OF THE
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BY
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«^\ r<
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY UPON HIS PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS
EDITED BY
PROFESSOR W. G-. T. SHEDD
IN SEVEN VOLUMES VOL. I.
AIDS TO REFLECTION
STATESMAN'S MANUAL
NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1884
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court ot the Southern District of New York
PUBLISHEKS' ADVERTISEMENT.
THIS collection of Coleridge's "Works contains all the productions of this author that have appeared in England, with the exception of his newspaper articles, which have been recently republished under the title of Essays on his own Times. It has not been deemed advisable to include these in this series, on account of the ephemeral character of most of them, and because the author's social, political and ethical philosophy is much more fully and clearly presented in the Essays of The Friend. The English editions of several of the treatises are accompanied with introductory and supplementary essays by the editors, which have generally been omitted, because of their pre- vailing reference to topics and controversies of local and temporary interest.
The purchaser of this edition, therefore, will, with the above-mentioned exception, possess the entire and un- abridged works of S. T. Coleridge.
CONTENTS.
FAOI
Introductory Essay, by the American Editor 9
Editor's Advertisement to the Fourth Edition of the Aids 65
Preliminary Essay, by James Marsh, D.D 67
Author's Address to the Header Ill
Author's Preface 113
AIDS TO REFLECTION:
Introductory Aphorisms 117
On Sensibility 135
Prudential Aphorisms 130
Moral and Religious Aphorisms 146
Elements of Religious Philosophy 199
Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion 190
Aphorisms on that which is indeed Spiritual Religion 20 1
On the difference in kind of Reason and the Understanding 24.1
On Instinct in connection with the Understanding 259
On Original Sin 268
On Redemption 316
On Baptism 333
Conclusion 350
Appendix A. Distinction between Reason and Understanding. . . . 369
Appendix B. On Instinct, by J. H. Green 370
Appendix C. Theory of Life, by S. T. Coleridge 373
STATESMAN'S MANUAL 417
Appendix A 455
Appendix B 456
Appendix C 473
Appendix D 474
Appendix E. , 478
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
IN presenting- the public with a complete edition 01' the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it seems proper to prefice it with some remarks upon their general spirit and tendency. At first sight this may seem to be a superfluous attempt, because from the very first appearance of this author before the world, down to the present moment, he has been the subject of analysis and criticism, both offensive and defensive, to an extent unparalleled in the case of any other literary man, within the same length of time. Yet a second look will enable any one to see, that not withstanding all this remark upon Coleridge, it is still difficult to form an estimate of his mind, and of his real worth as a Thinker. Critics themselves have been embarrassed by the re- markable universality of his genius, and the wonderful variety of his productions, and have generally confined themselves to one side of his mind, and one class of his works. The result is that one gift of the man has been extolled to the depreciation of an- other. Those, and they are the great majority, who have been impressed by the rich and exhaustless Imagination of Coleridge, and by his contributions to the lighter and more beautiful forms of Literature, have lamented that so much of the power and vigor of his intellect, should have been enlisted in Philosophy ; while the lesser number who have been stimulated and strength- ened by his profound speculations, as they have been by no con- temporaneous English writer, have regretted that the poetic na- ture prevented that singleness of aim and unity of pursuit, which might have left as the record of his life, a philosophic system, to be placed beside those of Plato and Kant. With the exception of the clear and masterly Essay, prefixed to his edition of the- Aids to Refection, by the late Dr. Marsh, whose premature decease, in the full vigor of his powers, and the full maturity of his discipline and scholarship, is the greatest loss American
10 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
Philosophy has yet been called to meet, we call to mind no thor« oughly elaborated, and truly profound estimate, of the philosophi- cal opinions of Coleridge. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, the speculative opinions of Coleridge were a slow formation, and although they finally came to have a fixed and determined character, yet during the first half of his literary career, he was undoubtedly not clear in his own mind. The consequence therefore is, that the philosophy of Coleridge must be gathered from his writings rather than quoted from them, and hence the difficulty for the critic, which does not exist in the in- stance of a rounded and finished treatise, to determine the real form and matter of his system. In the second place, the literary world has not been interested in the department of Philosophy. Those problems relating to the nature of man, the universe, and God, which in some ages of the world have swallowed up in their living vortex all the best thinking of the human mind, and which in reality have been the root whence have sprung all the loftiest growths of the human intellect, have been displaced by other and slighter themes, and hence the English Philosopher of this age has been a lonely and solitary thinker. There have been ages when the striking expression of Hazlitt, would apply with literal truth to the majority of the literary class : — " Sir, I am a metaphysician, and nothing makes an impression upon me but abstract ideas." But the age in which one of the most subtile and profound of English minds made his appearance and cast his bread upon all waters, was the least abstract in its way of think- ing, the most concrete and outward in its method and tendency, oi any. These two causes combined, will account, perhaps, for the fact that while the poetical and strictly literary productions of Coleridge have on the whole met with a genial reception and an appreciative criticism, his philosophical and theological opinions have been at the best, imperfectly understood, and more often, much misunderstood and misrepresented. While therefore Cole- ridge has done more than any other man, with the exception of Wordsworth, to form the poetic taste of the age and to impart style and tone to the rising generation of English Poets, and as a literary man lias done more by far than any other one, to revo- lutionize the criticism of the age — while in this way " he has been melted into the rising literatures of England and America' --Coleridge as a Thinker has accomplished far 'ess.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 11
And yet it is our belief, that in this latter character — in the capacity of a Philosopher and Theologian — Coleridge is to exert his greatest and best influence. After his immediate influence upon Poetry and Belles Lettres shall have disappeared in that most vital and therefore most shifting of all processes — the ever evolving development of a national Literature — the direction and impulse which his speculative opinions have given to the English thinking of the nineteenth century, will for -a long time to come, be as distinct and unmistakable as the Gulf-Stream in the Atlan- tic. It is for this reason that we shall, in this introductory essay, confine our remarks to the philosophical and theological opinions of Coleridge ; and it will be our aim, as fully as our limits will permit, to contemplate him as a Thinker, the main tendency of whose thinking is in the right direction, and the general spirit and influence of whose system is profound and salutary. It will be our object to justify to the general mind that respectful regard for Coleridge's philosophical and theological views, and that con- fidence in their general soundness, which is so marked a charac- teristic of that lesser but increasing public who have been swayed by him for the last twenty years. In doing this, however, we mean not to appear as the mere passive recipient of his opinions, or as the blind adherent of each and every one of them. How far we are disposed to look upon Coleridge as an original thinker, in the sense in which the phrase is applied to the Platos and Aristotles, the Leibnitzes and Kants of the race, and to what ex- tent we think he may be regarded as the author of a system, and as the head of a school in Philosophy, will appear in the course of our remarks.
And we would here in the outset direct attention to the man- ner in which the opinions of Coleridge originated. It is unfor- tunate that no biography at all worthy of the man is in exist- ence, his own most interesting but most fragmentary Biographia Liter aria, still being the best account of his intellectual and moral history yet given to the world. With the aid, however, to be derived from the biographical materials now before the world, a careful study of his writings themselves will enable the discern- ing student, not only to gather the general system finally adopted, and to some extent developed, by Coleridge, but also to trace the origin and growth of it. A full account, however, of the inward as we . as outward life of Coleridge, by a congenial mind, would
12 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
be, in many lespects, the richest contribution to psychology that could be made.
For the mental development of Coleridge was eminently an historic process. He did not, as do the majority of men, even literary men, begin with the same general system and method of thinking, with which he ended, but like the age in which he lived and upon which he impressed himself, he passed by a slow but most thorough process from a sensuous to a spiritual system of speculation. Bred up in the reigning empirical philosophy of the eighteenth century, it was only gradually, and as we think, through the intermediate stage of Pantheism, that he finally came out, in the maturity of his powers, upon the high ground of a rational and Christian Theism. In like manner, and parallel with this, he went through a great theological change. Begin- ning with the Socmianism, which, at the close of the last century, existed not merely in an independent and avowed form of dissent from the Established Church of England, but also to some extent in the clergy of this church itself, Coleridge, partly from the change in his philosophic views, and still more as we believe from severe inward struggles, and a change in his own religious experience, in the end, embraced the Christian system with a depth and sincerity, a humility and docility of spirit rarely to be found in the history of philosophers and poets, of whom " few are called." And finally the same revolution, the same change for the better, and growth, appears in his political opinions. Embracing with •' proud precipitance of soul" the cause of a false freedom, he gradually moderated his views, grew conservative, and in the end settled down upon the principles of the majority of cultivated Englishmen, and rested in them.
Now this peculiarity in the origin and formation of the system of opinions finally adopted by Coleridge, and by which he ought to be known, and will be known to posterity, deserves serious and candid attention for several reasons. In the first place, the stu- dent will thereby be saved from the errors into which many indi- viduals, and to some extent the age itse f, have fallen, of attributing to Coleridge, as the. ultimate and fixed view of his mind, opinions which had but an early and transient existence in it, and which sustain about the same relation to his final system, that the pang and the throe do to the living birth. The question for the student in relation to Coleridge is not : — What did he believe and teach on
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 18
this point, and on that point, in the year 1800 — but what did he teach and believe in the fulness of his development and in the maturity of his ripened reason. The question is not : — What can be logically deduced, and still less what can be twisted and tor- tured, out of this or that passage in his writings, but wrhat is un- questionably the strong drift and general spirit of them as a whole. No writer more needs, or is more deserving of a gener- ous and large-minded criticism than this one. "Without reserve he has communicated himself to the world, in all the phases of •experience and varieties of opinion through which he passed — in all his weaknesses and in all his strength — and such an exposure as this, surely ought not to be subjected to the same remorseless inference as that to which we of right subject the single treatise on a single doctrine, of a mind made up.
Again, this recognition of the manner in which the opinions of Coleridge were formed .will, at the very same time that it opens the eye to all that is true and sound in them, also open it to whatever is defective or erroneous. How much there is of the latter is a point upon which each mind must judge for itself, and such freedom of judgment is one of the plainest lessons and most natural fruits of the general system contained in these volumes. Provided only the judgment be intelligent and free from bigotry, we believe Coleadge will suffer no more than the finite human mind must suffer, when it allows itself to expatiate in all regions of inquiry, and attempts to construct a system of universal knowl- edge. If we remember the immense range of Coleridge's studies arid the vastness of his schemes, and also remember, that though he had not the constructive ability of an Aristotle or a Hegel, and did not fairly arid fully realize a single one of his many plans, he yet has left on record some expression of his mind, upon nearly or quite all the more serious and important subjects that L*ome before the human understanding, we shall not be surprised to find some misconceptions and errors in his multifarious productions. But these mistakes and deficiencies themselves will be the most unerringly detected, and the most effectually guarded against, by him who is able to view and criticize them from the very van- tage-ground itself, to which his mind has been lifted by the prin- ciples of the general system of Coleridge. Having made these " the fountain-light of all his day, the master-light of all his see- ing," the inquirer after truth will be able to detect the errors to
14 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
which the human mind is always liable, and which in the present instance are, as we verily believe, the excrescences merely.
But however it may have been with Coleridge himself, it is plain that this slow process of renunciation of erroneous systems and reception of more correct ones, is one of increased interest and worth for the inquirer. Like the Retractions of Augustine, the retractions of Coleridge, if we may call them such, have a negative worth almost equal to that of the positive statements to which they lead. This rise of the mind through doubts and prej- udices to a higher and more rectified position — this nearing the centre of absolute truth, by these corrections — is always one of the most instructive passages in literary history. And especially is it so in the case of Coleridge. We see here one of the most capacious and powerfully-endowed minds of the race, after a slow and toilsome course, first through the less profound, and lastly through the most profound of the two .erroneous systems of speculation, in which many of the most gifted intellects, contem- poraneous with him, were caught and stopped, ultimately and with a deep and clear consciousness finding rest in Christianity as the eternal ground not only of life but also of truth, not only of religion but also of philosophy. Coleridge lived contempora- neously with that most wonderful, and for the speculating intel- lect most overmastering, of all mental processes, the pantheistic movement in the German mind. But while he was at one pe- riod of his life — the heyday of hope and aspiration — involved in it so far as to say that his head was with Spinoza, we find him freeing himself from it at an after-period when the whole con- tinental mind was drawn within reach of its tremendous sweep as within the circles of a maelstrom. He worked his way through and out of a system the most stupendous for its logical consist- ence, and the most fascinating for the imagination of any that the world has yet seen, and undoubtedly stablished and settled his own mind, whether he may have done the same for others or not, in the Christian Theism, at a time when the speculation and philosophizing of his day were fast departing from the centre of truth, and drawing nearly all the inquiring intellect of Ger- many and France with them. During the last quarter of his life, as matter of fact, Coleridge was the resort and the teacher for many minds who were seeking rest and finding none in the sphere of philosophy, and whether he relieved their doubts
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 15
and cleared up their difficulties or not, no one of them ever seems to have doubted that he was clear and settled in his own mind, and that though he might not succeed in refuting the positions of Atheism and Pantheism, he was himself impregnable to them. But there is reason to believe that many minds were strengthened and armed by him, and that the philosophy and theology of Eng- land is at this very moment very different from what it Avould have been had the thinking of Coleridge not been working like leaven in it.* It is a remark of Goethe that our own faith is wonderfully increased on learning that another mind shares it with us ; and perhaps one of the strongest reasons for a wavering soul, for believing in the highest truths of philosophy and religion, and for rejecting the skepticism of the human understanding, lies in such examples as that of Coleridge. His belief was not he- reditary and passive. He was not ignorant of the arguments and gigantic schemes which the speculative reason has constructed in opposition to the truth. He had painfully felt in his own being the difficulties and doubts to which man is liable, and to which the acutest intellects have too often succumbed. He had been over the whole ground from Pyrrho to Hegel, and after all his investigation saw his way clear into the region of Christian Rev- elation and rested there. Surely such an example is an argument and an authority for the doubting mind. All that Burkef says of the relation of the culture of Montesquieu to the Constitution of England, in that splendid passage, at once the most magnificent rhetoric and the strongest logic, applies with fuller and far deeper force, to the relation of an endowment, a discipline, and an ac- quisition, like that of Coleridge, to Philosophy and Christianity.
It is in reference to this historical formation and enunciation of the opinions of Coleridge that this, so far as we know, first complete collection of his works finds its justification and rec- ommendation. It has been said in respect to the publication of such portions of his writings as the Table Talk and the Lit-
* Even the recent picture of Coleridge by Carlyle, unconsciously betrays tos sense of the superiority of this intellect, in reference to the deeper prob- lems of man's existence and destiny, while poo: Sterling seems to have de- rived from the oracle at Highgate, most of that little faith in a personal God and in man's freedom and immortality, which throws such a Badly pleasing air over his biography.
\ Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, sub fine.
16 INTRODUUTOKr ESSAY.
crary Remains, that their extremely fragmentary character ought to exclude them from a permanent collection of a greal writer's works, and that at least they should be subjected to a revision that would strike out the less important matter, the sometimes hastily conceived and rashly uttered remark. But in the light of what has been said, the value of every jot and tittle of what Coleridge, and his friends, for him, have ever printed, is clearly apparent. Not that every thing he has left on record has high intrinsic worth — not that every thing he. has written can be regarded as the pure product of his own brain — not that every thing contained in these volumes is to be received as truth by the reader — but each and every thing here, has value and interest, if for nothing else, as exhibiting the course and development of his intellect. In this reference the volumes containing the Table Talk and Literary Remains are of the highest value not only for the wonderful pregnancy and suggestiveness of his remarks upon all things human or divine, but for the acquaintance they give the reader with the interior process and change going on within him. A careful perusal of these in connection with the dates, throws great light upon the history of Coleridge's mind Aside however from, the value of these productions in this respect, they have great intrinsic worth. Besides the profound and pierc- ing glances into the highest truths of metaphysical philosophy, scattered throughout the Literary Remains, unquestionably the best philosophy of Art and of Criticism, and the very best actual criticism upon the great creative minds in Literature, that is ac- cessible to the merely English reader, are to be found in this same miscellany.
It is of course impossible in an introductory essay, to attempt a criticism in detail upon all the principal topics upon which Coleridge has philosophized, even if we were competent to the task, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to a few points, which we think are deserving of consideration, and which will tend to place their author in a just and fair light as a thinker.
1. And in the first place, we think this author is to be recom- mended and confided in, as the foremost and ablest English op- ponent of Pantheism. We do not speak of formal opposition tc this, the most powerful and successful of all systems of false phi- losophy, for Coleridge has left on record no professed and finished refutation of Spinoza or S shelling, but we allude to the whole
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 17
plan and structure of the philosophy which he finally adopted and defended, as in its own nature the most effectual preventive of the adoption of Pantheism, and the best positive remedy for it when adopted, to be found out of that country, which has furnished both, the most virulent bane, and the most powerful antidote. The distinctions lying at the foundation of his whole system, if recognized and received, render it impossible for the recipient to be diverted from the true method of thinking, intc one so illegitimate and abnormal, as the pantheistic, to say noth- ing of their incompatibility with the fundamental positions of Pantheism. No ingenuity whatever, «?. g. can amalgamate the doctrine of which Coleridge makes so muchr of an essential d is- tinction between Nature and Spirit, with the doctrine of the su b- stantia una et unica. Ifjhe Natural is of one substance, arid the Spiritual is of another — if the distinction is not merely forma? but substantial,^ and no possible heighteningand clarification of the former can result in the latter — then thereis a gulf between Nature and_Spirit7between^atter and Minrj, whioh nnn Tint, be fijledjup. This distinction, moreover, not only permits, but natu- rally conducts to, the conceptions of an uncreated and a created essence — conceptions which are precluded by the assumption, which the pantheist supposes he must make in order to introduce unity into the system of the universe, that there is ultimatel) only one substance, uncreated, infinite, and eternal. The verj moment that the materialism, which is to be found in ideal Pan- theism notwithstanding its boast of spirituality, as really as in material Pantheism, is eliminated and refuted and precluded, by the recognition of a difference in kind between Nature and Spirit, the inquirer is left alone with the self-determined, personal Spirit, the contrary and antithesis of Nature and of 'Matter, with its Reason and its Conscience, and thereafter may be safely left to answer the questions : — Is there an uncreated personal God ? am I a created and accountable being ? am I destined to a conscious immortality of existence ? But if this distinction is denied, and Nature and Spirit, Matter and Mind, the World and God, are all one essence and substance, and the distinctions denoted by these terms are merely formal, subjective and phenomenal, then such questions as the above are absurd and impossible.
