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Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Time's Portraiture"

Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan - "An Exhortation to Peace and Unity"

Clara Rayleigh - "The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters"

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Biographia Literaria

S >> Samuel Taylor Coleridge >> Biographia Literaria







CHAPTER IX

Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its conditions?--
Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit
compact among the learned as a privileged order--The Author's
obligations to the Mystics--to Immanuel Kant--The difference between
the letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of
prudence in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt to complete
the Critical system--Its partial success and ultimate failure--
Obligations to Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez.


After I had successively studied in the schools of Locke, Berkeley,
Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could find in none of them an abiding place
for my reason, I began to ask myself; is a system of philosophy; as
different from mere history and historic classification, possible? If
possible, what are its necessary conditions? I was for a while
disposed to answer the first question in the negative, and to admit
that the sole practicable employment for the human mind was to
observe, to collect, and to classify. But I soon felt, that human
nature itself fought up against this wilful resignation of intellect;
and as soon did I find, that the scheme, taken with all its
consequences and cleared of all inconsistencies, was not less
impracticable than contranatural. Assume in its full extent the
position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, assume it
without Leibnitz's qualifying praeter ipsum intellectum, and in the
same sense, in which the position was understood by Hartley and
Condillac: and then what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this
concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and
crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and the
logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks
without straw;--or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by
occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward
on the antecedents, that must be presupposed in order to render
experience itself possible. The first book of Locke's Essay, (if the
supposed error, which it labours to subvert, be not a mere thing of
straw, an absurdity which, no man ever did, or indeed ever could,
believe,) is formed on a sophisma heterozaetaeseos, and involves the
old mistake of Cum hoc: ergo, propter hoc.

The term, Philosophy, defines itself as an affectionate seeking after
the truth; but Truth is the correlative of Being. This again is no way
conceivable, but by assuming as a postulate, that both are ab initio,
identical and coinherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally
each other's substrate. I presumed that this was a possible
conception, (i.e. that it involved no logical inconsonance,) from the
length of time during which the scholastic definition of the Supreme
Being, as actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate, was received in
the schools of Theology, both by the Pontifician and the Reformed
divines. The early study of Plato and Plotinus, with the commentaries
and the THEOLOGIA PLATONICA of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus,
and Gemistius Pletho; and at a later period of the De Immenso et
Innumerabili and the "De la causa, principio et uno," of the
philosopher of Nola, who could boast of a Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke
Greville among his patrons, and whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an
atheist in the year 1600; had all contributed to prepare my mind for
the reception and welcoming of the Cogito quia Sum, et Sum quia
Cogito; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but certainly the most
ancient, and therefore presumptively the most natural.

Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare I be ashamed of the Teutonic
theosophist, Jacob Behmen? Many, indeed, and gross were his delusions;
and such as furnish frequent and ample occasion for the triumph of the
learned over the poor ignorant shoemaker, who had dared think for
himself. But while we remember that these delusions were such, as
might be anticipated from his utter want of all intellectual
discipline, and from his ignorance of rational psychology, let it not
be forgotten that the latter defect he had in common with the most
learned theologians of his age. Neither with books, nor with book-
learned men was he conversant. A meek and shy quietest, his
intellectual powers were never stimulated into feverous energy by
crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen
was an enthusiast, in the strictest sense, as not merely
distinguished, but as contra-distinguished, from a fanatic. While I in
part translate the following observations from a contemporary writer
of the Continent, let me be permitted to premise, that I might have
transcribed the substance from memoranda of my own, which were written
many years before his pamphlet was given to the world; and that I
prefer another's words to my own, partly as a tribute due to priority
of publication; but still more from the pleasure of sympathy in a case
where coincidence only was possible.

Whoever is acquainted with the history of philosophy, during the last
two or three centuries, cannot but admit that there appears to have
existed a sort of secret and tacit compact among the learned, not to
pass beyond a certain limit in speculative science. The privilege of
free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time been held valid in
actual practice, except within this limit; and not a single stride
beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the
transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who
actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance
of having so done. Therefore the true depth of science, and the
penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of
knowledge diverge to their ever distant circumference, was abandoned
to the illiterate and the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and an
original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to the investigation of the
indwelling and living ground of all things. These, then, because their
names had never been enrolled in the guilds of the learned, were
persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights
and privileges. All without distinction were branded as fanatics and
phantasts; not only those, whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had
actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and
whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross
caricatures of genuine inspiration; but the truly inspired likewise,
the originals themselves. And this for no other reason, but because
they were the unlearned, men of humble and obscure occupations. When,
and from whom among the literati by profession, have we ever heard the
divine doxology repeated, I thank thee, O Father! Lord of Heaven and
Earth! because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes [28]. No; the haughty priests of
learning not only banished from the schools and marts of science all
who had dared draw living waters from the fountain, but drove them out
of the very Temple, which mean time the buyers, and sellers, and
money-changers were suffered to make a den of thieves.

