ILLUSION Sunday Midnight, May 12, 1805
At the Treasury, La Valetta, Malta, in the room the windows of which directly face the piazzas and vast saloon built for the archives and Library and now used as the Garrison Ball-room, sitting at one corner of a large parallelogram table well-littered with books, in a red arm-chair, at the other corner of which (diagonally)
Mr. Dennison had been sitting—he and I having conversed for a long time, he bade me good night, and retired—I meaning to retire too, however sunk for five minutes or so into a doze and on suddenly awaking up I saw him as distinctly sitting in the chair, as I had, really, some ten minutes before. I was startled, and thinking of it, sunk into a second doze, out of which awaking as before I saw again the same appearance; not more distinct indeed, but more of his form—for at the first time I had seen only his face and bust—but now I saw as much as I could have seen if he had been really there. The appearance was very nearly that of a person seen through thin smoke distinct indeed, but yet a sort of distinct shape and colour, with a diminished sense of substantiality—like a face in a clear stream. My nerves had been violently agitated yesterday morning by the attack of three dogs as I was mounting the steps of Captain Pasley's door—two of them savage Bedouins, who wounded me in the calf of my left leg. I have noted this down, not three minutes having intervened since the illusion took place. Often and often I have had similar experiences and, therefore, resolved to write down the particulars whenever any new instance should occur, as a weapon against superstition, and an explanation of ghosts—Banquo in "Macbeth" the very same thing. I once told a lady the reason why I did not believe in the existence of ghosts, etc., was that I had seen too many of them myself. N.B. There were on the table a common black wine-bottle, a decanter of water, and, between these, one of the half-gallon glass flasks which Sir G. Beaumont had given me (four of these full of port), the cork in, covered with leather, and having a white plated ring on the top. I mention this because since I wrote the former pages, on blinking a bit a third time, and opening my eyes, I clearly detected that this high-shouldered hypochondriacal bottle-man had a great share in producing the effect. The metamorphosis was clearly beginning, though I snapped the spell before it had assumed a recognisable form. The red-leather arm-chair was so placed at the corner that the flask was exactly between me and it—and the lamp being close to my corner of the large table, and not giving much light, the chair was rather obscure, and the brass nails where the leather was fastened to the outward wooden rim reflecting the light more copiously were seen almost for themselves. What if instead of immediately checking the sight, and then pleased with it as a philosophical case, I had been frightened and encouraged it, and my understanding had joined its vote to that of my senses?
My own shadow, too, on the wall not far from Mr. D.'s chair—the white paper, the sheet of Harbour Reports lying spread out on the table on the other side of the bottles—influence of mere colour, influence of shape—wonderful coalescence of scattered colours at distances, and, then, all going to some one shape, and the modification! Likewise I am more convinced by repeated observation that, perhaps, always in a very minute degree but assuredly in certain states and postures of the eye, as in drowsiness, in the state of the brain and nerves after distress or agitation, especially if it had been accompanied by weeping, and in many others, we see our own faces, and project them according to the distance given them by the degree of indistinctness—that this may occasion in the highest degree the Wraith (vide a hundred Scotch stories, but better than all, Wordsworth's most wonderful and admirable poem, Peter Bell, when he sees his own figure), and, still oftener, that it facilitates the formation of a human face out of some really present object, and from the alteration of the distance among other causes never suspected as the occasion and substratum.
S. T. C.
N.B.—This is a valuable note, re-read by me, Tuesday morning, May 14.
[Compare Table Talk for January 3 and May 1, 1823, Bell & Co., 1884, pp. 20, 31-33. See, too, The Friend, First Landing Place Essay, iii., Coleridge's Works, Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 134-137.]
FOR THE "SOOTHER IN ABSENCE"
Mem. always to bear in mind that profound sentence of Leibnitz that men's intellectual errors consist chiefly in denying. What they affirm with feeling is, for the most part, right—if it be a real affirmation, and not affirmative in form, negative in reality. As, for instance, when a man praises the French stage, meaning and implying his dislike of Shakspere [and the Elizabethan dramatists].
"Facts—stubborn facts! None of your theory!" A most entertaining and instructive essay might be written on this text, and the sooner the better. Trace it from the most absurd credulity—e.g., in Fracastorius' De Sympathiâ, cap. i. and the Alchemy Book—even to that of your modern agriculturists, relating their own facts and swearing against each other like ships' crews. O! it is the relation of the facts—not the facts, friend!
Speculative men are wont to be condemned by the general. But who more speculative then Sir Walter Raleigh, and he, even he, brought the potato to Europe. Good heavens! let me never eat a roasted potato without dwelling on it, and detailing its train of consequences. Likewise, too, dubious to the philosopher, but to be clapped chorally by the commercial world, he, this mere wild speculatist, introduced tobacco.
For a nation to make peace only because it is tired of war, and, as it were, in order just to take breath, is in direct subversion of the end and object of the war which was its sole justification. 'Tis like a poor way-sore foot traveller getting up behind a coach that is going the contrary way to his.
The eye hath a two-fold power. It is, verily, a window through which you not only look out of the house, but can look into it too. A statesman and diplomatist should for this reason always wear spectacles.
Worldly men gain their purposes with worldly men by that instinctive belief in sincerity. Hence (nothing immediately and passionately contradicting it) the effect of the "with unfeigned esteem," "entire devotion," and the other smooth phrases in letters, all, in short, that sea-officers call oil, and of which they, with all their bluntness, well understand the use.
The confusion of metaphor with reality is one of the fountains of the many-headed Nile of credulity, which, overflowing its banks, covers the world with miscreations and reptile monsters, and feeds by its many mouths the sea of blood.
A ready command of a limited number of words is but a playing cat-cradle dexterously with language.
Plain contra-reasoning may be compared with boxing with fists. Controversy with boxing is the cestus, that is, the lead-loaded glove, like the pugilists in the Æneid. But the stiletto! the envenomed stiletto is here. What worse? (a Germanism) Yes! the poisoned Italian glove of mock friendship.
The more I reflect, the more exact and close appears to me the analogy between a watch and watches, and the conscience and consciences of men, on the one hand, and that between the sun and motion of the heavenly bodies in general and the reason and goodness of the Supreme on the other. Never goes quite right any one, no two go exactly the same; they derive their dignity and use as being substitutes and exponents of heavenly motions, but still, in a thousand instances, they are and must be our instructors by which we must act, in practice presuming a coincidence while theoretically we are aware of incalculable variations.
One lifts up one's eyes to heaven, as if to seek there what one had lost on earth—eyes,
Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears
Gave shape, hue,