We are aware that in these pantheistic systems the terms Nature and Spirit, the World and God, are as freely employ e<l a*
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
in theistic systems, and that in the last and most remarkable oi them all, Philosophy itself is divided into the Philosophy of Na- ture and the Philosophy of Spirit. But on the hypothesis of a one sole substance, the subject-matter of each must be one and the same, and the inquirer in the latter department is only inves- tigating a mere modification of the same thing which he has just investigated in the former. He has risen into no essentially higher sphere of being or of knowing, by passing from the phi- losophy of Nature to that of Spirit, as he understands and em- ploys these terms, because he has not passed into any essentially different sphere. The vice of the whole system is in the fatal error — the pantheistic postulate — at the outset. There is, and can be, but one substance, and notwithstanding all the modifica- tion it may undergo in infinite space and everlasting time, it re- mains but one substance still. But this vice is impossible in any system of philosophy or in any method of thinking, that starts with the fundamental hypothesis of a difference in kind between the substance of the Natural and the substance of the Spiritual, or between Matter and Mind.*
Now the earnestness and force with which this distinction, so fundamental to Theism and preclusive of Pantheism, is insisted upon by Coleridge, particularly in the Aids to Reflection, the most complete and self-consistent of his strictly philosophic writ* ings, will strike every reflecting reader. It is not merely for- mally laid down, but it enters so thoroughly into his whole meth- od of philosophizing, that it can be eliminated from it only as oxygen can from atmospheric air, by decomposition and destruc- tion. And especially are all pantheistic conceptions and tenden- cies excluded by the distinction in question, when it is further considered that the constituent element in the Spiritual, is free- dom, as that of the Natural is necessity. In Nature, as distin- guished from Spirit, there is no absolute beginning, no first start, consequently no self-motion, and consequently no responsibility. Nature, says Coleridge, is an endless line, in constant and ccn- tinuous evolution. To be in the middle of an endless series, is the characteristic of a thing of Nature, says Jacobi,t between whose
* We use Matter in a somewhat loose way in this connection, in order tc illustrate the strict use of the word Nature as the contrary of Spirit, and uot because it contains all that is meant by Nature.
f Werke; Bd. 3, S. 40 1. Leipsic Ed. 1816.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 1*
statements regarding this general distinction, in the last part of his Von Gottlichen Dingen, and those of Coleridge in the Aids,. there is a striking coincidence. In the Spirit and the Spiritual realm, on the contrary, this law, and process, of continuity, by which we are hurried back from the effect to its foregoing cause, and from this foregoing cause to its foregoing cause, and so backward endlessly into an infinite inane, and can never reach a point where a movement has no antecedent, because it really begins, by seZ/'-movement — that point where a responsible move- ment is first found, and which is to be reached, not by a gradual ascent within the sphere of the Natural, to the highest degree of the same kind, but by a leap over the gulf which divides the two great domains from each other — this law of continuous cause and effect, we say, ib excluded from the sphere of the Spiritual by virtue of its differing in kind from the Natural ; by virtue of its being of another substance, and consequently, of having an essentially different function and operation, from Nature and Matter. It is true that we speak of a continuous evolution and development, and properly too, within the realm of Spirit as well as of Nature, but the continuity in this instance is not continuity without beginning and without ending, or the continuity of the law of cause and effect which is the only law in the Natural world, but continuity that has a true beginning or first start, or the continuity of self-determination. Development in the Spirit, ual world — that of the human Will for example — begins with the creation of the "Will, and proceeds freely and responsibly so long as the Will exists. The development or movement, in this instance, is not like that of a movement in Nature, a mere and pure effect. If it were, a cause must be found for it antecedent to, and other than, it ; and this would bring the process out of the sphere of the Spiritual or se//"-moved, into the sphere of Na- ture, and make it a dependent unit in an endless series of pro- cesses, to the destruction of a.1 responsibility. But we have no disposition to repeat what has been so clearly expressed by Cole- ridge on this point, and re-affirmed and explained by Dr. Marsh in his preliminary Essay to the Aids. The distinction itself, never more important than at this time when Naturalism is so rife, can not, after all, be taught in words, so well as it can be thought out , It is a matter of direct perception, if perceived at all, as must be the case with all a priori and iundarnental posi-
20 INTRODUCTOKY ESSAY.
tions. The contradiction which clings to the idea of self-motion when wre attempt to express it through the imperfect medium of language is merely verbal, and will weigh nothing with the mind that has once seen the distinction.
Now on the pantheistic system there is really nothing but Nature. The one Substance, of which all things are modifications and developments, is nothing but a single infinite Nature. From eternity to eternity the process of emanation and evolution goes on, and the result is, all that was, is, and is to come. Though the terms God and Man, Spirit and Nature, Mind and Matter, may be employed, yet the objects denoted by them are of one and the same substance, and therefore have the same primary attributes. The history of the universe is the history of a single Being, and of one, merely Natural, necessitated process, slowly and blindly evolving from that dark ground of all existence, the one aboriginal substance. There is no creation out of nothing, of a new and secondary substance, but merely the shaping of the eternal and only substance. There is, except in a phenomenal and scenic way, no finite being. The All is One and infinite. The self-consciousness of the finite subject which the pantheist recognizes does not help the matter. This consciousness itself is but a mockery, by which a modification of the one and only Being is made to suppose for a little time that it has a truly in- dividual and responsible existence. The only reality on this scheme is a single universal Nature with its innumerable pro- cesses, and all the personal self-consciousness which is recognized by it is a deceptive and transitory phenomenon, for the reason, that there is, in an essence which is not simply beneath and through all things, but IS all things, no basis for distinct person ality, free self-detsrmination and permanent self-consciousness either in God or man. For there must be coherence between attributes and their substance, and it is absurd to endow with the attributes of freedom and responsibility, a substance, or a subjec- tive modification of a substance, whose whole history is in fact a necessitated and blind evolution. In order to an infinite Person ality thore must be an infinite personal Essence or Being. In order to finite Personality there must be a finite personal Essence or Being. And these two can not be or become one Essence or Being, without destroying the peculiar basis for the peculiar con- sciousness belonging to each. Pantheism has, therefore, no right
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 21
to the terms of Theism, for the simple reason that the objects denoted by them, are not recognized by it as metaphysically and scientifically real. Pantheism is but a Philosophy of Nature, and as matter of fact it has accomplished more, or rather has done least injury to the cause of truth and true philosophy, when, as in the case of the earlier system of Schilling, it has been confined mainly to the sphere of Nature. It would be unjust to deny that the Pantheism of Schelling has done something toward destroy- ing the mechanical theory and view of Nature and Natural Sci- ence, while the fact that he proceeded no farther with it in its application to the Philosophy of Spirit and of Intelligence, and is understood to have renounced it in his late attempt to construct a system that will solve the problems of Intellectual and Spiritual existence, seems to corroborate the position here taken, that Pan theism can never at any time, or under any of its forms, rise out of the sphere of Nature, because it, in reality, recognizes the ex- istence of nothing but Nature.
It has been asserted, we are aware, and perhaps it is still to some extent beli3ved, that the philosophy of Coleridge is itself liable to the charge of Pantheism. The warm admiration with which he regarded Schelling, and the reception at one time of Schelling's doctrine of the original identity of Subject and Object, have given some ground for the assertion and belief. We shall, therefore, dwell briefly upon this point of Coleridge's relation to Schelling, because while we are clear that the earlier system of this philosopher, whatever his later system shall prove to be, is nothing but Spinozism, we are equally clear that Coleridge freed himself from it, as decidedly as he did from the mechanical phi- losophy of his youthful days.
After all the study and reflection which Coleridge expended upon the systems of speculation that sprang up in Germany after that of Kant, it is very evident that his closest and longest con- tinued study was applied to Kant himself. After all his wide study of philosophy, ancient and modem, the two minds who did most toward the formation of Coleridge's philosophic opinions were Plato and Kant. From the Greek he derived the doctrine of Ideas, and fully sympathized with his warmly-glowing and poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the German he derived the more strictly scientific part of his system — the funda- mental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason
22 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
(with the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Prac tical), and between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympa- thized in that deep conviction of the absolute nature and validity of the great ideas of God, Fresdom and Immortality — of the bind- ing obligation of Conscience — and generally of the supremacy of the Moral and Practical over the purely Speculative. Indeed any one who goes to the study of Kant, after having made himself acquainted with the writings of Coleridge, will be impressed by the spontaneous and vital concurrence of the latter with the for- mer— the heartiness and entireness with which the Englishman enters into the method and system, of this, in many respects, greatest philosopher of the modern world. For to say that Cole- ridge was the originator of the distinctions above-mentioned, in the sense that Kant was, is to claim for him what will never be granted by the scholar ; and on the other hand to say that Cole ridge was a mere vulgar plagiary, copying for the mere sake of gratifying vanity, is not to be thought of for a moment. The plagiary is always a copyist and never an imitator, to use a dis- tinction of Kant,* also naturalized among us by Coleridge. There is no surer test of plagiarism therefore than a dry, mechanical, and dead method, by which the material handled becomes a mere caput mortuum. But who would charge such a method upon Coleridge ? Whatever else may be laid to his charge, there is no lack of life, and life, too, that organizes and vitalizes. Much of that obscurity charged upon him is owing to an excess of life ; the warm stream gushes out with such ebullience that it can not be confined to a channel, but spreads out on all sides like an in- undation. Had there been less play of living power in his mind, he would have been a more distinct thinker for the common mind, and as we believe, less exposed to the charge of plagiarism. This power of sympathy with the great minds of the race in all departments of mental effort — this opulence and exuberance of endowment, coupled with an immense range of reading and a brooding contemplation that instantaneously assimilated every thing brought into his mind — put him unconsciously, and in spite of himself, into communication with all the best thinking of the race ; and hence it is, that while the beginner in philosophy finds the writings of Coleridge full to bursting, with principles, and germs of truth, freshly presented and entirely new to him, his * Urtheilskraft, § 32.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 23
altcr-study of the great thinkers of ancient and of modern times, compels him to deduct from Coleridge's merits on the score of absolute discovery and invention, though not an iota from them on the score of originality, in the sense of original treatment. It is for this reason that the writings of this author .are the very best preparatory exercise for the student, before he launches out upon the " mighty and mooned sea" of general philosophy. One who has thoroughly studied them, is well prepared to begin his philosophical studies ; and, we may add, no one who has once mastered this author can possibly stop with him, but is urged on to the study of the greatest and choicest philosophic systems them- selves. . . : But returning to the relation of Coleridge to Schelling, we think that it is very evident that his reception of the doctrine of the identity of Subject and Object, of which he gives an account in the Biographia Literaria, that is mainly a transfusion from Schel- ling, was temporary. In the year 1834, we find him speaking thus of this account, " The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the Biographia Liter aria, is unformed and immature ; it contains the fragments of the truth, but it is not fully thought out."* This, taken in connection with the general drift of Coleridge's annotations upon Schelling, contained in the latest edition of the Biographia LiterariaJ we think is nearly
* Table Talk, Works, VI. p. 520.
f At the end of Schelling's Denkmal der Schrift von den gottlichen Dingen, <kc., des Jacobi, Coleridge has written :
" Spite of all the superior airs of the Natur-Philosophie, I confess that in the perusal of Kant I breathe the air of good sense and logical understanding with the light of reason shining in it and through it : while in the Physics of Schelling, I am amused with happy conjectures, and in his Theology I am bewildered by positions which in their first sense are transcendental (iiber fliegend), and in their literal sense scandalous." — Biog. Lit. Appen., III. p. 709.
P. 64, and then pp. 59-62. " The Spinozism of Schelling's system first be- trays itself." — Biog. Lit. Appendix, III. p. 707.
"Strange that Fichte and Schelling both hold that the very object which is the condition of self-consciousness, is nothing but the self itself by an act of free self-limitation.
" P.S. The above I wrote a year ago ; but the more I reflect, the more convinced I am of the gross materialism which lies under the whole system." —Biog. Lit. Appendix, III. p. 701.
This last is a note, it deserves to be noticed, upon Schelling's Briefe vher Doqmatismus und Criticismus, or attack upon the Critical Philosophy and
24 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
equivalent to a distinct verbal renunciation of the theory in ques- tion. At any rate his rejection of the system of Spinoza is ex- pressed often and with emphasis in his writings,'* although in common with all who have made themselves acquainted with the works of this remarkable mind, he expresses himself in terms of the highest admiration, respecting the loftiness and grandeur of many of his sentiments and reflections, even on subjects per- taining to ethics and religion. But what is Schelling's identity of Subject and Object in their ultimate ground, but the reappear- ance of the one Substance of Spinoza with its two modifications Thought and Extension ? The theory which teaches that the Subject contemplating and the Object contemplated are in reality but one substance, and that the consciousness we have of things without us "is not only coherent, but identical and one and the same thing, with our own immediate self-consciousness, "f plainly does not differ in matter, however it may in form, from the the- ory of the substantia una et unica. "What is gained by saying that Spinoza started with an unthinking substance, but that the system of Identity starts with a thinking subject, $ when the posi- tion that One is All, and All is One, is the fundamental postulate of both systems alike ? This position, common to both, renders both systems alike pantheistic, because it precludes that duality — that difference in substance between God and the World, and that distinction between an uncreated and a created Essence or Being — which must be recognized by a truly theistic philosophy. The only difference between the two systems is adjective : Spino- zism being material, and the system of Identity ideal, Pantheism. If the postulate in question were limited in its application to the sphere of the finite alone, there might be a shadow of reason for saying that the doctrine of Identity does not annihilate the Deity, as other than the World. If an identity of substance were affirmed only between the human mind and the created universe, a supra- mundane Deity, other than and above all this finite unity might still be affirmed without self-contradiction ; though even in this
the earnestness with, which Coleridge in these notes generally, sides with this latter system, shows that neither his head nor his heart was with the e y stem of Identity at the time he wrote these annotations.
* Aids to Reflection, Works, I p. 21 1. Table Talk, Works, VI. pp. 301, 302
f Biog. Lit. chapter xii.
t Hegel's Phiinome.nologie, S. 14.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 25
case this limited annihilation of the essential distinction between Nature and Spirit would result in. its universal and absolute an- nihilation, so soon as it became apparent that the finite Spirit though not of the same, is yet of similar substance with the Infinite Spirit, But there is no limitation of this sort in the system, neither can there be, for it is its boast that it reduces the All to a One It is the universal Subject and the universal Object be- tween which an identity of substance is affirmed.*
But we lay much stress upon the indirect evidence in the case. It is perfectly plain, as we have already remarked, that the phi- losophy of Kant is the modern system with which Coleridge finally and most fully sympathized. If he is to be called after any one of the great founders of philosophical systems among the moderns, Coleridge was a Kantean. Not that he pushed his inquiries no further than Kant had gone, for there is abundant evidence on many a page of the Literary Remains, that the high- est problems of Christianity, during the last period of his life, were themes constantly present to his deep and brooding reflec- tion, and that whatever it shall be found that he actually accom- plished, in the way of distinct statement, in the unfinished work which was to put the crown upon his literary life, he did satisfy his own mind upon these subjects, and was himself convinced of the absolute rationality of the highest mysteries of the Christian Faith. Yet the groundwork of all these processes — the psychol- ogy and metaphysics from which they all started — was unques- tionably the theistic method of Kant, and not the pantheistic method of his successors. Even supposing that Coleridge at one time may have gone so far as to regard the system of Schelling, (with the still more remarkable one of Hegel, he does not seem to have been acquainted, for we do not recall any allusion to him throughout the whole of his works) as a positive and natural ad- vance upon that of Kant, there is sufficient reason for saying, that he saw the error, and fell back upon the old position of Kant, as the farthest point yet reached in the line of a true philosophic progress, regarding the systems that sprang up afterward as an illegitimate progeny. And in so doing, he only exhibited in an individual, the very same process that has gone on, and is still going on in the Germanic mind itself. There was a time, when 3vcn the serious theist was inclined to regard with favor at least, that wondrous evolution of the theoretic brain — the three systems * See Biog. Lit., Works, III. pp. 270, 271 (Note).
VOL. i B
26 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel — as a natural and normal develop- ment from Kanteanism, and so to regard the four systems as being in one and the same straight line of advance. It is true that at the very time when these later systems were rising into existence " like an exhalation," a man like Jacobi was found, to protest against the deviation and error, and to proclaim, with a serious and deep-toned eloquence that will ever endear him and his opinions to every serious-minded scholar who feels that his own mentai repose, with that of the reflecting mind generally, is bound up in the Ideas of Theism, that these later systems were not genuine offshoots from Kant, but wild grafts into him. But at the time, the national mind was caught in the process, and it was not until the speculative enthusiasm had cooled down, and the utter bar- renness of this method of philosophizing, so far as all the deeper and more interesting problems of Philosophy and Religion are concerned, had revealed itself, that men began to see that all the movement had been off and away from the line of true progress, and that the thinker who would make real advance, must join on where Kant, and not Hegel, left off.
In thus siding ultimately with the Critical Philosophy rather than with the system of Identity that succeeded it, Coleridge had much in common with Jacobi. Indeed it seems to us that speak- ing generally, Coleridge stands in nearly the same relation to English Philosophy, that Jacobi does to that of Germany, and Pascal to that of France. Neither of these three remarkably rich and genial thinkers has left a strictly scientific and finished system of philosophy, but the function of each was rather an awakening and suggestive one. The resemblance between Cole- ridge and Jacobi is very striking. Each has the same estimate of instinctive feelings, and the same religious sense of the pre- eminence of the Moral and Spiritual over the merely Intellectual and Speculative. Each clings, with the same firm and lofty spirit, to the Ideas of Theism, and plants himself with the same moral firmness, upon the imperative decisions of Conscience and the Moral Reason. But in no respect do they harmonize more than in their thorough rejection of the pantheistic view of 'things — of that mere Naturalism which swallows up all personality, and thereby, all morality and religion. In reading Jacobi' s Von gottlichen Dingen one is struck with the great similarity in con- ception, and often in statement, with remarks and trains of dis«
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 27
cussion in the Aids to Reflection. The coincidence in this case, it is very plain to the reader, does not arise, as in the case of Coleridge's coincidence with Schelling, from a previous study arid mastery of a predecessor, but from sustaining a similar relation to Kant, together with a deep sense of the vital importance and absolute truth of Theism in philosophy. The coincidence in this case is not a mere genial reception, and fresh transfusion, of the thought of another mind, but an independent and original shoot, in common with others, from the one great stock, the general sys- tem of Theism. Add to this, that both Coleridge and Jacobi were close students of Plato, and by mental constitution, were alike predisposed to the moulding influence of this greatest philo- sophic mind of the Pagan world, and we have still another ground and cause for the resemblance between the two.