And yet it would not be easy to discover any substantial ground for
this contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished
themselves by their scorn of Behmen, Thaulerus, George Fox, and
others; unless it be, that they could write orthographically, make
smooth periods, and had the fashions of authorship almost literally at
their fingers' ends, while the latter, in simplicity of soul, made
their words immediate echoes of their feelings. Hence the frequency of
those phrases among them, which have been mistaken for pretences to
immediate inspiration; as for instance, "It was delivered unto me; "--
"I strove not to speak;"-"I said, I will be silent;"--"But the word
was in my heart as a burning fire;"--"and I could not forbear." Hence
too the unwillingness to give offence; hence the foresight, and the
dread of the clamours, which would be raised against them, so
frequently avowed in the writings of these men, and expressed, as was
natural, in the words of the only book, with which they were familiar
[29]. "Woe is me that I am become a man of strife, and a man of
contention,--I love peace: the souls of men are dear unto me: yet
because I seek for light every one of them doth curse me!" O! it
requires deeper feeling, and a stronger imagination, than belong to
most of those, to whom reasoning and fluent expression have been as a
trade learnt in boyhood, to conceive with what might, with what inward
strivings and commotion, the perception of a new and vital truth takes
possession of an uneducated man of genius. His meditations are almost
inevitably employed on the eternal, or the everlasting; for "the world
is not his friend, nor the world's law." Need we then be surprised,
that, under an excitement at once so strong and so unusual, the man's
body should sympathize with the struggles of his mind; or that he
should at times be so far deluded, as to mistake the tumultuous
sensations of his nerves, and the co-existing spectres of his fancy,
as parts or symbols of the truths which were opening on him? It has
indeed been plausibly observed, that in order to derive any advantage,
or to collect any intelligible meaning, from the writings of these
ignorant Mystics, the reader must bring with him a spirit and judgment
superior to that of the writers themselves:

And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?

--a sophism, which I fully agree with Warburton, is unworthy of
Milton; how much more so of the awful Person, in whose mouth he has
placed it? One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my
own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding,
and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their
high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be
found as much fulness of heart and intellect, as burst forth in many a
simple page of George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and even of Behmen's
commentator, the pious and fervid William Law.

The feeling of gratitude, which I cherish toward these men, has caused
me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have
passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and
opinions, would have seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the
concealment of a boon. For the writings of these Mystics acted in no
slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the
outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive
the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working
presentiment, that all the products of the mere reflective faculty
partook of death, and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter,
into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had
not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter.
If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to me by day, yet they
were always a pillar of fire throughout the night, during my
wanderings through the wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to skirt,
without crossing, the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the system
is capable of being converted into an irreligious Pantheism, I well
know. The Ethics of Spinoza, may, or may not, be an instance. But at
no time could I believe, that in itself and essentially it is
incompatible with religion, natural or revealed: and now I am most
thoroughly persuaded of the contrary. The writings of the illustrious
sage of Koenigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than
any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding.
The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the
novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions;
the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add--(paradox
as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel
Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)--the clearness and evidence, of the
Critique of the Pure Reason; and Critique of the Judgment; of the
Metaphysical Elements of Natural Philosophy; and of his Religion
within the bounds of Pure Reason, took possession of me as with the
giant's hand. After fifteen years' familiarity with them, I still read
these and all his other productions with undiminished delight and
increasing admiration. The few passages that remained obscure to me,
after due efforts of thought, (as the chapter on original
apperception,) and the apparent contradictions which occur, I soon
found were hints and insinuations referring to ideas, which KANT
either did not think it prudent to avow, or which he considered as
consistently left behind in a pure analysis, not of human nature in
toto, but of the speculative intellect alone. Here therefore he was
constrained to commence at the point of reflection, or natural
consciousness: while in his moral system he was permitted to assume a
higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as a postulate deducible from
the unconditional command, or (in the technical language of his
school) the categorical imperative, of the conscience. He had been in
imminent danger of persecution during the reign of the late king of
Prussia, that strange compound of lawless debauchery and priest-ridden
superstition: and it is probable that he had little inclination, in
his old age, to act over again the fortunes, and hair-breadth escapes
of Wolf. The expulsion of the first among Kant's disciples, who
attempted to complete his system, from the University of Jena, with
the confiscation and prohibition of the obnoxious work by the joint
efforts of the courts of Saxony and Hanover, supplied experimental
proof, that the venerable old man's caution was not groundless. In
spite therefore of his own declarations, I could never believe, that
it was possible for him to have meant no more by his Noumenon, or
Thing in itself, than his mere words express; or that in his own
conception he confined the whole plastic power to the forms of the
intellect, leaving for the external cause, for the materiale of our
sensations, a matter without form, which is doubtless inconceivable. I
entertained doubts likewise, whether, in his own mind, he even laid
all the stress, which he appears to do, on the moral postulates.

