Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge Samuel Taylor. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

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are nevertheless true; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher logic— that of ideas. They are contradictory only in the Aristotelian logic, which is the instrument of the understanding. I have read most of the works of Plato several times with profound attention, but not all his writings. In fact, I soon found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was a consummate genius.40

* * * * *

      My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to animal magnetism. Von Spix, the eminent naturalist, makes no doubt of the matter, and talks coolly of giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or external object, by an exertion of its own will: such a power is not properly electrical; for electricity acts invariably under the same circumstances. A steady gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush deeply. Account for that.41

      May 1. 1830

FALL OF MAN.—MADNESS.—BROWN AND DARWIN.—NITROUS OXIDE

      A Fall of some sort or other—the creation, as it were, of the non- absolute—is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.

* * * * *

      Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the sleep of the spirit with certain conditions of wakefulness; that is to say, lucid intervals. During this sleep, or recession of the spirit, the lower or bestial states of life rise up into action and prominence. It is an awful thing to be eternally tempted by the perverted senses. The reason may resist—it does resist—for a long time; but too often, at length, it yields for a moment, and the man is mad for ever. An act of the will is, in many instances, precedent to complete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler who said, that he was "all his life struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses," which would have maddened him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his reason for a single moment.

* * * * *

      Brown's and Darwin's theories are both ingenious; but the first will not account for sleep, and the last will not account for death: considerable defects, you must allow.

* * * * *

      It is said that every excitation is followed by a commensurate exhaustion. That is not so. The excitation caused by inhaling nitrous oxide is an exception at least; it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the bubble. The operation of this gas is to prevent the decarbonating of the blood; and, consequently, if taken excessively, it would produce apoplexy. The blood becomes black as ink. The voluptuous sensation attending the inhalation is produced by the compression and resistance.

      May 2. 1830

PLANTS.—INSECTS.—MEN.—DOG.—ANT AND BEE

      Plants exist in themselves. Insects by, or by means of, themselves. Men, for themselves. The perfection of irrational animals is that which is best for them; the perfection of man is that which is absolutely best. There is growth only in plants; but there is irritability, or, a better word, instinctivity, in insects.

* * * * *

      You may understand by insect, life in sections—diffused generally over all the parts.

* * * * *

      The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a [*Greek: storgae], or affection upwards to man.

* * * * *

      The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man in the understanding or faculty of adapting means to proximate ends than the elephant.42

      May 3. 1830

BLACK COLONEL

      What an excellent character is the black Colonel in Mrs. Bennett's "Beggar Girl!"43

      If an inscription be put upon my tomb, it may be that I was an enthusiastic lover of the church; and as enthusiastic a hater of those who have betrayed it, be they who they may.44

      May 4. 1830

HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH

      Holland and the Netherlands ought to be seen once, because no other country is like them. Every thing is artificial. You will be struck with the combinations of vivid greenery, and water, and building; but every thing is so distinct and rememberable, that you would not improve your conception by visiting the country a hundred times over. It is interesting to see a country and a nature made, as it were, by man, and to compare it with God's nature.45

      If you go, remark, (indeed you will be forced to do so in spite of yourself,) remark, I say, the identity (for it is more than proximity) of a disgusting dirtiness in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence for, the human person; and a persecuting painted cleanliness in every thing connected with property. You must not walk in their gardens; nay, you must hardly look into them.

* * * * *

      The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, certainly; but it is the happiness of animals. In vain do you look for the sweet breath of hope and advancement among them.46 [1]In fact, as to their villas and gardens, they are not to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box.

      May 5. 1830

RELIGION GENTILIZES.—WOMEN AND MEN.—BIBLICAL COMMENTATORS.—WALKERITE CREED

      You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.

* * * * *

      A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. Man seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever.

* * * * *

      I never could get much information out of the biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which puzzle a man of reflection.

      The Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New Church, as it is called, appears to be a miscellany of Calvinism and Quakerism; but it is hard to understand it.

* * * * *

      May 7, 1830

HORNE TOOKE.–DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY.–GENDER OF THE SUN IN GERMAN

      Horne Tooke was pre-eminently a ready-witted man. He had that clearness which is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness. His voice was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no progression or developement. All that is worth any thing (and that is but little) in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, hut there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto volume, 1 believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting newspaper lampoons and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the pamphlet, It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so divine, a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political squibs. All that is true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history of one language, or one or two languages. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the Hermes, was dealing—not very profoundly, it is true,—with the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, and metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of words only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of language, which is a very different thing. In point of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic dialects. I must say, all that decantata fabula about the genders of the sun and moon in German seems to me great


<p>40</p>

"This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (—a truth of the reason, an Idea)—that in its own proper form it is inconceivable. For to conceive, is a function of the understanding, which can he exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered expressible. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the representative or expression (—the exponent) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. Examples: before Abraham WAS, I AM. God is a circle, the centre of which is every where, and the circumference no where. The soul is all in every part." Aids to Reflection, n. 224.n. See also Church and State, p. 12.—ED.

<p>41</p>

I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301. vol. i. of the richly annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed as his "darling book and the favourite of his library" to its great and honoured author and donor:—

"The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is common to almost all the magnetic patients in Denmark, Germany, France, and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, and where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attesters are to be found names of men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their competence in respect of physio- and psychological insight and attainments incomparably greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c.? Were I asked, what I think, my answer would be,—that the evidence enforces scepticism and a non liquet;—too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvibility on the supposition of imposture or casual coincidence;—too fugacious and unfixable to support any theory that supposes the always potential, and, under certain conditions and circumstances, occasionally active, existence of a correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an hypothesis would be adequate to the satisfactory explanation of the facts;—though that of a metastasis of specific functions of the nervous energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, plus some delusion, plus some illusion, plus some imposition, plus some chance and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, ex. gr. Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical celebrity, and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Klug's work had left me, without having moved an inch backward or forward. The reply of Treviranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is worth recording:—'Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht würde geglaubt haben auf ihren erzählung,' &c. 'I have seen what I am certain I would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore, I can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on mine.'"—ED.

<p>42</p>

I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant, as the most intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational creatures, so far as our present acquaintance with the facts of natural history enables us to judge.—ED.

<p>43</p>

This character was frequently a subject of pleasant description and enlargement with Mr. Coleridge, and he generally passed from it to a high commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being in their way perfectly genuine and individual productions.—ED.

<p>44</p>

This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. A better and a truer character would be, that Coleridge was a lover of the church, and a defender of the faith! This last expression is the utterance of a conviction so profound that it can patiently wait for time to prove its truth.—ED.

<p>45</p>

In the summer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion with Mr. Wordsworth in Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine, as far as Bergen. He came back delighted, especially with his stay near Bonn, but with an abiding disgust at the filthy habits of the people. Upon Cologne, in particular, he avenged himself in two epigrams. See Poet. Works, vol. ii. p. 144.—ED.

<p>46</p> "For every gift of noble originIs breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath."Wordsworth.