Now in this resemblance with Jacobi, we find still another in- direct proof of the position, that Coleridge's adoption of the sys tern of Schelling was temporary, and that he returned, with still deeper faith and clearer insight, to the theistic system. For no mind of the age in which he lived, or of any age, was more decidedly and determinedly theistic, than Jacobi. His Letters to Mendelssohn upon the system of Spinoza, and still more, because more regularly constructed, his treatise on Divine Things and their Revelation, are among the most genial cer- tainly, and we think among the most impressive, and practically effective, of all attacks upon the pantheistic Naturalism. We know that it was fashionable, especially when the hard logical processes of Hegelianism were more influential and authoritative as models than they now are, to decry the method of Jacobi as unscientific, and to endeavor to weaken the force of his views, by the assertion, that his is the mere " philosophy of feeling." But there is reason to believe, that this same thinker, though defi- cient as must be acknowledged in the logical and systematizing ability of Kant and Hegel, has done a giant's work, in aiding to bring the German mind back to the position of Theism in philos- ophy. His influence, healthful and fruitful, is to be traced through the whole of the spiritual school of theologians. If there is any one of the many philosophers of Germany, who is re- garded with admiration and veneration by this class of reflecting men — a class which shares largely in the disposition of its great head Schleiermaoher, to establish theology upon an independent
28 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
is, and thereby divorce it altogether from philosophy — it is Jacob! ; and this, principally on the ground of his earnest re- ligious abhorrence of that speculation of the mere understanding, which under the name of philosophy, has so invariably ended in the overthrow of the foundations of Ethics and Religion.
We have dwelt the longer upon this point of Coleridge's rela- tion to Schelling, because we believe if to be the fact that the philosophic system which he finally adopted, and which is the prominent one in these volumes, is irreconcilable with the system of Identity, and if so, that it is of the highest importance that the fact be known and acknowledged. Moreover the establishment of the position we have taken, acquires some additional interest, in relation to the charge of plagiarism which has of late been frequently urged. This charge becomes of little importance, so far as the question of Coleridge's original power as a philosopher is concerned, so soon as it appears that this reception of the views of Schelling, was only one feature in the temporary pantheistic stage of his mental history, and of still less importance, when it is further considered, that Schelling himself is entitled to but small credit on the score of absolute invention ; — the philosophy of Spinoza being " the rock and the quarry," on and out of which the whole system of Identity was constructed. Indeed, in leaving this system, Coleridge has been imitated by Schelling himself, if, as there is reason to believe, the later system of this philosopher is a renunciation of his earlier, and not a mere development of it. How far either of these two minds possessed that highest, and most truly original, philosophic power — the power of forming an era in the history of philosophy, by carrying the philosophic mind onward through another stadium in its normal course and development — remains yet to be seen. This point can not be settled until the publication of the Logosophia of Coleridge, and the recent system of Schelling.
The influence, however, of this pantheistic system upon Coleridge, was for a time undoubtedly great, harmonizing as it did with the imaginative side of his nature, and promis- ing, as it always has done, to reduce all knowledge to a unity — that promise always so impressive and fascinating for the hu- man intellect, and which moreover addresses, though in this in- stance by a false method, one of the necessary and organic wants of reason itself. Besides the disquisition in the Biographia
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 29
Literaria, there are statements respecting the mutual relations of Nature and the Mind of man, and trains of reflection, here and there in these volumes,* which spring, as it seems to us, from the pantheistic intuition, and which, run out to their legitimate consequences, would end in a mere Naturalism, of which all Coleridge's more matured, and more strictly scientific views are a profound and powerful refutation, and against which, Ms own moral and spiritual consciousness, certainly for the last twenty years of his life, was one loud and solemn protest.
In this connection, also, it may be proper to speak of the ob- jection made to the system of Kant himself, that it is essentially skeptical. This objection is founded upon the fact, that the Criti- cal philosophy denies the possibility, within a certain sphere, of an absolute knowledge on the part of the human mind, because its knowledge is conformed to forms and modes of cognition, that pertain to the human understanding, and are peculiar to it. The thing in itself is not known, but only the thing as it appears to the finite intelligence. An absolute knowledge, true intrinsically, and irrespective of the subjective laws of human intelligence, is therefore impossible within this sphere.
If this theory were to be extended over the whole domain of knowledge, Spiritual as well as Natural, it is plain that it would end in universal skepticism. If for instance the knowledge which the human mind has of right and wrong, of its own freedom and immortality, of the divine attributes and the Dread One in whom they inhere, is no real and absolute knowledge, but is merely subjective, the foundations of all morals and religion would sink out of sight immediately, and the human mind would be afloat upon the sea of doubt, conjecture, and denial. This was the identical skepticism against which Socrates and Plato waged such serious and successful war. But Kant, as it seems to us, by his f distinction of the Speculative and Practical reason, intended to confine, and actually does confine, this doctrine of a subjective and conditional knowledge to the sphere of the Natural and the Sensuous. Within this sphere there is no absolute knowledge, for the good reason that there is no absolute object to be known. The absolutely and necessarily true, is not within the domain of Nature, but above it altogether, in the domain of Spirit, f Th* * See Essays X. and XI. of The Friend, Works, II. pp. 448-479 •j- See Cudworth's Immutable Morality, passim.
30 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
things that are sensuous, are in continual flux, and even in r&
O
gard to the immaterial principles beneath them, even in regard to the laws of Nature themselves, we can not conceive of their be- ing of such a necessary and immutable character, as we can not but conceive moral and spiritual realities to be. For they are creations, and as such, are only one, out of the infinitely various manners in which the divine Mind can express itself in a mate- rial universe. The whole domain of Nature and of Matter is it- Eelf but a means to an end, and therefore can not, like the do- main of the Spiritual, which is an end, have absolute and necessary characteristics, and therefore can not be the object of an absolute knowledge. All this domain of the Conditional, therefore, legiti- mately comes before the Understanding, with its subjective forma of knowing.
But there is another and a higher realm than that of Nature , of another substance, and therefore not merely a higher develop- ment of the Natural. The moral and Spiritual world, as it is not subject, in its functions and operations, to the law of cause and effect, but is the sphere of freedom, so it is not cognizable under the forms of the Understanding, but by the direct intuitions of Reason. It is no mere afterthought therefore, as has been charged, but a most strictly philosophic procedure in the system of Kant, by which, after the whole domain of the Natural and the Condi- tional has been legitimately brought within the ken of the ration- alized Understanding, the domain of the Spiritual and the Abso- lute is assigned to a higher, even the very highest, faculty of the soul, as the proper organ and inlet of knowledge regarding it. It is because such an object of knowledge as God, e. g., can not be truly known, by being brought within the limitations of time and space, and under the categories of quantity, quality, &c. &c., that Kant affirmed the existence of a power in man, not hampered by these forms of the Understanding, through which by an act of direct spiritual contemplation, this highest of all objects is known. Not fully and completely known, as some have falsely asserted that he taught, for the object in question is infinite, and reason in man is finite ; but truly and absolutely known so far as the cognition does extend. Kant never claimed, for the finite reason of man, that plenitude of knowledge, which belongs only to the infinite reason, but he did affirm, that so far as the reason in man does have any knowledge of God, and of spiritual objects gener
INTKODUCTORF ESSAY. 81
ally, it has an absolute and reliable knowledge. God is not thus, for one man's reason, and thus, for another man's, as a color is thus, for the sense of one man, and thus, for the sense of another ; but so far as His infinite fulness is known by the finite reason, it is known as it really is, and is therefore known in the same way by all rational beings, and is the same to all. The same is true of all the ideas and objects of the Spiritual, as distinguished from the Natural world. In the former, the human mind has an ab- solute, i. e. unconditionally true knowledge, so far as it has any at all (for-there may be no development of reason, and no use of the faculty at all), while in the latter, its knowledge is merely subjective and conditional. Hence the prominence, the suprem- acy, assigned in Kant's system to the Moral or Practical Reason. This is reason in its highest and substantive form, and no deci- sions of any other faculty of the human soul, have such absolute authority as those of this faculty. It stands over against the moral and spiritual world, precisely as the five senses stand over against the world of sense, and there is the same immediateness of knowledge, in the one case, as in the other. In the phrase of Jacobi, reason, i. e. the Moral Reason — is the sense for the supernatural,^ and therefore we have in fact the same kind of evidence for the reality of spiritual objects, that we have for that of objects of sense — the evidence of a sense ; the evidence of a i direct intuition.
There is therefore no room fo"r skepticism on this system within the only sphere in which the philosopher and the theologian have any vital interest in keeping it out — the sphere of the Moral and Spiritual. However subjective and relative may be our knowl- edge of the Natural, coming to us as it does through the mechan- ism of the understanding, and shaped by it, into conformity with our subjective structure, as creatures of sense and time, our knowledge of the supernatural, so far as we have any at all, is absolute and unconditional. We may doubt in regard to the real nature of matter, but we can not doubt in regard to the real na ture of right and wrong. We may grant that our knowledge of an object of sense is conditional, and not absolutely reliable, but we may not grant that our knowledge of a moral attribute of God, is conditional and not absolutely reliable. The skepticism of the human mind, on this system, is confined to the lower and * Von don gottlichen Dingen. Beilage A.
32 * JNTEODUCTOKY ESSAY.
less important sphere of Nature, while the " confidence of reason/* the faith that is insight, and the insight that is faith— can exist only in relation to the Moral and Spiritual worlct; only in rela- tion to Moral and Spiritual objects.
Kant's treatise on the Practical Reason therefore, though from the very nature of the subject — (it being that Reason which is freest from the complexity of logical forms — ) not so artificially constructed as that upon the Theoretic Reason, and seemingly oc- cupying a humbler place in his general system, should be re- garded as the sincere and serious expression of his real views upon the highest form of reason, and upon the very highest themes of reflection. Certainly no one can peruse those lofty and enno- bling enunciations, respecting the great practical ideas, of God, Freedom, and Immortality, and those grand and swelling senti- ments, regarding the nature of duty and the moral law, that are contained in this treatise, without a deep conviction that this part of Kant's system, was by no means an afterthought, or con- trivance to save himself from universal skepticism. If the cold and passionless intellect of the sage of Konigsberg ever rises into the sphere of feeling, and ever exhibits any thing of that real en- thusiasm, by which a living knowledge is always accompanied and manifested, it is in this, the most practical and serious-toned of all his productions. And if it is objected, as it has been, that this knowledge of the Spiritual is rather a belief, than a knowl- edge, and that the function of this so-called Practical Reason, is that of feeling, rather than scientific cognition, the objection must be acknowledged to have force, provided that that only is scien- tific, which is the result of logical deductions, and that alone is knowledge, which comes mediately into the mind by processes of comparison and generalization. But on the other hand, if it is proper to call that, knowledge, which by virtue of its immediate- ness in the rational consciousness, is a most original and intimate union of both knowing and feeling, of both reason and faith, of both the scientific and the moral, then the knowledge in question is the absolutely highest of all, for it contains the elements of both varieties of knowing, and is the most essentially scientific of all, because, in the form of first principles, it lies at the foun- dation of all the processes of logic, and all the structures of science.
But whatever may have been the relative position of the Prac-
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 33
tical Reason and its correspondent Ideas, in the general system of Kant, or in Kant's own mind, no reader of Coleridge can doubt that for him, and his system, this form of Reason and these Ideas are paramount. Coleridge had an interest in developing this part of philosophy, and establishing an absolute validity for the decisions of the moral Reason and Conscience, superadded to that which actuated Kant. The former had received into his boul the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, while the latter, so far as we have had the means of judging, stood upon the position of the serious-minded Deist, and was impelled to the defence of the foundations of Ethics and Natural Religion, by no other motives than such as actuated minds like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Coleridge had more than a merely moral interest in saving the fundamental prin- ciples of Ethics and Religion from an all-destroying Skepticism, or an all-absorbing Naturalism, in philosophy. And hence the positiveness and in the best sense of the word, the dogmatism, with which he iterates and reiterates his affirmation that " re- ligion as both the corner-stone and the key-stone of morality, must have a moral origin : so far at least, that the evidence of its doctrines can not, like the truths of abstract science, be wholly independent of the Will"*
Now as the defender and interpreter of this decidedly and profoundly theistic system of philosophy, we regard the works of Coleridge as of great and growing worth, in the present state of the educated and thinking world. It is not to be disguised that Pantheism is the most formidable opponent which truth has to encounter in the cultivated and reflecting classes. We do not here allude to the formal reception and logical defence of the system, so much as to that pantheistic way of thinking, which is unconsciously stealing into the lighter and more imaginative species of modem literature, and from them is passing over into the principles and opinions of men at large. This popularized Naturalism — this Naturalism of polite literature and of literary society — is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of tone, arid that heartiness and robustness of temper, which charac- terize a mind into which the personality of God, and the re- sponsibility of man, cut sharply, and which does not cowardly shrink from a severe and salutary moral consciousness. There * Biographia Literaria, "Works, III. p 297. B*
34 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
is no remedy for this error of the brain and of the heart, but in that resolute and positive affirmation (worthy of the name of Virtue wherever found) of the existence of a distinction in essence, between the Natural and the Spiritual, with its implica- tion of a Supreme and Infinite Spirit, the first cause and last end of both the finitely Spiritual, and the Natural. For all philosophy, false as well as true, must begin with an affirmation — a postulate upon which all else rests, and which is itself un- susceptible of proof, because it is the ground of proof for all other affirmations. Pantheism itself starts in Dogmatism — starts with postulating, not proving, the existence of its one only Sub stance. It has an interest in so doing. The evidence of this its so-called first truth " is not altogether independent of the Will" Here too, the voluntary and the theoretic, the practical and the speculative, are, though illegitimately, in one act of the under- standing. In respect therefore to the logical necessity — the com- pulsory necessity — of its first position, we see not the advantage which it boasts of having, over a Theism which does not pretend to reject all aid from the moral side of the human soul, or to regard all evidence as not truly scientific and absolute, which is not of the nature of mathematical. Since, then, there must be a postulate to start from, in either or any case, let the individual mind imitate that justifiable Positivity — that rational Dogmatism — of the general human mind (which the soundly philosophizing mind only repeats with a fuller and distincter consciousness of the meaning and contents of the affirmation) by which the ab- solute existence of a personal supra-mundane God, is affirmed. This Being styles Himself the I AM — the self-affirmed self-ex- istence ; and what is left for the human Reason but to imitate this positive affirmation, and steadfastly to assert that " HE IS, and is the re warder of them that diligently seek him."
In driving the hesitating mind over its hesitancy, and urging it up to that moral resoluteness, which is at the same time the most rational freedom, whereby it takes sides with the instincts of Reason and the convictions of Conscience, rather than with the figments and fictions of the speculative Understanding and tho immoral deductions from them, we regard these volumes of Coleridge to be of great worth. Apart from the influence of the example of this most learned and most contemplative mind, the clearness and profundity with which the doctrines of Theism are
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 35
enunciated, and their mutual relation and dependence explained, is admirably fitted to propagate the living process of insight and of faith into the mind of the student. For it is one great merit of this author, that when his views are once mastered, they be- come inward and germinant. The consciousness of the teacher becomes that of the pupil. " You may," he says with perfect truth, " you may not understand my system, or any given part, of it — or by a determined act of wilfulness, you may, even without perceiving a ray of light, reject it, in anger and disgust. But this I will say — that if you once master it, or any part of it, you can not hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth. You can not be skeptical about it."*1 And we appeal with confidence to those who have had opportunities for observing, whether as matter of fact those minds, and especially those young minds (ever most liable to be misled by the imposing pretensions of a false and miscalled spiritualism in philosophy) who have once come fairly and continuously under the influence of the opinions of Coleridge, have not been, not only shielded from error, but also, fortified in the truth. Are those who have been educated and trained in this general method of philosophizing, liable to be drawn aside from it ? Does not the method itself, beget and nurture a deter- mined strength of philosophic character, which obstinately refuses to receive the brilliant and specious theories that are continually arising in the speculating world ?
This self-conscious and determined spirit in the recipient of the general system promulgated by Coleridge, springs naturally from its predominantly moral and practical character. The staple and stuff of this philosophy, are the great moral Ideas, and the facul ties of the human soul most honored and developed by it, are the moral Reason, the Conscience, and the Will. The purely specu- lative materiel of philosophy, is made to hold its proper subordi- nate place, and the merely speculative and dialectic faculty, is also subordinated along with it. By recognizing the absolute authority of Conscience, not only within the domain of Religio^ but also of Philosophy, and by affirming that the Will itself, being the inmost centre of the man, and ideally, conjoint and one with Reason, ought not to stand entirely aloof, while by a com- pulsory logical process, the first truths of Philosophy and Religion aro attempted to be forced upon the mind, with the same passivity * Table Talk, Works, VI. pp. 519, 520.
36 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
and indifference, with which its belief of abstract axioms i<* necessitated — by regarding, in short, the moral Reason and the Free- Will, in their living synthesis, as the dominant faculty and §eat of authority in the human soul, this system of philosophy not only secures a belief in the truths of Theism, but at the same time builds up and strengthens the human mind. Mental lielief, in this system, has the element of Will in it. The doctrine of the Divine existence e. g. is believed not merely passively and from the mere mechanic structure of the intellect, as the axioms of Geometry are, but to a certain extent by free self-determination. The individual believes in the essential difference between Right and Wrong, partly because he will believe it, and not because it is impossible to sophisticate himself into the disbelief of it. On this theory man becomes responsible for his belief, even in respect to the first principles of Morals and Religion, and thus feels all Jhe stimulation of a free and therefore hazardous position.