An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by
a symbol; and, except in geometry, all symbols of necessity involve an
apparent contradiction. Phonaese synetoisin: and for those who could
not pierce through this symbolic husk, his writings were not intended.
Questions which cannot be fully answered without exposing the
respondent to personal danger, are not entitled to a fair answer; and
yet to say this openly, would in many cases furnish the very advantage
which the adversary is insidiously seeking after. Veracity does not
consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating, truth; and
the philosopher who cannot utter the whole truth without conveying
falsehood, and at the same time, perhaps, exciting the most malignant
passions, is constrained to express himself either mythically or
equivocally. When Kant therefore was importuned to settle the disputes
of his commentators himself, by declaring what he meant, how could he
decline the honours of martyrdom with less offence, than by simply
replying, "I meant what I said, and at the age of near fourscore, I
have something else, and more important to do, than to write a
commentary on my own works."

Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add
the key-stone of the arch: and by commencing with an act, instead of a
thing or substance, Fichte assuredly gave the first mortal blow to
Spinozism, as taught by Spinoza himself; and supplied the idea of a
system truly metaphysical, and of a metaphysique truly systematic:
(i.e. having its spring and principle within itself). But this
fundamental idea he overbuilt with a heavy mass of mere notions, and
psychological acts of arbitrary reflection. Thus his theory
degenerated into a crude [30] egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic
hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy:
while his religion consisted in the assumption of a mere Ordo
ordinans, which we were permitted exoterice to call GOD; and his
ethics in an ascetic, and almost monkish, mortification of the natural
passions and desires. In Schelling's Natur-Philosophie, and the System
des transcendentalen Idealismus, I first found a genial coincidence
with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance
in what I had yet to do.

I have introduced this statement, as appropriate to the narrative
nature of this sketch; yet rather in reference to the work which I
have announced in a preceding page, than to my present subject. It
would be but a mere act of justice to myself, were I to warn my future
readers, than an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase,
will not be at all times a certain proof that the passage has been
borrowed from Schelling, or that the conceptions were originally
learnt from him. In this instance, as in the dramatic lectures of
Schlegel to which I have before alluded, from the same motive of self-
defence against the charge of plagiarism, many of the most striking
resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and
matured in my mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German
Philosopher; and I might indeed affirm with truth, before the more
important works of Schelling had been written, or at least made
public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had
studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same preparatory
philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both equal
obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano
Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition, avowed
that same affectionate reverence for the labours of Behmen, and other
mystics, which I had formed at a much earlier period. The coincidence
of Schelling's system with certain general ideas of Behmen, he
declares to have been mere coincidence; while my obligations have been
more direct. He needs give to Behmen only feelings of sympathy; while
I owe him a debt of gratitude. God forbid! that I should be suspected
of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so
unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but
as the founder of the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful
improver of the Dynamic System [31] which, begun by Bruno, was re-
introduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its
impurities and visionary accompaniments) by Kant; in whom it was the
native and necessary growth of his own system. Kant's followers,
however, on whom (for the greater part) their master's cloak had
fallen without, or with a very scanty portion of, his spirit, had
adopted his dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species of
mechanics. With exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which
cannot be withheld from Fichte, to Schelling we owe the completion,
and the most important victories, of this revolution in philosophy. To
me it will be happiness and honour enough, should I succeed in
rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the
application of it to the most awful of subjects for the most important
of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's own spirit,
and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by those who
are its sole legitimate judges, by better tests than the mere
reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever shall be
found in this or any future work of mine, that resembles, or coincides
with, the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, be
wholly attributed to him: provided, that the absence of distinct
references to his books, which I could not at all times make with
truth as designating citations or thoughts actually derived from him;
and which, I trust, would, after this general acknowledgment be
superfluous; be not charged on me as an ungenerous concealment or
intentional plagiarism. I have not indeed (eheu! res angusta domi!)
been hitherto able to procure more than two of his books, viz. the
first volume of his collected Tracts, and his System of Transcendental
Idealism; to which, however, I must add a small pamphlet against
Fichte, the spirit of which was to my feelings painfully incongruous
with the principles, and which (with the usual allowance afforded to
an antithesis) displayed the love of wisdom rather than the wisdom of
love. I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist: I care not from whose
mouth the sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the words are
audible and intelligible. "Albeit, I must confess to be half in doubt,
whether I should bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to the eye
of the world, and the world so potent in most men's hearts, that I
shall endanger either not to be regarded or not to be understood."

