a staunch
Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen
snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift--an intense
half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon
skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common
sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between
the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument,
and yet each is a diamond in itself.
[Footnote 1:
"An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life,
revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without
passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could
not be thus translated, till he had passed through death. " Asgill died in
the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for
debt thirty years. --ED. ]
* * * * *
Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the
Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day? [1] Every
other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their
own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to
him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and
boasts of the atmosphere of "_honour_," through which the lie did not
transpire.
Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,--each by itself smutty and
contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.
[Footnote 1:
When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were
reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the
Hotel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville confessed
with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards,
taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. "An
inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in
the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search.
Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative
researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable
to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty
foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a
weakness," &c. --ED. ]
_August_ 1. 1831.
As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and
some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life
never destroyed.
* * * * *
I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on
the ground of Christianity--its precepts and its assurances.
_August_ 6. 1831.
THE GOOD AND THE TRUE. --ROMISH RELIGION.
There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the
truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the
good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman,
love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet; without the latter, the former
may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of
the truth,--the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party
zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is
ultimately identical--is given only to those who love both sincerely and
without any foreign ends.
* * * * *
Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion,
and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed
principle of action--that the end will sanction any means.
_August_ 8. 1831.
ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.
The conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my
judgment, base and unprincipled beyond any thing in our history since the
times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most
important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject
it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the
English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his
body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot
bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a
hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it.
_August_ 8. 1831.
IRON. --GALVANISM. --HEAT.
Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile
metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is
the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost
impossible to purify nickel of iron.
* * * * *
Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being
continuous, it exhibits an image of life;--I say, an image only: it is
life in death.
* * * * *
Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter.
_August_ 14. 1831.
NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER, AND NAVAL DISCIPLINE.
The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an
inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in
the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst
at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less
offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will
degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now
considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves;
of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break
in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In
countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but
those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another
hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always
striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to
their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the
contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to
emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if
they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have
little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and
better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider
themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to
live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the
place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel
attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for
otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it
as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as
possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the
English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified
this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always
done.
Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is
the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of
the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most
oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest;
then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to
be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.
At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of
the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.
[Footnote 1:
This expression needs explanation. It _looks_ as if Mr. Coleridge rated the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, _after_ that of the citizens of
the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the
form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned
more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better
friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with
interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their
present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and
their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the
English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual
freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less
surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in
Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly
expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly
observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were,
of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the
aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better
support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state
documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of
liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the
ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or
modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the
spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of
antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,--the stars of that narrow
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second
Charles's reigns--believed compatible, the one with the safety of the
state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes! for little less than
a century and a half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of
any known republic, past or present. " (p. 120. ) Upon which he subjoins the
following note: "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of
North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock,
language, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an
exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it
will continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which
I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where
every man may take, liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or,
that where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any. " (p. 121. ) See
also a passage to the like effect in the _Friend_, vol. i. p. 129--ED. ]
August 15. 1831.
ENGLAND. --HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.
I cannot contain my indignation at the conduct of our government towards
Holland. They have undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognized
policy of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the war faction
in France to take possession of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese
upon so flimsy--indeed, false--a pretext[1] yet, in this instance,
something may be said for them.
Miguel is such a wretch, that I acknowledge a sort of morality in leaving
him to be cuffed and insulted; though, of course, this is a poor answer to
a statesman who alleges the interest and policy of the country. But, as to
the Dutch and King William: the first, as a nation, the most ancient ally,
the _alter idem_ of England, the best deserving of the cause of freedom
and religion and morality of any people in Europe; and the second, the
very best sovereign now in Christendom, with, perhaps, the single
exception of the excellent king of Sweden[2]--was ever any thing so mean
and cowardly as the behaviour of England!
The Five Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated exclusively
by a selfish desire to preserve peace--I should rather say, to smother war
--at the expense of a most valuable but inferior power. They have over and
over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch claims, and the absurdity
of the Belgian pretences; but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they
were iniquitous,--as they would not yield _their_ point, why then--that
peace may be preserved--the Dutch must yield theirs! A foreign prince comes
into Belgium, pending these negotiations, and takes an unqualified oath to
maintain the Belgian demands:--what could King William or the Dutch do, if
they ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, but resist and
resent this outrage to the uttermost? It was a crisis in which every
consideration of state became inferior to the strong sense and duty of
national honour. When, indeed, the French appear in the field, King William
retires. "I now see," he may say, "that the powers of Europe are determined
to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a proceeding I leave to their
conscience and the decision of history. It is now no longer a question
whether I am tamely to submit to rebels and a usurper; it is no longer a
quarrel between Holland and Belgium: it is an alliance of all Europe
against Holland,--in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice my
people. "
[Footnote 1:
Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a
Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of
common decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in
Passion Week. --ED. ];
[Footnote 2:
"Every thing that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed
to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy
to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic
race. "--_Church and State_, p. 125. n. --ED. ]
* * * * *
When Leopold said that he was called to "_reign over_ four millions of
noble Belgians," I thought the phrase would have been more germane to the
matter, if he had said that he was called to "_rein in_ four million
restive asses. "
_August_ 20. 1831.
GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE. ----HOBBISM.
O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever fellow. He is for the
greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the
longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will
venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q.
mean by the word _happiness_? and, secondly, how does he propose to make
other persons agree in _his_ definition of the term? Don't you see the
ridiculous absurdity of setting up _that_ as a principle or motive of
action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very
nature--an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures
susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness? But,
_what_ happiness? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping
his fallen enemy, pursues _his_ happiness naturally and adequately. A
Chickasaw, or Pawnee Bentham, or O. P. Q. , would necessarily hope for the
most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible
number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this
absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty,
imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q.
,
I am for the happiness of _others! _ Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I
happen to be one of those _others_, and, so far as I can judge from what
you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your
banquet of happiness. _Your_ mode of happiness would make _me_ miserable.
To go about doing as much _good_ as possible to as many men as possible,
is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then,
in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others
to your particular views, which may be quite different from your
neighbour's, you must do _that_ good to others which the reason, common to
all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so
very true as to be a mere truism.
* * * * *
So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions _for_ the pleasure
of a good conscience; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist!
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.