And this brings us back again to the intensely theistic charac ter of this philosophy. It is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural. Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a distinct and broad line between these two realms, it keeps them apart from each other, by affirming a difference in essence, and steadfastly resists any, and every, attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance. The doctrine of Creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it con- structs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible self-determination and not of irresponsible natural development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy \ and Religion.
2. In th3 second place, we think that this author is worthy of study, for his general method of Theologizing, and as an able defender and expounder of the doctrines of Christianity, on ground? of reason and philosophy.
In treating of this point, we shall be led to speak of Coleridge in his other principal character of a Theologian. In regard t( his general merits under this head, there is, both in this country and in Great Britain, more difference of opinion than in regard tc his general merits as a Philosopher. We are inclined to the be lief, however, that there is a growing confidence in the substan tial orthodoxy of his theological opinions, and that \ :* coming t*
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 37
be the belief, even of those "who do not sympathize with his phil- osophical opinions, and of course not, therefore, with his method of unfolding and defending the truths of Christianity, that the name of Coleridge deserves to be associated with those of the great English Divines of the seventeenth century, and that his views do not differ fundamentally from that body of Christian doctrine, which had its first systematic origin in the head and heart of Augustine. We are ourselves firm in the belief, that the theology of Coleridge, notwithstanding variations on some points, of which we shall speak hereafter, and which we are by no means disposed to regard as insignificant, is yet heartily and fully on the Augustinian side of that controversy, which after all, makes up the pith and substance of dogmatic church history. Even in re- lation to the difference between the Calvinistic and Armiiiian schemes, — schemes which, though essentially the same with the Augustinian and Pelagian, yet have a narrower sweep, and there- fore allow their adherents less latitude of movement, — even in relation to these two schemes, respecting which there is such a shrinking in the English clergy, notwithstanding the strongly- pronounced tone of the Thirty-nine Articles, from a clear expres sion of opinion, Coleridge has not hesitated to say, that " Calvin ism (Archbishop Leighton's for example), compared with Jeremy Taylor's Arminianism, is as the lamb in the wolfs skin, to the wolf in the lamb's skin : the one is cruel in phrases, the other in the doctrine."*
If the reader will peruse the Confession of Faith drawn up by Coleridge, as far back as 1816,f he will find that he expresses his solemn belief in the Personality and Tri-unity of God, the free and guilty Fall of man, the Redemption of man by the incarna- tion and death of the Son of God, and the Regeneration of the human soul by the Holy Spirit ; and if he will further peruse the development of Coleridge's views, in the Aids to Reflection especially, on these cardinal doctrines of Christianity, he will find that, with the exception of that part of the subject of Redemption technically denominated Justification, Coleridge did not shrink from the most thorough-going statements. No divine — not even Calvin himself — ever expressed himself more decidedly than this author, in regard to such points as the Divinity of Christ, the deplh and totality of man's apostasy, and the utter bondage and * Lit, Rem., Works, V. p. 200. f Lit. Rem., Works, V. p. U
38 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
helplessness of the fallen will : and the mere novice in theology knows that profound and thorough views of Sin, lie at the foun dation of all depth, comprehensiveness, and correctness, in a general theological system.
It is rare, very rare, in the history of literature, to find a mintl BO deeply interested in the pursuits of Philosophy and Poetry as was that of Coleridge, at the same time deeply and increasingly interested in theological studies and speculations : and still more rai3 to find the Philosopher and the Poet so thoroughly committed to :Le distinguishing doctrines of the Scriptures. Compare Coleridge, for example, with his learned and able contemporary in Philosophy, Sir James Mackintosh, and observe the wide dif- ference between the two men, in respect to the relation of each to the so-called Evangelical system. Compare him again with his contemporary and friend, the poet Southey, and notice the same wide difference, in the same respect. Neither Mackintosh nor Southey seem to have had that profound and living consciousness of the truth of such doctrines, as those of Sin and Redemption, which imparts so much of the theological character to Coleridge, and which would justify his being placed among the Divines of England, were not Theology, in this as in too many other in- stances, thrown into the shade by the less noble but more impos- ing departments of Philosophy and Poetry. He tells us that he was drawn off from Poetry by the study of Philosophy ; and the account we gather of his studies and reflections during the last quarter of his life, shows that he was drawn off — so far as the nature of the case permits this — from Philosophy itself by Theol- ogy ; or rather that the one passed over into the other.
Now it seems to us that this mind, having received such a profound discipline in Philosophy, and that too a spiritual and theistic Philosophy, and being led both by its original tendency and the operation of Divine Grace, to the study and defence of the truths of the Christian religion, on grounds of reason, is emi- nently fitted to be a guide and aid to reflection in this direction. We do not recommend Coleridge to the student as the author of a theological system, but rather as the defender and expounder of a general method of inquiry and reflection upon theological doctrines, in the highest degree fruitful and sound. Indeed, what we have said of Coleridge's lack of systematizing and constructive ability in the department of Philosophy, applies with stil) more
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 39
force to him as a Theologian. The longest and most continuous statements, that Coleridge has made upon the doctrines of Chris- tianity, are to be found in the Aids to Reflection, and yut the general character of this the most elaborate and valuable of his prose productions, is aphoristic. The aphoristic method is obvi- ously not the best by which to convey opinions upon so intrinsi- cally systematic and systematized themes as the doctrines of Christianity : much less therefore can this method be employed successfully, in constructing a whole theological system. Still as an aid to reflection, as inducing a general style of thinking, and manner of unfolding and defending truth, this method has some decided advantages over that of the connected treatise. It allows of more mental freedom on the part of the pupil, and fosters orig- inal reflection more, than a work finished in all its parts and de- tails. " For," says Lord Bacon, " as young men, when they knit arid shape perfectly, do seldom grow to a further stature, so knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth ; but when it is once comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be further polished and illustrated, and accommo- dated for use and practice ; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance."^
We regard the general method of Theologizing induced by the reflections of Coleridge upon theological doctrines as eminently profound and comprehensive. It leads the student to prize first of all, depth, breadth, and certainty, in his own views, in this de- partment of knowledge. It does this by teaching as its first and great lesson, that '; the scheme of Christianity though not discov-
* Advancement of Learning, Book I.
Consonant with this are the following remarks of Schleiermacher : — Denn erinnert euch nur, wie wenige von denen, welche auf einem eigenen Wege in das innre der Natur und des Geistes eingedrungen sind und deren gegenseites Verhaltnisz und innere Harmonie in einem eigenen Lichte ange- echant und dargestellt haben, wie dennoch nur wenige von ihnen gleich ein System ihres Erkennens hingestellt, sondern vielmehr fast alle in einer zarte- reu, sollte es auch sein zerbrechlicheren, Form ihre Entdeckkungen mitgeth- eilt haben. Und wenn Ihr dagegen auf die Systeme seht in alien Schul^n ; wie oft diese nicht auders siud als der Sitz uud die Pflanzstatte des todten Buchfttabens, weil namlich mit seltenen Ausnahmen, der selbstbildende Geist der hohen Betrachtung zu fliichtig ist und zu frei fiir die strengen Formen. Reden Ueber die Religion. Erste Rede
40 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
erable by human reason, is yet in accordance with it,"* and that all reflection upon the truths of Scripture ought therefore to carry the mind down into deeper and deeper depths of its own being and result in the most absolute and unassailable conviction that Divine Revelation is likewise Divine Reason. The influence of Coleridge's speculations is to produce and establish the belief that there is no inward and necessary contradiction between Faith and Reason, but that when both are traced to their ultimate and central unity, Faith, in the phrase of Heinroth,f will be seen to be undeveloped and unconscious Reason, and Reason again, this same Faith, developed, self-conscious, and self-intelligent : in other words, that when the believer shall have been raised by the high est grade of Christian consciousness to the highest grade of Chris- tian knowledge, he will see that the unquestioning and childlike docility with which he trusted and rested in the truths and mys- teries of Christianity, was the most rational of all mental acts, and the most philosophic of all mental processes. That this absolute consciousness can be perfectly reached, even by the most profound and holiest soul while in the flesh, we for one deny ; for the same reason that, within the sphere of life and practice, we deny the doctrine of spiritual perfection here on earth. But that this knowledge, this insight into the identity of the revelation of God, with the reason of God, is a reality, and may be striven after, and that in its perfect completeness it will be attained by the human spirit when it has ceased to see through a glass darkly, has been the steadfast belief of the holy and the wise, in all ages of the Christian church. There is a point, a final centre, where faith and insight meet, even in regard to the mysteries of Christianity, and to this point the earnest straining eye of Christian speculation, has in all ages steadily turned. This point is at once the mysterious power that attracts, and the goal where the whole mighty tendency is to come to a rest. Only on the hypothesis that the problem is not in its own nature absurd and insoluble, but that by a legitimate method, Christian Philos- ophy may draw nearer and nearer its solution, even here in space and time, can we account for the existence of a Christian Theol- ogy at all. How far Coleridge has contributed in the employ- ment of this method to the scientific statement and philosophical defence of the doctrines of Christianity, and generally what his * Biographia Litcraria sub fine. f Anthropologie, S. 219
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, 41
positive merits are in respect to this relation of Philosopny to Rev- elation, is a question to which we would devote a short space.
In respect to the doctrine of The Trinity, upon which his thoughts seem to have centered during his latter life, the positior which he took, that this doctrine, though mysterious is yet rational, and is therefore a legitimate object of investigation for a rational mind, at first sight seems to extend the sphere of Christian spec- ulation beyond its proper limits. For the last two centuries it has been customary among English and American theologians to receive the doctrine of the Trinity purely on the ground of its be- ing revealed in Scripture, and attempts to establish its rationality and intrinsic necessity, have, in the main, been deprecated. It has not always been so. In some ages the doctrine of the Tri- unity of the Divine Being, was the battle-ground of the church, and we are inclined to think that the Christian mind has never reached a deeper depth in metaphysical philosophy, than that to which it was compelled to sink, by the acute objections of Arian- ism and Sabellianism. Let any one thoughtfully peruse the creeds that had their origin in these controversies, and see with what masterly care and ability, the orthodox mind, in spite of all the imperfections of human language, strove to express the idea with which it was laboring, so as to avoid the Arian, the Sabellian and Tritheistic ideas of the Divine Nature, and then ask himself if there is not something of the mental, something of the national, in the doctrine of the Trinity, by virtue of which it becomes a legitimate object of contemplation for the human mind, and to some extent a guide to its inquiry. How could a man like Atha- nasius, for example, contend so earnestly, and with such truth of counter-statement, against a false idea, unless he had the true Idea somewhat clear in his own mind to contend for. And if it be said that this was derived from the bare letter of the Scrip- tures, and that the whole controversy between the contending parties hinged upon the citation of proof texts, the question arises : — how came Athanasius to see such a different truth in these texts from that which his opponents saw in them ? Sup- pose a transfer of consciousness — suppose that the inward convic- tions and notions, upon the subject of the Trinity, possessed by Arius, could have been carried over into the mind of Athanasius, would the letter of these proof-texts have contained the same spirit or meaning for him, that they actually did ? For it must
4:2 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
be recollected that the Scriptures do not furnish ready-formed, a systematic and scientific statement of the doctrine in question. How then came the orthodox mind to derive its own sharply-de- fined dogma from the Scriptures, and the hetorodox mind its own equally sharply-defined dogma from the very same Scriptures, un- less each brought an antecedent interpreting Idea into the con- troversy ? We do not by any means suppose that this orthodox Idea of the Trinity, sprang up in the orthodox mind at this pa:- ticular instant in the history of the church, and entirely inde- pendent of the Scriptures. It was a slow formation, and had come down from the beginning, as the joint product of Scriptural teaching and rational reflection, but was brought out, by this controversy, into a greater clearness and fulness than it had ever before appeared in, outside of the circle of inspired minds. But that the doctrine of the Trinity was now an Idea in the mind of the church, and therefore contained a mental element by virtue of which, it was a legitimate object of rational contemplation, and not a mere letter upon the page of Scripture, is the point we wished to bring out.
Now we think it a return to an older and better view of the subject, and not a mere novelty, that Coleridge was disposed to affirm, that whether it can be distinctly and fully shown or not, the doctrine of the Trinity is a rational doctrine, and is not, there- fore, a theme altogether forbidden to the theologian because it stands in no sort of relation to a human intelligence. "We believe that the position, taken by him in common with the spiritual school of theologians in Germany, between whose general views in theology, and those of Coleridge there is much affinity, that the doctrine of the Trinity contains the only adequate and final answer to the standing objection of Pantheism : — viz. that an In- finite Being can not be personal, because all personal self-con- sciousness implies limitation — is a valuable one for both Philoso phy and Theology. It proposes a high aim for both of these sciences, and provided the investigation be conducted in the light of Scripture and of the Christian consciousness, and for the very purpose of destroying the pantheistic conception of the Deity, into which such abstruse and recondite speculation we confess is very apt to run,* we have little fear, that the cause of true philosophy and religion will suffer from the attempt. Whether the attempt * The Trinity of Hegel is an example.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 43
be successful or not, surely it is honoring Divine Revelation, and that body of systematic knowledge which has sprung up out of it, to affirm with Julius Mailer, that " the Christian Religion as it lies in the New Testament, contains the fundamental elements of a perfect system of philosophy in itself — that there can not be a real reconciliation between Philosophy and Christianity, if such reconciliation must come in from without, and that such a recon- ciliation is possible only as it is merely an unfolding of that which is already contained by implication in Christianity : and hence that it must be possible to find, from the immediate contents of the Christian Religion, as its metaphysical complement, ultimate and absolutely scientific statements relative to the existence of God and the world, and their mutual relations, in such way as that they shall of themselves constitute a system of Christian Philosophy."*
Furthermore, whether the attempt to construct the doctrine of the Trinity philosophically, succeed or not, the mere recognition of the fact that it is grounded in reason, and the necessity of the Divine Nature, cuts the root cf the doctrine of a merely modal Trinity : a heresy which was revived by the contemplative Schleiermacher. If the doctrine of a Trinity has a rational ne- cessity, i. e. a necessity in the Divine Essence itself — if God, in order to be personal and self-conscious, and not merely that He may manifest Himself, must be Triune — then it follows that a mere Trinity of manifestation, whatever it may do for other be- ings than the Deity, leaves the Deity himself destitute of self-con- sciousness. The position of the Christian Theology is, that irre- spective of His manifestation in the universe, antecedent to the Creation, and in the solitude of His own eternity, God is person- ally self-conscious and therefore Triune — absolutely self-sufficient and therefore needing to undergo no process of development and manifestation, in order to absolute plenitude and perfection of existence. By affirming that the doctrine of the Trinity is an absolutely rational and necessary one, because the Trinity is grounded in the Divine Essence, the doctrine of a relative and modal Trinity is logically precluded.
So far as concerns the speculations themselves, of Coleridge, upon this doctrine, he undoubtedly received the theological state- ment of it, contained in the Nicene Creed, as the truth, and en- * Lehre von der Siinde, Bd. i. SS. 7, 8, 9.
44 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
deavored, from, this as a point of departure, to originate a corres- ponding philosophical determination of the doctrine. How much he has actually contributed to the scientific solution of the prob- lem, each reader will decide for himself. We are free to say for ourselves, that we think Coleridge committed an error in lejfYirig the scheme of the Triad for that of the Tetrad, in his construction. The symbols of the Church, and the Christian mind, proceed upon the hypothesis of a simple Tria.d, which is also a Monad, and hence teach a Trinity in Unity and a Unity in Trinity. Cole- ridge, on the other hand, proceeds upon the scheme of the Pagan Trinity, of which hints are to be found in Plato, and which can be traced back as far as Pythagoras — the scheme namely of a Monad logically anterior to, and other than, the Triad — of a Monad which originally is not a Triad, but becomes one — where- by four factors are introduced into the problem. The error in this scheme consists in this its assumption of an aboriginal Unity existing primarily by itself, and in the order of nature, before a Trinity — of a ground for the Trinity, or, in Coleridge's phrase, a prothesis, which is not in its own nature either triune or personal, but is merely the impersonal base from which the Trinity propei is evolved. In this way, we think, a process of development i& introduced into the Godhead which is incompatible with its im- mutable perfection, and with that golden position of the school- men that God is actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate. There is no latency in the Divine Being. He is the same yes- terday, to-day, and forever. We think we see in this scheme of Coleridge, the influence of the pantheistic conception of potential- ity, instead of the theistic conception of self-completeness, and that if he had taken the distinct and full personality of the finite spirit, as the image and likeness of the Infinite Personality, and having steadfastly contemplated the necessary conditions of self- consciousness in man, had merely freed them from the limitations of the Finite — of time and degree — he would have been more successful, certainly more continuous and progressive. While we say this, however, we are far from believing that Coleridge's practical faith as a Christian in the Trinity, was in the least af- fected by this tendency to modalisrn in his speculative construc- tion of the doctrine — a modalism, too,, which, as we have re marked above, is logically, and ought actually to have been, precluded by the position which he heartily adopted, of the in-
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 40
trinsic rationality and necessity ol the doctrine. Few minds in the whole history of the Christian Church, as we believe, have had more awful and adoring views of the Triune God, or have bowed down in more absolute and lowly worship before the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The reflections of Coleridge upon the great and important doctrine of Sin, we regard as of the highest worth both in a practical and speculative respect. Indeed a profound cor> sciousncss of Sin in the heart, and a correspondingly profound theory of it in the head, are fundamental to all depth and soundness of view in the general domain of Theology. Cole- ridge speaks in several places of his renunciation of Socinian- ism and reception of Trinitarianism as resulting from a change in his philosophical opinions : of a Spiritual Philosophy as the means of bringing him to a Spiritual Religion. Without deny- ing the co-operation of this influence, we are yet inclined to the belief, that in his case, as in that of Augustine and of men of a strongly contemplative bent, generally, the change from error to truth had its first and deepest source in that profound and bit- ter experience of an evil nature, which every child of Adam must pass through before reaching peace of soul, and which more than any other experience, carries the mind down into the depths of both the nature of man and of God. The biographical materials for forming an estimate of the spirituality, and religious experi- ence, of Coleridge, are exceedingly meagre, but there is full reason for believing, from the gushes of tender devotional feeling that burst up spontaneously, and with the utmost unconsciousness, on the slightest hint or occasion,* that a most profound Christian experience lay warm and tremulous under the whole of his cul- ture and character. We think we can see plainly in those most touching expressions of a sense of bondage which sometimes es- cape from him, that Coleridge in common with the wise and the holy of all ages, was slowly but triumphantly fighting through that great fight between the flesh and the spirit, which, far more than the richness of a merely human endowment, is the secret of that lofty and melancholy interest with which, even if person- ally unacquainted with the struggle, every truly noble and thoughtful mind, contemplates the lives of those elect spirits whom God's grace has chosen as its distinguished organs of manifesta-
* See Table Talk, Works, VI. pp. 323 (Note), 327 (Note), 478 (Note), 527 • and Lit. R<m., Works, V. pp. 19-21, 368, 372, 290.