And to conclude the subject of citation, with a cluster of citations,
which as taken from books, not in common use, may contribute to the
reader's amusement, as a voluntary before a sermon: "Dolet mihi quidem
deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam homines adeo esse, praesertim
qui Christianos se profitentur, et legere nisi quod ad delectationem
facit, sustineant nihil: unde et discipline severiores et philosophia
ipsa jam fere prorsus etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem
propositum studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam magnum rebus
incommodum dabit, quam dedit barbaries olim. Pertinax res barbaries
est, fateor: sed minus potent tamen, quam illa mollities et persuasa
prudentia literarum, si ratione caret, sapientiae virtutisque specie
mortales misere circumducens. Succedet igitur, ut arbitror, haud ita
multo post, pro rusticana seculi nostri ruditate captatrix illa
communi-loquentia robur animi virilis omne, omnem virtutem masculam,
profligatura nisi cavetur."

A too prophetic remark, which has been in fulfilment from the year
1680, to the present 1815. By persuasa prudentia, Grynaeus means self-
complacent common sense as opposed to science and philosophic reason.

Est medius ordo, et velut equestris, ingeniorum quidem sagacium, et
commodorum rebus humanis, non tamen in primam magnitudinem patentium.
Eorum hominum, ut sic dicam, major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil
temere loqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentiae et modistiae
tegere angustiores partes captus, dum exercitationem ac usum, quo isti
in civilibus rebus pollent, pro natura et magnitudine ingenii plerique
accipiunt.

"As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods
of curing as themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by
the patient's impatiency, are fain to try the best they can: in like
sort, considering how the case doth stand with this present age, full
of tongue and weak of brain, behold we would (if our subject permitted
it) yield to the stream thereof. That way we would be contented to
prove our thesis, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding
now by reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be
brooked."

If this fear could be rationally entertained in the controversial age
of Hooker, under the then robust discipline of the scholastic logic,
pardonably may a writer of the present times anticipate a scanty
audience for abstrusest themes, and truths that can neither be
communicated nor received without effort of thought, as well as
patience of attention.

"Che s'io non erro al calcolar de' punti,
Par ch' Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
E'l Somaro e'l Castron si sian congiunti.
Il tempo d'Apuleio piu non si nomini:
Che se allora un sol huom sembrava un Asino,
Mille Asini a' miei di rassembran huomini!"




CHAPTER X

A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that
on the nature and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power--On
pedantry and pedantic expressions--Advice to young authors respecting
publication--Various anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the
progress of his opinions in Religion and Politics.


"Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I met with it
elsewhere." Neither have, I. I constructed it myself from the Greek
words, eis en plattein, to shape into one; because, having to convey a
new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection
of my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with the usual import
of the word, imagination. "But this is pedantry!" Not necessarily so,
I hope. If I am not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words
unsuitable to the time, place, and company. The language of the market
would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated
by that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere
man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in
common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition,
and with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of
letters, who either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or
misled by his own familiarity with technical or scholastic terms,
converses at the wine-table with his mind fixed on his museum or
laboratory; even though the latter pedant instead of desiring his wife
to make the tea should bid her add to the quant. suff. of thea
Sinensis the oxyd of hydrogen saturated with caloric. To use the
colloquial (and in truth somewhat vulgar) metaphor, if the pedant of
the cloister, and the pedant of the lobby, both smell equally of the
shop, yet the odour from the Russian binding of good old authentic-
looking folios and quartos is less annoying than the steams from the
tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the pedantry of the scholar should
betray a little ostentation, yet a well-conditioned mind would more
easily, methinks, tolerate the fox brush of learned vanity, than the
sans culotterie of a contemptuous ignorance, that assumes a merit from
mutilation in the self-consoling sneer at the pompous incumbrance of
tails.

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