46 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
tion — that unearthly contest which, more than all else, is the secret of that superior charm, which sets the Confession? of Augustine as high above the Confessions of Rousseau, as the heavens are above the earth. In this connection we believe that the opium-eating of Coleridge, about which so much has been said in a pharisaic spirit by those who had small if any knowl- edge of that publican-like humility and lowly self-despair which is the heart and kernel of a Christian, as distinguished from a merely pagan or ethnic, character, was the occasion, as are all evil habits in the regenerate soul, of this deep and continually deepening religious consciousness : and that if that peculiarity, which resulted from this struggle with an evil habit, were to be taken out of Coleridge's experience as a Christian, it would lose much of its depth, expanse, and true elevation. We have not the slightest doubt that when told, " the tale of his long and pas- sionate struggle with, and final victory over, the habit, will form one of the brightest, as well as most interesting traits of the moral and religious being of this humble, this exalted, Christian."* The pious-minded believer who finds an analogy in his own ex- perience to this struggle with the relics of an evil nature, and the truly philosophic inquirer who traces the Christian life to its hid- den and lowest springs, are both of them alike, far better quali- fied to be judges and censors over such a frailty and sin, as the one in question, than those moralists, who are precluded, as of old, from both the reception and the apprehension of an evan- gelical spirit, by their self-righteousness, and whose so-called re- ligion is that merely negative thing, which owes its origin not to the conflict of grace with sin, but to an excess of lymph in the blood.
Coleridge's view of Sin, which is to be found the most fully expressed in the Aids to Reflection, is so intimately connected with his view of the Will, that it is necessary to direct attention to the nature and functions of this important faculty. The place which the Will holds in his system of philosophy was briefly al- luded to under that head. As the Spiritual, i. e. self-determined, principle in man, it stands over against all that is strictly and merely Natural in him, in the sharpest opposition. In the idea and plan of the human soul it was intended to control and sub- ject to its own rational self-determination all the functions and * EL N. Coleridge's Preface to tbt Table Talk, Works, VI. p. 252.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 47
operations, all the appetencies and tendencies of a Nature which, unallied with such a higher Spiritual power, would be as irrespon- sible, because as necessitated in its development, in man, as we find it to be in the brute. All radical deterioration, there- fore, in the human soul, must begin in the se//"-determined part of it, for this is the only point at which a radical, responsible change can be introduced, and from which it can evolve. A mere Nature, as in the case of irrational and irresponsible exist- ences, is not capable of either a radical deterioration or a radical improvement. It must develop itself in the main, and substan- tially, in accordance with what has been inlaid in it. There are, therefore, in the world of Nature as distinguished from that of Spirit, no radical changes — no terrible catastrophes like the fall of the Will, no glorious recoveries like its renovation. There is, and must be, within the realm of the strictly Natural, only one uniform evolution, in one continuous and endless line, because the development can not, by a free act, go behind itself, and alter the basis from which it proceeds.
Sin, therefore, as involving a radical change in the character, development, and history of the human soul originates in the Will. If maa were a mere creature of Nature, his development would go on with the same necessary uniformity with which a crystal or a tree is built up in accordance with the law of Na- ture. But he is also a Spiritual, i. e. seZ/'-determiried, creature, and hence that possibility of sinning which has become a dread- ful actuality. By virtue of this power, man is capable of throw- ing himself out of the normal line of development prescribed for him by his Creator, and of beginning by an absolute beginning, a character, a course, and career, the precise contrary to the right and ideal one.
Without going into further detail in regard to Sin as origina- ting within the sphere of freedom — a point upon which there is no controversy among those who hold to the existence of Sin at all — we wish to allude as concisely as possible to the idea of the Will itself as held by Coleridge, and as it is found generally, we think, in the Platonic as distinguished from the Locke Calvinism. For the doctrine of Sin assumes a very different form, and is ac- companied with totally different results, both in speculative and practical theology, according as the idea of the Will is capacious, deep, and exhaustive, or the contrary. If the Will is regarded
48 INTKODUCTORY ESSAY
as merely the faculty of single choices, or particular volitions, the Sin that has its origin in it, must necessarily be atomic — a mere series of single and isolated acts, or in the technics of theology, actual and conscious transgressions. If, on the other hand, the Will is regarded as the power of determining the whole soul, and the soul as a whole, to an ultimate end of living, the Sin. that has its origin in it, is dynamic — an immanent process or state of the Will, having the unity, depth, and totality of a nature, and in theological phraseology, is an evil nature, from which all actual and volitionary transgressions proceed. This distinction between the volitionary and the voluntary power — a distinction plainly marked by the Latin arbitrium and voluntas, and equally plainly by the German Willkuhr and Wille — is important, not only in- trinsically, but, in order to an apprehension of Coleridge's view of the doctrine of Original Sin, which we think does not differ materially from that of Augustine and the Reformers. For al- though Coleridge insists earnestly and at length upon the doctrine of free self-determination, he is equally earnest and decided in affirming the absolute bondage and helplessness of the fallen human Will. According to him, the Will is capable of absolutely originating its states — its holy state only in concurrence with, and aided by, the One Holy Will which is the ground and support of all finite holiness, and its sinful state without any aid or concur- rence, on the part of the Infinite Will — but when the evil moral ctate has once been originated, and the Will has once responsibly formed its sinful character and nature, a central radical change in the direction and tendency of this faculty is, from the very na- ture of the case, then out of its power. For the Will is not the surface-faculty of single volitions, over which the individual has arbitrary control, but that central and inmost active principle, into which all the powers of knowing and feeling are grafted, as into the very core and substance of the personality itself. So that when the Will, in this full and adequate sense of the word, puts forth its self-movement, it takes the whole soul along with it, from centre to circumference, leaving no remainder of power in reserve, by which the existing direction of its movement can be reversed. The fall of the Will, therefore, though a free and self-moved procedure, brings this faculty into such a relation to holiness, that it is utterly impossible for it to recover itself back into its primitive state : it being a contradiction, to attribute a
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 49
power of being holy, to a faculty, the ivhole of whose power is already absorbed in an unintermittent determination to be evil. The Will as thus conceived, is a unit and a unity, and having once freely set itself in the direction of evil, it thereby, and in the same proportion, becomes powerless in respect to a contrary direction : not because, be it observed, of any compulsion from without, but because of the obstinate energy and overmastering momentum within. It is an impossibility, for Satan to cast out Satan, because it is an incompatibility.
Coleridge, in short, while holding to the doctrine of free self- determination with the serious earnestness of a philosopher who well knew the vital importance of it in a system of Theism — the doctrine of responsible and personal free-will being the very and only corrosive of all pantheistic Naturalism — at the same time agreed with the oldest and soundest theology of the Christian Church, in not affirming the existence of positive and efficient power in the fallen Will, either to recover itself, or to maintain itself in holiness, after recovery. " The difference," he says, " between a Calvinist and a Priestleyan Materialist-Necessitarian consists in this : — the former not only believes a Will, but that it is equivalent to the ego ipse, to the actual self, in every moral agent ; though he believes that in human nature, it is an en- slaved, because a corrupt Will. In denying free-Will to the un- regenerate, he no more denies Will, than in asserting the poor negroes in the West Indies to be slaves, I deny them to be men. Now the latter, the Priestleyan, uses the word Will — not for any distinct correspondent power, but — for the mere result and aggre- gate of fibres, motions, and sensations ; in short it is a mere gen- eric teim with him, just as when we say, the main current of a river."* In fine the fallen Will in relation to a holy state — in relation to the " new heart" of the Scriptures — is a capability and not an ability, a recipiency and not a self-sufficient power, because the decided and positive energy of the faculty, its actual and actuating power, is entirely enlisted and swallowed up in the process of a sinful self-determination. This sinful self-determination, involving the whole soul into itself, and implicating all the tenden- cies of the inward being of man, with itself, constitutes that evil ground and nature below the range of distinct consciousness, from
* Literary Remains, Works, V. p. 448 ; compare also Aids to Reflection • Comment on Aphorism x., Works, I. pp. 271-291.
VOL. i. C3
50 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
which all conscious transgression proceeds, and of which it is the phenomenal manifestation. In this way Sin is seen to be a single indivisible nature, or disposition, and not merely an innumerable series of isolated acts, and this nature again is seen to be essential guilt, because as originated in a "Will and by a Will, it is self- originated and self-determined. In the phrase of Coleridge man " receives a nature into his Will, which by this very act becomes a corrupt Will ; and vice versa this Will becomes his nature and thus a corrupt nature ;" and bearing in mind the distinguishing characteristics of Nature and Spirit, the reader will see the truth of the further position of this author, " that a nature in a Will is as inconsistent with freedom, as free choice with an incapacity of choosing aught but evil ; and that a free power in a nature to fulfil a law above nature is a startling paradox to the reason."*
Respecting the doctrine of Original Sin, therefore, we think there is a substantial agreement between Coleridge and that form of doctrine which has come down in the Christian Church, as the best expression of both the Christian experience and the Christian reflection upon this momentous subject ; and as we have already remarked, a profound view of Sin is the deep and strong soil from which all sound, healthy, and healing growths in theological speculation, shoot up. Depth and truth of theory here, is the very best preventive of errors and misconceptions elsewhere, and the very best mitigation, and remedy for them, if they exist.
We have thus far spoken of the soundness and fruitfulness of Coleridge's general method of Theologizing ; of his profound be- lief in the inward harmony of Reason and Revelation, and of that instinctive and irresistible desire, which he shared with the profbundest theologians of all ages, to exhibit and establish this harmony. We have also dwelt upon his views upon the funda- mental doctrines of the Trinity and the Fall of man, selecting these out of the great circle of Christian doctrines, because they are fundamental, and in their implication contain the whole Christian system. It is impossible, however, within the space of an essay, and it is not perhaps desirable, to pursue the opinions of this author through the whole series of individual doctrines, and having, as we think, shown his substantial agreement, so far * Aids to Reflection, Works, I. p. 281 (Note). See also Notes on Jeremj Taylor's Unum Necessarium. Literary Remains, Works. V. p. 195.
INTROI)CJCTOEY ESSAY. 51
as the general type and character of his Theology is concerned, \vith the Augustinian, we pass now to a brief consideration of some erroneous and defective views that cling to it.
Notwithstanding Coleridge's earnest advocacy of the doctrine of the self-determining power of the human Will, whereby the origin of Sin is taken out of the course of Nature and merely Natural processes, and brought within the sphere of freedom and amenability to justice, we think that the idea of Guilt, though by no means denied, or unrecognized, either in his personal expe- rience or his speculations, was not sufficiently deep, clear, and impressive, for him. Sin, for him, as for many contemplative minds in the Christian Church — as it was for Origen in the early Church, for the Mystical Theology of the Middle Ages, for the school of Schleiermacher at the present time — was too dispropor- tionately the corruption and disharmony of the human soul, and not sufficiently its guilt. Now the strongest motive which the Theologian, as distinguished from the Philosopher, has for main- taining the doctrine of Free Will, is to find an adequate and ra- .tiorial ground for the responsibility and criminality of the human soul as fallen and corrupt. He is not so anxious, if he is thought- ful and wise, to establish the doctrine of self-determination in reference to the origin of holiness (though in this reference the doctrine is important) as in reference to the origin of Sin : know- ing that while there is little hazard in attributing too much to the Divine agency, in the production of moral good, there is the greatest of hazard, in implicating the Deity in the origin of moral evil. It would seem, therefore, that so determined an advocate of the doctrine of human freedom as Coleridge was, should have not only seen that the very essence of Sin, as self-willed, and thereby distinguished from all other forms of evil, consists in its ill-desert and penality, and that therefore its first and most im- portant relation is to Law and Justice, but should especially have allowed this view to have moulded and shaped in a proper de- gree his theory of Redemption. But the scheme which Coleridge presents in the Aids to Reflection is defective in not insisting with emphasis upon the truth, that as the essential nature of sin (by virtue of which it is different in kind from all other forms of evil, and becomes, strictly speaking, the only evil per se) is guilt, so an essential element in any remedial plan must be atonement 01 expiation. The correlate to guilt is atonement, and to attempt
52 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
to satisfy those specific wants of the sinful soul, which spring OUT of remorse of conscience, which is the felt and living relation ol sin to law and justice, by a mere provision for spiritual sanctifi- cation, however needed and necessary this may be, in its own place, must be like the attempt to satisfy thirst with food. Coleridge was repelled from the doctrine of vicarious atonement, by some of the mechanical schemes and forms under which it has been exhibited, but if, as the best theology of the church haa generally done, he had looked at it from the view-point of the absolute nature of justice, and had brought it under the category of want and correlate — one of the most vital of all, and one with which Coleridge's own mind was thoroughly familiar — it seems to us that he would have seen, that although the terms ranso?n and payment of a debt, when applied to the agency of the K e- deemer, are indeed metaphorical, the term sacrificial expiation, is not.* If he had steadfastly contemplated the subjective wants of the human soul, while filled with the consciousness of guilt, and before that sense of corruption and those yearn- ings for holiness of heart, which are the consequent rather than antecedent of regeneration, have sprung up in it, and then had gone still farther and contemplated the dread objective ground of this remorseful and guilty conscience, in the Divine justice, v/hich through this finite medium, reveals itself against all unrighteousness, he would have seen as the Augustines, the Anselms, the Calvins, and the Howes have seen, that there is a rational necessity for the expiation of guilt — a necessity founded secondarily, in the rational nature and moral wants of man, and therefore primarily, in the nature and attributes of that infinitely Holy Being, who made man in His own image and after His likeness.
* See Aids to Reflection, Aph. xix. : Comment, Works, I. pp. 306-321. We never read this ardent but merely analogical argument against substi- tuted penal suffering within the Spiritual sphere of justice, based upon the merely Natural, and wholly unjudicial, relation of a son to his mother, with- out thinking of the words in Wallenstein,
" 0 thou art blind, with thy deep seeing eyes."
There is no inward and real analogy between the two spheres. There can be no legitimate arguing from a sphere, from which the retributive is alto- gether excluded, such as that of the mother and child, over into a sphere in which the retributive is the sole element, such as that of God the just ttud man the guilty. It is fjeru^aac eof dA/lo yivoc.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 58
Moreover, in taking the position which he does — viz., that th« real and absolute relation of the Passion of the Redeemer to the Divine attributes, is a mystery, in such sense that nothing can be affirmed concerning it, that can be intelligible to the human in- tellect, or edifying to the human heart (for this is said, when it is said that the subjective consequences in the redeemed, are all that can be known upon the subject), Coleridge stands in re* maikable inconsistency with himself. We have seen that even the Trinity was not by him regarded as a mystery, in this modern, but really improper, sense, of standing in no sort of re- lation to a rational intelligence ; in this sense of containing 110 element of the rational and mental, upon which the human mind can seize as a point of union and communion. And yet one whole side of the work of Redemption — that side too which stands in the very closest connection with the deepest and most awful sense in the human soul — the sense of guilt — and ministers to the d sepest and most awful craving that ever emerges into the horizon of consciousness — the craving for a deliverance from guilt on real grounds, i. e. on grounds of justice : (a craving that lies at the bottom of the whole system of sacrifices, Pagan as well as Jewish, and is both their rational justification and explanation) — this whole side of the work of Redemption is thrown utterly out of, and beyond the range of the human mind, so that although its consequences in the redeemed may be known, its own inward nature — the ground and origin of these very consequences — is as utterly unknown and unknowable as that of a " gorgon 01 chimaera dire !" But aside from this inconsistency it is a fatal objection to this theory, that these consequences themselves — this Christian peace of conscience and sense of reconciliation with a Holy Lawgiver — can not come into existence through such an ig- norant and blind faith as the soul is shut up to on this scheme. Such effects can not proceed from such a cause. Here, if any- where in the whole field of the Christian consciousness, there must be the union of faith with insight. There must be some knowledge of the purpose and purport of the death of the Son of God — some knowledge of the inward and real relation which the substituted sufferings of Christ sustain to divine justice — before the guilt-stricken spirit looking about instinctively, but despair- ingly, for an atonement of guilt, can confidently and calmly rest in them for purposes of justification. At the very least their in
54 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
trinsic adaptation to the end proposed and desiied — their ade quacy — must be recognized by the mind, and what is such recog- nition but a species and a grade of knowledge respecting then nature, fitness and rational necessity ? The faith of the common Christian contains the rationale of the doctrine of Atonement, for the origin and existence of this faith itself, is explicable only on the hypothesis that there is reason in the doctrine ; and if it is rational it is apprehensible.
"While, however, we are noticing this defect in Coleridge's statement of the doctrine of Redemption, it ought at the same time to be observed, that he was not impelled to the view he took, by a morbid and feeble moral sentiment, or from any disposition to merge all the Divine attributes into an irrational and blind Be- nevolence. It was an intellectual, more than a moral defect, with him, for when he is himself opposing Socinianism — and few minds have been more heartily opposed to it than his — we find him employing the very same objections to a scheme of salvation that makes no provision for the guilt of man and the Justice of God, which the orthodox mind has urged in all ages. " Socini- anism," he says, " is not a religion, but a theory, and that too, a very pernicious, or a very unsatisfactory theory. Pernicious — for it excludes all our deep and awful ideas of the perfect holiness of God, His justice and His mercy, and thereby makes the voice of conscience a delusion, as having no correspondent in the charac- ter of the legislator ; regarding God as merely a good-natured pleasure-giver, so happiness is produced, indifferent as to the means : — unsatisfactory, for it promises forgiveness, without any Eolution of the difficulty of the compatibility of this, ivith the Justice of God."*
In other places,! on the other hand, we find him expressing himself, respecting the more mechanical view of this doctrine, with an impatience and rashness, which a deeper, calmer, and more truly philosophic insight into it, would have precluded. For he who has meditated profoundly upon the Divine Being, and has thoughtfully asked himself the question : — Has the Deity af- fections in any sense, and what solid meaning have such terms as Anger and Propitiation, when applied to Him ? — will not be in haste to condemn even the most inadequate statement upon this :< abyssmal subject," provided he sees that its general meaning
* Lit. Rem., Works, V. pp. 552, 553, and compare V. pp. 447, 448.
\ Lit. Rem., Works, V. p. 74, e. g.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 56
and purport is on the right side of the great controversy. That Coleridge had not speculatively reached the bottom of this doc- trine, and acquired a view of it as profound and comprehensive as that of Anselm, e. g. in his Cur Deus homo ? or as that to which a tract, like Owen's, on the absolute nature of Divine Justice, leads, is evident from the irresolution of his mind, arid the unsteadiness of his attitude.^ In fine, as we remarked at the outset, the defect in Coleridge's view of this subject is traceable to a deficiency in his theoretic view of Sin in one of its two main aspects. The Idea was not full. And perhaps the cause of this speculative deficiency was a practical one at bottom. Like many other contemplative spirits, Coleridge came into Christianity gradually, and not through a violent inward crisis, and hence his experimental consciousness of Sin, though not by any means en- tirely lacking the element of remorse, was yet predominantly a sense of bondage and corruption. We doubt not that Coleridge's exposition of the doctrine of Redemption (as would that of Schlei- errnacher) would have been different from what it now is, by a very important modification, had his own Christian consciousness been the result of such an inward conflict with Guilt, as Luther's was, or of such a keen insight into the nature of Law and Jus- tice, as Calvin had, instead of being, as it was, the result of a comparatively quiet transition into Christianity and growth therein ; in which process the yearning after holiness and pu- rity, instead of the craving after atonement for agonizing Guilt in the conscience, was the predominant, though not sole, feeling,
In respect to the views of Coleridge upon the subject of Inspi ration, it is not our purpose to enter into any detail, but simply to notice the defect in the general principle adopted by hirn. This principle, to state it in a word, is as follows : — In determining the absolute truth and authority of the Scriptures, the Objective generally, is subordinate to the Subjective. With the exception of those particular cases, in which the Objective Revelation ex- plicitly claims a paramount superiority to the Subjective Intelli- gence, by asserting a direct dictation or revelation from God, the
* When himself attacking Socinianism, Coleridge employs the phraseol ogy of the Calvinist, and seems thereby to reserve the attacking of Calvin- ism as a pecuhuni of his own : as Johnson allowed no one to abuse Goldsmith but himself. See Lit. Hem., passim, and observe the general animus of tli« ootes on Jeremy Taylor, and on A Barrister's Hints.
5ft INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
former has intrinsic authority or validity, only so far as it acquires it before the bar of the individual judgment. The Subjective Reason, with the exception specified, is placed first, as the fixed and absolute norm or rule to which the Objective Reason is to be brought up and conformed. Now the strongest objection to this theory of Revelation is to be derived from the principles of the philosophy adopted, as we have endeavored to show, by Coleridge himself. But even if we should regard him as an adherent of the later German philosophy, the absolute and fixed truth would riot lie in thq. Subject alone, but in the identity of the Subject and the Object — -in a common ground that contains both factors. And even this position would be more sound and less objection- able when applied to the mutual relations of the individual mind and Divine Revelation than the one which we have mentioned above, and which is really tenable only by an adherent of Fichte's system, in which the truth is laid in the Subject wholly. Even on the principles of the philosophy of Identity, the truth would not be wholly and ultimately in the Subjective, nor would the Objective Revelation be so passively exposed to the fluctuations of an individual consciousness, because, at the very least, there would be room for action arid reaction, of correction and counter- correction.
But we think it has been made out, that Coleridge, on this point of the relation of the Subject to the Object, ultimately adopted the views of the Critical philosophy, substantially those of all theistic systems, which explains the possibility of knowl- edge, by a preconforrnity of the Subject to the Object, instead of an identity of substance between them. -Ou this system there is a dualism between the Object and the Subject. Of the two, the former is the unlimited and the universal, and stands over against the latter as the limited and particular. It is the Objective, therefore, which possesses the fixed and uniform character (in this instance, the infallibility) to which the Subjective comes up with its pre-conformed powers of apprehension, and the function of the latter consequently, is a recipient instead of an origiriant or crea- tive one, as in the system of Fichte, or a self-developing one, as in the system of Schelling and Hegel.
We are aware that Coleridge believed that the Scriptures are, as matter of fact, true on all primary points, and that thoau Christian doctrines which he, in common with the Christian
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 57
Church, regarded as vital to human salvation, are all plainly re- vealed in them. This ought to be noticed, because this of itself separates him heaven-wide, from a mere Rationalist, and places him in the same general class with the evangelical school of theologians in Germany, in respect to this doctrine of Inspiration. Still we regard it an error in him, and in them, that the Canon is not contemplated as a complete whole in and by itself, having a common origin in the Divine Mind, in such sense, that as a body of information it is infallibly correct on all the subjects that come within its scope and purpose. There must be truth some- where, in regard to all, even the most unimportant particulars of history, biography, and geography, that enter into the subject matter of the Sacred Canon, and it seems to us altogether the most rational, in accordance with the general principle enounced above, to presume and assume that it lies in the Canon itself — in the outward Revelation considered as a finished whole, and an infallible unit and unity. These secondary matters are always an important, and sometimes vital, part^ of the great whole, and as they are so integrated into the solid doctrinal substance of the Scriptures, that they can not be taken out of it, any more than the blue veins can be from the solid marble, why is it not ra- tional to believe, that they had the same common origin with the doctrines and fundamental truths themselves, which are encrusted and crystallized in them — in other words, that the Divine Mind, whether as positively revealing, or inspiring, or superintending, is the ultimate Author of the whole ? There are but two objec- tions to this position. The first is — that the inspired writers be- come thereby, mere amanuenses and automata. This objection has no force for one who believes that the Divine can, and does, dwell and work in the Human, in the most real and absolute manner, without in the least mutilating or suppressing the
* In some instances at least, a vital part ; as e. g. the biographic memoir* of the Redeemer by the Evangelists. If these are not infallible as history, then the whole Christian Religion instantaneously disappears : — for the Personage in whom it centres and rests can not be proved to have had an existence in space and time, and the forecasting intimations which the human soul (of a Plato, e. g.} has had of a Redeemer to come, would not save it from skepticism and despair. Hence the four gospels, in the late contest between Rationalism and Supernaturalism in Germany, have beeii the hottest part of the battle-field.
58 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
Human, and ought not to be urged by one who believes in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the regenerate soul. As in this instance, the Human can not be separated from the Divine, in the individual consciousness, and all " the fruits of the Spirit" seem to be the very spontaneity of the human soul itself, so in the instance of the origination of the body of Holy Writ, while all, even the minutest, parts have the flexibility, freshness, and natu- ralness of purely human productions, there is yet in and through them all, the unerring agency of the Supreme Mind. In other words, the Supreme Intelligence is the organizing principle of that outstanding body of information which is called the Bible, and working like any other organizing principle, with thorough- ness, produces a whole, that is characterized by its own charac- teristic— perfection of knowledge — even as life in the natural world diffuses itself and produces all the characteristic marks of life, out to the rim of the tiniest leaf. The second objection, and a fatal one, if it can be maintained, is — that there are actual errors in the Scriptures, on points, in regard to which, they pro- fess to teach the truth. Let this be shown, if it can be, but until it has been shown, without possibility of contradiction, the Chris tian mind is certainly rational, in continuing to assume and affirm the infallibility of the Written Word. We say this with confi- dence, because out of the great number of alleged errors and contradictions that have been urged against the plenary inspira- tion of the Scriptures, there is not a single one established as such on grounds that render it absurd for a defender of the doctrine to take the opposite side. There is no list of conceded errors in the Scriptures. There are many difficulties still remaining, we grant, but while there is not a single case in which the absolute and unappealable settlement has resulted in establishing the fact of undoubted error, there are many in which it has resulted in favor of the doctrine of plenary inspiration. No one acquainted with the results of the severe and skeptical criticism to which the Canon has been subjected for the last half-century in Ger- many, will deny that the number of apparent contradictions and errors is much smaller now, than it was at the beginning of this period, and that the remainder of the series is diminishing. And had Coleridge himself kept up with the progress of Biblical Crit- icism in that country where the foundation of his views on this subject seems to have been laid, he would undoubtedly have seen
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 5S
reasons for rejecting some erroneous hypotheses, which, though: exploded in the land of their birth, clung to him till the end of his life. He seems in regard to such an important point, as the inspiration and canonical authority of the Christopcedia* in both Matthew's and Luke's gospels, e. g. not to have made any ad- vance upon the general views of the brilliant but superficial Eichorn, who was his teacher in 1799.
This whole subject of Inspiration, a most important, and a most difficult one, in some respects, turns upon the true relation of the Subjective to the Objective, and particularly of the Human to the Divine Reason. We can not but regard the theory of In- spiration set forth by Coleridge, in common with that spiritual school of theologians in Germany, which is destined to exert a great, and we believe, on the whole, salutary influence upon the theology of this country and Great Britain, for some time to come, as in direct opposition to that sober and rational philosophy which regards the Objective as fixed, reliable, and absolute, and con- ceives of the Subjective as designed to receive this into itself with intelligence and freedom, and as really free from fluctuation and error only so far as it partakes of the fixedness and truth of the Objective. The finite Reason is rather a recipiency than a self- subsistent power, according to Kant and Jacobi, and there are passages in these volumes that endorse this. The Human Mind is rather a capacity, than a self-sufficing fulness like the Divine Mind ; and therefore the only rational attitude of the Subjective Intelligence towards an Objective Revelation, and towards all Revelation of the Supreme Reason, is that of intelligent and liv- ing recipiency. The Christian consciousness itself can not safely be left to its own independent movement, without any moulding and modifying influence of the Written Word. The outward, fixed, and self-included Revelation, must go down, through all the ages arid changes of the Christian experience and Christian doc- trine, as the absolute norm by which the whole process of prac- tical and speculative development is to be protected from devia- tions to the right hand and to the left. The Canon is to steady and solidify that living process of thinking and of feeling which is embodied and manifested in the Christian Church, arid keep it from the extremes on either hand, to which a finite mind and a living process are ever liable. Neither the practical nor th* * Lit. Remains, Works, V. pp. 76, 78, 79. 532.
60 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
scientific form of a particular doctrine, or of Christian Theologj generally, may be sought for in the Christian consciousness, ex- cept as it has been rectified and purified by the Scriptures — in this Subjective, except as it has been rectified from its errors, and purified from its foreign elements by the conscious reception into itself of this Objective, which is absolutely free from both There would be more weight in the doctrine of the authority of the finite Reason, and the Christian consciousness, than there now is, if all the processes of the human soul — even the regenerate human soul — were normal processes. But he has studied the history of even Christian Speculation, to little purpose, who has not learned from it, the need of an objective and fixed authority lor the fallen human mind. Taken as a whole, the thinking of the human mind has never been nearer the central line of truth, than while it has been under the influence and guidance of Christianity. Christian Philosophy is far nearer this centre than the best schools of merely Pagan philosophy. And yet how fluc- tuating has been the movement, and what constant need there has been of an absolute standard by which to determine and cor- rect the aberrations of the human mind ! We think that in his strong belief that Christianity is absolutely rational, and in his earnest desire to exhibit it as such, Coleridge was led, at times certainly, to attribute a greater power of origination to the finite Reason than it really possesses, and to forget that as an endow- ment superinduced, and not as the whole essence of the finite mind, Reason in man, though the same in kind with the Supreme Reason, is not that infinite plenitude of Wisdom, which is incom municable to a created Spirit.
We have been the more free and full, in speaking of the views of Coleridge upon the two topics of Vicarious Atonement, and Inspiration, because we believe that the defect in them origi- nated not so much from a moral as from a speculative source. We have already spoken of the manner in which he identifies himself with the orthodox feeling and view, in relation to the doctrine of Atonement, when himself opposing Socinianisrn, and any one, who will carefully peruse the expressions of reverence and awe for the Scriptures, which spontaneously break from him, and bear in mind that whatever may be the actual influence, the serious and solemn purpose, of his little tract, was to strengthen the Bible in its claims upon the human mind, as the
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 61
source of religious knowledge, can not doubt that Coleridge was in- duced to reject the common theory of Inspiration from a conviction that it really defeated its own end, and not because he wished to weaken in the least, the belief of Christendom in the Divine Oracles. While therefore we have distinctly expressed our con- victions upon these points, we wish at the same time to remind the reader that these defects, though important, are not the sub- stance and staple of the theological opinions of this author. Notwithstanding a partial disagreement with the Christian Mind upon these subjects, there is a positive and profound agree- ment with it, on all the other important doctrines of Christianity ; and it should be remembered that in a fundamental agreement with such a body of truth as the Christian Religion, a basis is laid for the ultimate correction of views and opinions not in con- sonance with it. When a mind has once received into itself the substance of Christianity, it is its tendency, to deepen and widen its own religious consciousness, and in this process, foreign and contradictory elements are finally cast out of it, by its own saliency and vitality. In the case of Coleridge, it should more- over be observed, that he was compelled to clear himself of sys- tems of philosophy and religion, inimical to a theistic Philosophy and a spiritual Christianity, in and during the development of his positive and final opinions ; and hence, that it is not to be wondered at, that these latter should, here and there, exhibit the vanishing hues of the former. It is not to be wondered at, that some particles of the chaotic slime should have cleaved to him, compelled as he was, to paw himself out of ground, like the first lion.*
We have now as briefly as possible, touched upon the leading points in the Philosophy and Theology of Coleridge, thereby tc show what is the general drift and spirit of his speculations in these two highest departments of knowledge. We have not been anxious to defend this Author upon each and every one of the various topics on which he has given the world his thoughts, be- lieving that on some of them he is indefensible. A_t the same
* * * * * now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts ; then springs, as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane. Par, Lost, B. VII
62 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
time we have expressed a decided opinion, that in respect gen- erally to the highest problems of Philosophy and Theology, the opinions of Coleridge are every way worthy of being classed with those of the master minds of the race. We are confident that these volumes contain, after subtracting the subtrahend, a body of thought upon the highest themes of reflection, well worthy of the study of every mind that is seeking a deep, clear, and ex- panded development of itself. Into the great variety of philo- sophical theories, and the great diversity in the ways and methods of thinking, characteristic of this age, we think the speculations of Coleridge deserve to be cast, and believe that just in propor- tion as they are thoroughly apprehended, and thereby enter vitally into the thinking world, will they allay the furious fer- mentation that is going on, and introduce unity, order, serenity, and health, into the mental processes of the times. We believe that they will do still more than this. We believe that they will help to fortify the minds of the rising generation of educated men, in that Platonic method of philosophizing, which has come down through all the mutations in the philosophic world, which has survived them all, which, more than any other method, haa shown an affinity with Religion — natural and revealed — and which, through its doctrine of seminal and germinant Ideas, haa been the fertile root of all the finest growths and fruitage of the human mind.
AIDS TO REFLECTION
BY
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLEEIDGE
WITH A PRELIMINARY ESSAY BY
JAMES MARSH, D.D.
EDITED BY
PIENRY NELSON COLERIDGE
THIS MAKES, THAT WHATSOEVER HERE BEFALLS, YOU IN THE REGION OP YOURSELF REMAIN NEIGHBORING ON HEAVEN ; AND THAT NO FOREIGN LAND.
DANIEL.
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
THIS corrected Edition of the Aids to Reflection is commended to Christian readers, in the hope and the trust that the power which the book has already exercised over hundreds, it may, by God's furtherance, hereafter exercise over thousands. No age, since Christianity had a name, has more pointedly needed the mental discipline taught in this work than that in which we now live ; when, in the Author's own words, all the great ideas or verities of religion seem in danger of being condensed into idols, or evaporated into metaphors. Between the encroachments, on the one hand, of those who so magnify means that they practi- cally impeach the supremacy of the ends which those means were meant to subserve ; and of those, on the other hand, who, engrossed in the contemplation of the great Redemptive Act, rashly disregard or depreciate the appointed ordinances of grace ; — between those who, confounding the sensuous Understanding, varying in every individual, with the universal Reason, the image of God, the same in all men, inculcate a so-called faith, having no demonstrated harmony with the attributes of God, or the essential laws of humanity, and being sometimes inconsistent with both ; and those again who requiring a logical proof of that which, though not contradicting, does in its very kind, tran- scend, our reason, virtually deny the existence of true faith alto- gether ; — between these almost equal enemies of the truth, Cole- ridge,— in all his works, but pre-eminently in this — has kindled an inextinguishable beacon of warning and of guidance. In so doing, he has taken his stand on the sure word of Scripture, and is supported by the authority of almost every one of our great divines, before the prevalence of that system of philosophy ( Locke's), which no consistent reasoner can possibly reconcile
66 ADVERTISEMENT.
with the undoubted meaning of the Articles and Formularies of the English Church : —
In causaque valet, causamque juvantibus armis.
The Editor had intended to offer to the reader a few words by way of introduction to some of the leading points of philoso- phy contained in this Volume. But he has been delighted to find the work already done to his hand, in a manner superior to anything he could have hoped to accomplish himself, by an affec- tionate disciple of Coleridge on the other side of the Atlantic. The following Essay was written by the Rev. James Marsh, President of the University of Vermont, United States of America, and prefixed by him to his Edition of the Aids to Reflection, published at Burlington in 1829. The Editor has printed this Essay entire ; — as well out of respect for its author, as believing that the few paragraphs in it, having a more special reference to the state of opinion in America, will not be altogether without an interest of their own to -the attentive observers of the pro- gress of Truth in this or any other country.
26th April, 1836.
PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
BY THE KEY. JAMES MARSH. D.D.
WHETHER the present state of religious feeling, and the prt vailing topics of theological inquiry among us, are particularly favorable to the success of the Work herewith offered to the Public can be determined only by the result. The question, however, has not been left unconsidered ; and however that may be, it is not a work, the value of which depends essentially upon its relation to the passing controversies of the day. Unless I distrust my own feelings and convictions altogether, I must sup- pose, that for some, I hope for many, minds, it will have a deep and enduring interest. Of those classes, for whose use it i? more especially designated in the Author's Preface, I trust there are many also in this country, who will justly appreciate the ob- ject at which it aims, and avail themselves of its instruction and assistance. I could wish it might be received, by all who con- cern themselves in religious inquiries and instruction especially, in the spirit which seems to me to have animated its great and admirable author ; and I hesitate not to say, that to all of every class, who shall so receive it, and peruse it with the attention and thoughtfulness, which it demands and deserves, it will be found by experience to furnish, what its title imports, " AIDS TO REFLECTION" on subjects, upon which every man is bound to reflect deeply arid in earnest.
What the specific objects of the Work are, and for whom it is written, may be learned in few words from the Preface of the Author. From this, too, it will be seen to be professedly didactic It is designed to aid those who wish for instruction, or assistance in the instruction of others. The plan and composition of the Work will to most readers probably appear somewhat anomalous ; but reflection upon the nature of the objects aimed at, and some
68 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
little experience of its results, may convince them that the method adopted is not without its advantages. It is important to observe, that it is designed, as its general characteristic, to aid REFLECTION, and for the most part upon subjects which can be learned and understood only by the exercise of reflection in the strict and proper sense of that term. It was not so much to teach a speculative system of doctrines built upon established premisses, for which a different method would have been ob- viously preferable, as to turn the mind continually back upon the premisses themselves — upon the inherent grounds of truth and error in its own being. The only way in which it is possible for any one to learn the science of words, which is one of the objects to be sought in the present Work, and the true import of those words especially, which most concern us as rational and account- able beings, is by reflecting upon and bringing forth into distinct consciousness, those mental acts, which the words are intended to designate. We must discover and distinctly apprehend differ- ent meanings, before we can appropriate to each a several word, or understand the words so appropriated by others. Now it is not too much to say, that most men, and even a large proportion of educated men, do not reflect sufficiently upon their own in- ward being, upon the constituent laws of their own understand- ing, upon, the mysterious powers and agencies of reason, and con- science, and will, to apprehend with much distinctness the objects to be named, or of course to refer the names with correctness to their several objects. Hence the necessity of associating the study of words with the study of morals and religion ; and that is the most effectual method of instruction, which enables the teacher most especially to fix the attention upon a definite mean- ing, that is, in these studies, upon a particular act, or process, or law of the mind — to call it into distinct consciousness, and assign to it its proper name, so that the name shall thenceforth have for the learner a distinct, definite, and intelligible sense. To im- press upon the reader the importance of this, and to exemplify it in the particular subjects taken up in the Work, is a leading aim of the Author throughout ; and it is obviously the only possible way by which we can arrive at any satisfactory and conclusive results on subjects of philosophy, morals, and religion. The first principles, the ultimate grounds, of these, so far as they are pos- sible objects of knowledge for us, must be sought and found in
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 69
the laws of our being, or they are not found at all. The knowl- edge of these, terminates in the knowledge of ourselves, of our rational and personal being, of our proper and distinctive hu- manity, and of that Divine Being, in whose image we are cre- ated. " We must retire inward," says St. Bernard, " if we would ascend upward." It is by self-inspection, by reflecting upon the mysterious grounds of our own being, that we can alone arrive at any rational knowledge of the central and absolute ground of all being. It is by this only, that we can discover that principle of unity and consistency, which reason instinc- tively seeks after, which shall reduce to an harmonious system all our views of truth and of being, and destitute of which all the knowledge that comes to us from without is fragmentary, arid in its relation to our highest interests as rational beings but the patch-work of vanity.
Now, of necessity, the only method, by which another can aid our efforts in the work of reflection, is by first reflecting himself, and so pointing out the process and marking the result by words, that we can repeat it, and try the conclusions by our own con- sciousness. If he have reflected aright, if he have excluded all causes of self-deception, and directed his thoughts by those prin- ciples of truth and reason, and by those laws of the understand- ing, which belong in common to all men, his conclusions must be true for all. We have only to repeat the process, impartially to reflect ourselves, unbiassed by received opinions, and undeceived by the idols of our own understandings, and we shall find the same truths in the depths of our own self-consciousness. I am persuaded that such, for the most part, will be found to be the case with regard to the principles developed in the present Work, and that those who, with serious reflection and an unbiassed love of truth, will refer them to the laws of thought in their own minds, to the requirements of their own reason, will find there a witness to their truth.
Viewing the Work in this manner, therefore, as an instructive and safe guide to the knowledge of what it concerns all men to know, I can not but consider it in itself as a work of great and permanent value to any Christian community. Whatever indeed tends to awaken and cherish the power and to form the habit, of reflection upon the great constituent principles of our own perma- nent being and proper humanity, and upon the abiding laws of
70 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
truth and duty, as revealed in our reason and conscience, can not but promote our highest interests as moral and rational beings. Even if the particular conclusions, to which the Author has ar- rived, should prove erroneous, the evil is comparatively of little importance, if he have at the same time communicated to our minds such powers of thought, as will enable us to detect his errors, and attain by our own efforts to a more perfect knowledge of the truth. That some of his views may not be erroneous, or that they are to be received on his authority, the Author, I pre- sume, would be the last to affirm ; and although in the nature of the case it was impossible for him to aid reflection without an- ticipating, and in some measure influencing, the results, yet the piimary tendency and design of the Work is, not to establish this or that system, but to cultivate in every mind the power and the will to seek earnestly and steadfastly for the truth in the only direction, in which it can ever be found. The work is no further controversial, than every work must be, " that is writ with free dom and reason" upon subjects of the same kind ; and if it be found at variance with existing opinions and modes of philoso- phizing, it is not necessarily to be considered the fault of the writer.
In republishing the Work in this country, I could wish that it might be received by all, for whose instruction it was designed, simply as a didactic work, on its own merits, and without con- troversy. I must not, however, be supposed ignorant of its bear- ing upon those questions, which have so often been, and still are, the prevailing topics of theological controversy among us. It was indeed incumbent on me, before inviting the attention of the religious community to the Work, to consider its relation to exist ing opinions, and its probable influence on the progress of truth. This I have done with as severe thought as I am capable of be stowing upon any subject, and I trust too with no want of defer- ence and conscientious regard to the feelings and opinions of others. I have not attempted to disguise from myself, nor do I wish to disguise from the readers of the Work, the inconsistency of some of its leading principles with much that is taught and re- ceived in our theological circles. Should it gain much of the public attention in any way, it will become, as it ought, an ob- ject of special and deep interest to all, who would contend for the truth, and labor to establish it upon a permanent basis. 1
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 71
venture to assure such, even those of them who are most capable of comprehending the philosophical grounds of truth in our spec- ulative systems of theology, that in its relation to this whole sub- ject they will find it to be a Work of great depth and power, and, whether right or wrong, eminently deserving their attention. It is not to be supposed that all who read, or even all who compre- hend it, will be convinced of the soundness of its views, or be prepared to abandon those which they have long considered essential to the truth. To those, whose understandings by long habit have become limited in their powers of apprehension, and as it were identified with certain schemes of doctrine, certain modes of contemplating all that pertains to religious truth, it may appear novel, strange, and unintelligible, or even dangerous in its tendency, and be to them an occasion of offence. But I have no fear that any earnest arid single-hearted lover of the truth as it is in Jesus, who will free his mind from the idols of preconceived opinion, and give himself time and opportunity to understand the Work by such reflection as the nature of the subject renders un- avoidable, will find in it any cause of offence, or any source of alarm. If the Work become the occasion of controversy at all, 1 should expect it from those, who, instead of reflecting deeply upon the first principles of truth in their own reason arid con- science and in the word of God, are more accustomed to specu- late— that is, from premisses given or assumed, but considered unquestionable, as the constituted point of observation, to look abroad upon the whole field of their intellectual vision, and thence to decide upon the true form and dimensions of all which meets their view. To such I would say with deference, that the merits of this Work can not be determined by the merely relative aspect of its doctrines, as seen from the high ground of any pre- vailing metaphysical or theological system. Those on the con- trary who will seek tb comprehend it by reflection, to learn the true meaning of the whole and of all its parts, by retiring into their own minds and finding there the true point of observation for each, will not be in haste to question the truth or the ten dency of its principles. I make these remarks because I am anx ious, as far as may be, to anticipate the causeless fears of ail, who earnestly pray and labor for the promotion of the truth, and to preclude that unprofitable controversy, which might arise from hasty or prejudiced views of a Work like this At the «ame time
T2 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
I should be far from deprecating any discussion which might tend to unfold more fully the principles which it teaches, or to exhibit more distinctly its true bearing upon the interests of theological science and of spiritual religion. It is to promote this object, in- deed, that I am induced in the remarks which follow to offer some of my own thoughts on these subjects, imperfect I am well aware, and such as, for that reason, as well as others, worldl) prudence might require me to suppress. If, however, I may in duce reflecting men, and those who are engaged in theological inquiries especially, to indulge a suspicion that all truth, which it is important for them to know, is not contained in the systems of doctrine usually taught, and that this "Work may be worthy of their serious and reflecting perusal, my chief object will be ac- complished. I shall of course not need to anticipate in detail the contents of the Work itself, but shall aim simply to point out what I consider its distinguishing and essential character and tendency, and then direct the attention of my readers to some of those gen- eral feelings and views on the subjects of religious truth, and of those particulars in the prevailing philosophy of the age, which seem to me to be exerting an injurious influence on the cause of theological science and of spiritual religion, and not only to fur- nish a fit occasion, but to create an imperious demand, for a Work Uke that which is here offered to the public.
In regard then to the distinguishing character and tendency oi Ihe Work itself, it has already been stated to be didactic, and de- signed to aid reflection on the principles and grounds of truth in our own being ; but in another point of view, and with reference to my present object, it might rather be denominated A PHILO- SOPHICAL STATEMENT AND VINDICATION OF THE DISTINCTIVELY SPIRITUAL AND PECULIAR DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.
In order to understand more clearly the import of this statement, and the relation of the Author's views to those exhibited in other systems, the reader is requested to examine in the first place, what he considers the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and what he means by the terms spirit and spiritual. A synoptical view of what he considers peculiar to Christianity as a revelation is given in Aph. vii. on Spiritual Religion, and, if I mistake not, will be found essentially to coincide, though not perhaps in the language employed, with what among us are termed the Evan gelical doctrines of religion. Those who are anxious to examine
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 73
further into the orthodoxy of the Work in connection with this statement, may consult the articles on ORIGINAL SIN and REDEMP- TION, though I must forewarn them that it will require much study in connection with the other parts of the Work, before one unaccustomed to the Author's language, and unacquainted with his views, can fully appreciate the merit of what may be peculiar in his mode of treating these subjects. With regard to the term spiritual, it may be sufficient to remark here, that he regards it as having a specific import, and maintains that in the sense of tho New Testament, spiritual and natural are contradistin- guished, so that what is spiritual is different in kind from that which is natural, and is in fact swptfr-natural. So, too, while morality is something more than prudence, religion, the spiritual life, is something more than morality.
In vindicating the peculiar doctrines of the Christian system so stated, and a faith in the reality of agencies and modes of being essentially spiritual or supernatural, he aims to show their con- sistency with reason and with the true principles of philosophy, and that indeed, so far from being irrational, CHRISTIAN FAITH is THE PERFECTION OF HUMAN REASON. By reflection upon the sub- jective grounds of knowledge and faith in the human mind itself, and by an analysis of its faculties, he develops the distinguish- ing characteristics and necessary relations of the natural and the spiritual in our modes of being and knowing, and the all-impor- tant fact, that although the former does not comprehend the latter, yet neither does it preclude its existence. He proves, that " the scheme of Christianity, though not discoverable by reason, is yet in accordance with it — that link follows link by necessary consequence — that religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye of. reason has reached its own horizon — and that faith is then but its continuation."* Instead of adopting, like the popular metaphysicians of the day, a system of philosophy at war with religion, and which tends inevitably to undermine our belief in the reality of any thing spiritual in the only proper sense of that word, and then coldly and ambiguously referring us for the support of our faith to the authority of Revelation, he boldly asserts the reality of something distinctively spiritual in man, and the futility of all those modes of philosophizing, in which this is not recognized, or which are incompatible with it. He considers * Biographia /,i<e.-<m'<*, Works III. p. 594.— 8. C.
VOL. 1 I)
74 PKELIMINARY ESSAY.
it the highest and most rational purpose of any system of phi losophy, at least of one professing to be Christian, to investigate those higher and peculiar attributes, which distinguish us from the brutes that perish — which are the image of God in us, and constitute our proper humanity. It is in his view the propei business and the duty of the Christian philosopher to remove all appearance of contradiction between the several manifestation? of the one Divine Word, to reconcile reason with revelation, and thus to justify the ways of God to man. The methods by which he accomplishes this, cither in regard to the terms in which he enunciates the great doctrines of the Gospel, or the peculiar views of philosophy by which he reconciles them with the subjective grounds of faith in the universal reason of man, need not be stated here. I will merely observe, that the key to his system will be found in the distinctions, which he makes and illustrates between nature and free-will, and between the understanding and reason. It may meet the prejudices of some to remark far- tner, that in philosophizing on the grounds of our faith he does not profess or aim to solve all mysteries, and to bring all truth within the comprehension of the understanding. A truth may be mysterious, and the primary ground of all truth and leality must be so. But though we may believe what passeth all un- derstanding, we can not believe what is absurd, or contradictory to reason.
Whether the Work be well executed, according to the idea of it, as now given, or whether the Author have accomplished his purpose, must be determined by those who are capable of judg- ing, when they shall have examined and reflected upon the whole as it deserves. The inquiry which I have now to propose to my readers is, whether the idea itself be a rational one, and whether the purpose of the Author be one which a wise man and a Christian ought to aim at, or which in the present state of our religious interests, and of our theological science, specially needs to be accomplished.
No one, who has had occasion to observe the general feelings and views of our religious community for a few years past, can be ignorant, that a strong prejudice exists against the introduction of philosophy, in any ibrm, in the discussion of theological subjects. The terms philosophy and metaphysics, even reason and rational, eem, in the minds of those most devoted to the suppr it of reli-
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 75
gious truth, to have forfeited their original, and to have acquired a new import, especially in their relation to matters of faith. By a philosophical view of religious truth would generally be under- stood a view, not only varying from the religion of the Bible in the form and manner of presenting it, but at war with it ; and a rational religion is supposed to be of course something diverse from revealed religion. A philosophical and rational system of religious truth would by most readers among us, if I mistake not, be supposed a system deriving its doctrines not from revelation, but from the speculative reason of men, or at least relying on that only for their credibility. That these terms have been used to designate such systems, and that the prejudice against reason and philosophy so employed is not, therefore, without cause, I need not deny ; nor would any friend of revealed truth be less disposed to give credence to such systems, than the Author of the Work before us.
But, on the other hand, a moment's reflection only can be necessary to convince any man, attentive to the use of language, that we do at the same time employ these terms in relation to truth generally in a better and much higher sense. Rational, as contradistinguished from irrational and absurd, certainly de- notes a quality, which every man would be disposed to claim, noi only for himself, but for his religious opinions. Now, the adjec- tive reasonable having acquired a different use and signification, the word rational is the adjective corresponding in sense to the substantive reason, and signifies what is conformed to reason. In one sense, then, all men would appeal to reason in behalf of their religious faith ; they would deny that it was irrational or ab- surd. If we do not in this sense, adhere to reason, we forfeit our prerogative as rational beings, and our faith is no better than the bewildered dream of a man who has lost his reason. Nay, 1 maintain that when we use the term in this higher sense, it is impossible for us to believe on any authority what is directly con- tradictory to reason and seen to be so. No evidence from another source, and no authority could convince us, that a proposition in geometry, for example, is false, which our reason intuitively dis- covers to be true. Now if we suppose (and we may at least sup- pose this), that reason has the same power of intuitive insight in relation to certain moral and spiritual truths, as in relation to the
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truths of geometry, then it would be equally impossible to dives4 us of our belief of those truths.
Furthermore, we are not only unable to believe the same prop- osition to be false, which our reason sees to be true, but we can riot believe another proposition, which by the exercise of the same rational faculty we see to be incompatible with the former, or to contradict it. We may, and probably often do, receive with a certain kind and degree of credence opinions, which re- flection would show to be incompatible. But when we have reflected, and discovered the inconsistency, we can not retain both. We can not believe two contradictory propositions, know- ing them to be such. It would be irrational to do so.
Again, we can not conceive it possible, that what by the same power of intuition we see to be universally and necessarily true should appear otherwise to any other rational being. We can not, for example, but consider the propositions of geometry as necessarily true for all rational beings. So, too, a little reflec- tion, I think, will convince any one, that we attribute the same necessity of reason to the principles of moral rectitude. What in the clear daylight of our reason, and after mature reflection, we see to be right, we can not believe to be wrong in the view of other rational beings in the distinct exercise of their reason. Nay, in regard to those truths, which are clearly submitted to the view of our reason, and which we behold with distinct and steadfast intuitions, we necessarily attribute to the Supreme Reason, to the Divine Mind, views the same, or coincident, with those of our own reason. We can not (I say it with reverence arid I trust with some apprehension of the importance of the as- sertion), we can not believe that to be right in the view of the Supreme Reason, which is clearly and decidedly wrong in the view of our own. It would be contradictory to reason, it would be irrational, to believe it, and therefore we can not do so, till we lose our reason, or cease to exercise it.
I would ask, now, whether this be not an authorized use of the words reason and rational, and whether so used they do not mean something. If it be so — and I appeal to the mind of every man capable of reflection, and of understanding the use of lan- guage, if it be not — then there is meaning in the terms universal reason, and unity of reason, as used in this Work. There is, and can be, ID this highest sense of the word, but one reason,
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. V7
and whatever contradicts that reason, being seen to do so, can not be received as matter either of knowledge or faith. To rec- oncile religion with reason used in this sense, therefore, and to justify the ways of God to man, or in the view of reason, is so far from being irrational, that reason imperatively demands it of us. We can not, as rational beings, believe a proposition on the grounds of reason, and deny it on the authority of revelation. We can not believe a proposition in philosophy, and deny the same proposition in theology : nor can we believe two incompati- ble propositions on the different grounds of reason and revelation. So far as we compare our thoughts, the objects of our knowledge and faith, and by reflection refer them to their common measure in th^ universal laws of reason, so far the instinct of reason im- pels us to reject whatever is contradictory and absurd, and to bring unity and consistency into all our views of truth. Thus, in the language of the Author of this Work, though " the word rational has been strangely abused of late times, this must not disincline us to the weighty consideration, that thoughtfulness, and a desire to rest all our convictions on grounds of right reason, are inseparable from the character of a Christian."
But I beg the reader to observe, that in relation to the doc- trines of spiritual religion — to all that he considers the peculiar doctrines of the Christian revelation, the Author assigns to reason only a negative validity. It does not teach us what those doctrines are, or what they are not, except that they are not, and can not be, such as contradict the clear convictions of right reason. But his views on this point are fully stated in 'the Work, and the gen- eral office of reason in relation to all that is proposed for our belief, is given with philosophical precision in other parts of his Works.*
If then it be our prerogative, as rational beings, and our duty as Christians, to think, as well as to act, rationally, — to see that our convictions of truth rest on the grounds of right reason ; and if it be one of the clearest dictates of reason, that we should en- deavor to shun, and on discovery should reject, whatever is con- tradictory to the universal laws of thought, or to doctrines already established, I know not by what means we are to avoid the ap- plication of philosophy, at least to some extent, in the study of theology. For to determine what are the grounds of right rea son, what are those ultimate truths, and those universal laws of * See Statesman's Manual, Appendix (B.), p. 258, 2d. edit. — Ed
78 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
thought, which we can not rationally contradict, and by reflec- tion to compare with these whatever is proposed for pur belief, is in fact to philosophize ; and whoever does this to a greater or less extent, is so far a philosopher in the best and highest sense of the word. To this extent we are bound to philosophize in theology, as well as in every other science. For what is not rational in theology, is, of course, irrational, and can not be of the household of faith ; and to determine whether it be rational in the sense already explained or not, is the province of philoso- phy. It is in this sense that the Work before us is to be consid- ered a philosophical work, namely, that it proves the doctrines of the Christian Faith to be rational, and exhibits philosophical grounds for the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. The reality of those experiences, or states of being, which constitute experimental or spiritual religion, rests on other grounds. It is incumbent on the philosopher to free them from the contradic- tions of reason, and nothing more ; and who will deny, that to do this is a purpose worthy of the ablest philosopher and the most devoted Christian ? Is it not desirable to convince all men that the doctrines, which we affirm to be revealed in the Gospel, are not contradictory to the requirements of reason and con- science ? Is it not, on the other hand, vastly important to the cause of religious truth, and even to the practical influence of religion on our own minds, and the minds of the community at large, that we should attain and exhibit views of philosophy and doctrines in metaphysics, which are at least compatible with, if they do not specially favor, those views of religion, which, on other grounds, we find it our duty to believe and maintain ? For, I beg it may be observed, as a point of great moment, that it is not the method of the genuine philosopher to separate his philosophy and religion, and adopting his principles independently in each, to leave them to be reconciled or not, as the case may be. He has, and can have, rationally but one system, in which his philosophy becomes religious, and his religion philosophical. Nor am I disposed in compliance with popular opinion to limit the application of this remark, as is usually doi.e, to the mere external evidences of revelation. The philosophy which we adopt will and must influence not only our decision of the ques- tion, whether a book be of divine authority, but our views also of its meaning.
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 79
But this is a subject, on which, if possible, I would avoid being misunderstood, and must, therefore, exhibit it more fully, even at the risk of repeating what was said before, or is elsewhere found in the Work. It has been already, I believe, distinctly enough stated, that reason and philosophy ought to prevent our reception of doctrines claiming the authority of revelation only so far as the very necessities of our rational being require. However mys- terious the thing affirmed may be, though it passefh all under- standing, if it can not be shown to contradict the unchangeable principles of right reason, its being incomprehensible to our un- derstandings is not an obstacle to our faith. If it contradict rea son, we can not believe it, but must conclude, either that the writing is not of divine authority, or that the language has been misinterpreted. So far it seems to me, that our philosophy ought to modify our views of theological doctrines, and our mode of in terpreting the language of an inspired writer. But then we must be cautious, that we philosophize rightly, and " do not call that reason which is not so. Otherwise we may be led by the sup- posed requirements of reason to interpret metaphorically, what ought to be received literally, and evacuate the Scriptures of their most important doctrines." But what I mean to say here is, that we can not avoid the application of our philosophy in the inter- pretation of the language of Scripture, and in the explanation of the doctrines of religion generally. We can not avoid incurring the danger just alluded to of philosophizing erroneously, even to the extent of rejecting as irrational that which tends to the per- fection of reason itself. And hence I maintain, that instead of pretending to exclude philosophy from our religious inquiries, it is very important that we philosophize in earnest — that we should endeavor by profound reflection to learn the real requirements of reason, and attain a true knowledge of ourselves.
If any dispute the necessity of thus combining the study of phi- losophy with that of religion, I would beg them to point out the age since that of the Apostle's, in which the prevailing metaphys- ical opinions have not distinctly manifested themselves in the prevailing views of religion, ind if, as I fully believe will be the case, they fail to discover a single system of theolosy, a single volume on the subject of the Christian religion, in which the au thor's views are not modified by the metaphysical opinions of the age or of the individual, it would be desirable to ascertain,
80 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
whether this influence be accidental or necessary. The meta- physician analyzes the faculties and operations of the human mind, and teaches us to arrange, to classify, and to name them, according to his views of their various distinctions. The lan- guage of the Scriptures, at least to a great extent, speaks of sub- jects that can be understood only by a reference to those same powers and processes of thought and feeling, which we have learned to think of, and to name, according to our particular sys- tem of metaphysics. How is it possible then to avoid interpret- ing the one by the 'other ? Let us suppose, for example, that a man has studied and adopted the philosophy of Brown, is it pos- sible for him to interpret the 8th chapter of Romans, without having his views of its meaning influenced by his philosophy ? Would he not unavoidably interpret the language and explain the doctrines, which it contains, differently from one, who should have adopted such views of the human mind as are taught in this Work ? I know it is customary to disclaim the influence of philosophy in the business of interpretation, and every writer now-a-days on such subjects will assure us, that he has nothing to do with metaphysics, but is guided only by common sense and the laws of interpretation. But I should like to know how a man comes by any common sense in relation to the movements and laws of his intellectual and moral being without metaphy- sics. What is the common sense of a Hottentot on subjects of this sort ? I have no hesitation in saying, that from the very nature of the case, it is nearly, if not quite, impossible for any man entirely to separate his philosophical views of the human mind from his reflections on religious subjects. Probably no man has endeavored more faithfully to do this, perhaps no one has succeeded better in giving the truth of Scripture free from the glosses of metaphysics, than Professor Stuart. Yet, I should risk little in saying that a reader deeply versed in the language of metaphysics, extensively acquainted with the philosophy of dif- ^?rent ages, and the peculiar phraseology of different schools, night ascertain his metaphysical system from many a passage of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. What then, hi me ask, is the possible use to the cause of truth and of reli- gion, from thus perpetually decrying philosophy in theological in- quiries, when we can not avoid it if we would ? Every man, who has reflected at all, lias his metaphysics ; and if he reads on
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 81
religious subjects, he interprets and understands the language, which he employs, by the help of his metaphysics. He can not do otherwise. — And the proper inquiry is, not whether we admit our philosophy into our theological and religious investigations, but whether our philosophy be right and true. For myself, I am fully convinced that we can have no right views of theology, till we have right views of the human mind ; and that these are to be acquired only by laborious and persevering reflection. My belief is, that the distinctions unfolded in this Work will place us in the way to truth, and relieve us from numerous perplexities, in which we are involved by the philosophy which we have so long taken for our guide. For we are greatly deceived, if we suppose for a moment that the systems of theology which have been received among us, or even the theoretical views which are now most popular, are free from the entanglements of worldly wisdom. The readers of this Work will be able to see, I think, more clearly the import of this remark, and the true bearing of the received views of philosophy on our theological inquiries. Those who study the Work without prejudice, and adopt its prin- ciples to any considerable extent, will understand too how deeply an age may be ensnared in the metaphysical webs of its own weaving, or entangled in the net which the speculations of a for- mer generation have thrown over it, and yet suppose itself blessed with a perfect immunity from the dreaded evils of metaphysics.
But before I proceed to remark on those particulars, in which our prevailing philosophy seems to be dangerous in its tendency, and unfriendly to the cause of spiritual religion, I must beg leave to guard myself and the Work from misapprehension on another point of great importance in its relations to the whole subject While it is maintained that reason and philosophy, in their true character, ought to have a certain degree and extent of influence in the formation of our religious system, and that our metaphysi- cal opinions, whatever they may be, ivill almost unavoidably, modify more or less our theoretical views of religious truth gen- erally, it is yet a special object of the Author of the Work to show that the spiritual life, or what among us is termed experi- mental religion, is, in itself, and in its own proper growth and development, essentially distinct from the forms and processes of the understanding ; and that, although a true faith can not cou- tradict any universal principle of specii lative reason, it is yet in
D*
82 PRELIMINAEY ESSAY.
a certain sense independent of the discursions of philosophy, and in its proper nature beyond the reach " of positive science and theoretical insight." " Christianity is not a theory or a specu lation ; but a life. Not a philosophy of life, but a life and a liv- ing process." It is not, therefore, so properly a species of knowl- edge, as a form of being. And although the theoretical views of the understanding, and the motives of prudence which it pre- sents, may be, to a certain extent, connected with the develop inent of the spiritual principle of religious life in the Christian, yet a true and living faith is not incompatible with at least some degree of speculative error. As the acquisition of merely specu- lative knowledge can not of itself communicate the principle of spiritual life, so neither does that principle, and the living process of its growth, depend wholly, at least, upon the degree of specu- lative knowledge with which it co-exists. That religion, of which our blessed Saviour is himself the essential Form and the living Word, and to which he imparts the actuating Spirit, has a prin ciplc of unity and consistency in itself distinct from the unity and consistency of our theoretical views. Of this we have evidence in every day's observation of Christian character ; ibr how often do we see and acknowledge the power of religion, and the growth of a spiritual life in minds but little gifted with speculative knowledge, and little versed in the iorms of logic or philosophy ! How obviously, too, does the living principle of religion manifest the same specific character, the same essential form, amidst all the diversities of condition, of talents, of education, and natural disposition, with which it is associated ; everywhere rising above nature, and the powers of the natural man, and unlimited in its goings on by the forms in which the understanding seeks to com- prehend and confine its spiritual energies. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ; and it is no less true now than in the age of the Apostles, that in all lands, and in every variety of circumstances, the manifestations of spiritual life are essentially the same ; and all who truly believe in heart, however diverse in natural condition, in the character of their understandings, and even in their theoretical views of truth, are one in Christ, JesAS. The essential faith is not to be found in the understand- ing or the speculative theory, but " the life, the substance, the hope, the love — in one word, the faith — these are derivatives from the practical, moral, and spiritual nature and being of man.'
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Speculative systems of theology indeed have often had little con- nection with the essential spirit of religion, and are usually little more than schemes resulting from the strivings of the finite un- derstanding to comprehend and exhibit under its own forms and conditions a mode of being and spiritual truths essentially diverse from their proper objects, and with which they are incommensu- rate.
This I am aware is an imperfect, and I fear may be an unin- telligible, view of a subject exceedingly difficult of apprehension at the best. If so, I must beg the reader's indulgence, and re- quest him to suspend his j udgment, as to the absolute intelligi- bility of it, till he becomes acquainted with the language and sentiments of the "Work itself. It will, however, I hope, be so far understood, at least, as to answer the purpose for which it was introduced — of precluding the supposition that, in the remarks which preceded, or in those which follow, any suspicion was in- tended to be expressed, with regard to the religious principles or the essential faith of those who hold the opinions in question. According to this view of the inherent and essential nature of Spiritual Religion, as existing in the practical reason of man, we may not only admit, but can better understand the possibility of what every charitable Christian will acknowledge to be a fact, so far as human observation can determine facts of this sort — that a man may be truly religious, and essentially a believer at heart, while his understanding is sadly bewildered with the at- tempt to comprehend and express philosophically, what yet ho feels and knows spiritually. It is indeed impossible for us to tell how far the understanding may impose upon itself by partial views and false disguises, without perverting the will, or estrang- ing it from the laws and the authority of reason and the divine word. We can not say to what extent a false system of philos- ophy and metaphysical opinions, which in their natural and un- counteracted tendency would go to destroy all religion, may bo received in a Christian community, and yet the power of spiritual religion retain its hold and its efficacy in the hearts of the peo- ple. We may perhaps believe that in opposition to all the might of false philosophy, so long as the great body of the people have the Bible in their hands, and are taught to reverence and receive its heavenly instructions, though the Church may sufier injury flora unwise and unfruitful speculations, it will yet be preserved ;
84 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
and that the spiritual seed ot me divine word, though mingled with many tares of worldly wisdom and philosophy falsely so- called, will yet spring up, and bear fruit unto everlasting life.
But though we may hope and believe this, we can not avoid believing, at the same time, that injury must result from an un- suspecting confidence in metaphysical opinions, which are essen- tially at variance with the doctrines of Revelation. Especially must the effect be injurious, where those opinions lead gradually tc alter our views of religion itself, and of all that is peculiar in the Christian system. The great mass of the community, who know little of metaphysics, and whose faith in revelation is not so readily influenced by speculations not immediately connected with it, may, indeed, for a time, escape the evil, and continue to receive ivith meekness the ingrafted word. But in the minds of the better educated, especially those who think and follow out their conclusions with resolute independence of thought, the re- sult must be either a loss of confidence in the opinions themselves, or a rejection of all those parts of the Christian system which are at variance with them. Under particular circumstances, indeed, where both the metaphysical errors, and the great doctrines of the Christian Faith, have a strong hold upon the minds of a com- munity, a protracted struggle may take place, and earnest and long-continued efforts may be made to reconcile opinions which we are resolved to maintain, with a faith which our consciences will not permit us to abandon. But so long as the effort con- tinues and such opinions retain their hold upon our confidence, it must be with some diminution of the fulness and simplicity of our faith. To a greater or less degree, according to the educa- tion and habits of thought in different individuals, the word of God is received with doubt, or with such glozing modifications as enervate its power. Thus the light from heaven is intercepted, and we are left to a shadow-fight of metaphysical schemes and metaphorical interpretations. While one party, with conscien- tious and earnest endeavors, and at great expense of talent and ingenuity, contends for the Faith, and among the possible shap- ings of the received metaphysical system, seeks that which will best comport with the simplicity of. the Gospel, — another more boldly interprets the language of the Gospel itself in conformity with those views of religion to which their philosophy seems ob- viously to conduct them. The substantial being and the living en
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 85
ergry of the WORD, which is not only the light but the life of men, is either misapprehended or denied by all parties ; and even those who contend for what they conceive the literal import of the Gospel, do it — as they must to avoid too glaring absurdity — with such explanations of its import as to make it to become, in no small degree, the ivords of man's wisdom, rather than a simple demonstration of the Spirit and of poiver. Hence, although su3h as have experienced the spiritual and life-giving power of the Divine V-'ord, may be able, through the promised aids of the Spirit, to overcome the natural tendency of speculative error, and, by the law of the spirit of life which is in them, may at length be made free from the law of sin and death, yet who can tell how much they may lose of the blessings of the Gospel, and be retarded in their spiritual growth when they are but too often fed with the lifeless and starveling products of the human under- standing, instead of that living bread which came down from heaven ? Who can tell, moreover, how many, through the prev- alence of such philosophical errors as lead to misconceptions of the truth or create a prejudice against it, and thus tend to inter- cept the light from heaven, may continue in their ignorance, alienated from the life of God, and groping in the darkness of their own understandings ?
But however that may be, enlightened Christians, and espe- cially Christian instructors, know it to be their duty, as far as possible, to prepare the way for the full and unobstructed influ- ence of the Gospel, to do all in their power to remove those nat- ural prejudices, and those errors of the understanding, which are obstacles to the truth, that the word of God may find access to the heart, and conscience, and reason of every man, that it may have free course, and run, and be glorified. My own belief, that such obstacles to the influence of truth exist in the specula- tive and metaphysical opinions generally adopted in this country, and that the present Work is in some measure at least calculated to remove, them, is pretty clearly indicated by the remarks which I have already made. But, to be perfectly explicit on the sub- ject I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the natural tendency of some of the leading principles of our prevailing sys- tem of metaphysics, and those which must unavoidably have more or less influence on our theoretical views of religion, are of an injurious and dangerous tendency, and that 30 long as we re
66 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
tain them, however we may profess to exclude their influence from our theological inquiries, and from the interpretation of Scripture, we can maintain no consistent system of Scriptural theology, nor clearly and distinctly apprehend the spiritual im- port of the Scripture language. The grounds of this conviction I shall proceed to exhibit, though only in a very partial manner, as 1 could not do more without anticipating the contents of the Work itself, instead of merely preparing the reader to peruse them with attention. I am aware, too, that some of the language, which I have already employed, and shall be obliged to employ, will not convey its full import to the reader, till he becomes ac- quainted with some of the leading principles and distinctions un- folded in the Work. But this also is an evil which I saw no means of avoiding without incurring a greater, and writing a book instead of a brief essay.
Let it be understood, then, without further preface, that by the prevailing system of metaphysics, I mean the system, of which in modern times Locke is the reputed author, and the leading principles of which, with various modifications, more or less im- portant, but not altering its essential character, have been almost universally received in this country. It should be observed, too, that the causes enumerated by the Author, as having elevated it to its "pride of place" in Europe, have been aided by other fa- voring circumstances here. In the minds of our religious com- munity, especially, some of its most important doctrines have be- come associated with names justly loved and revered among ourselves, and so connected with all our theoretical views of re- ligion, that a man can hardly hope to question their validity with- out hazarding his reputation, not only for orthodoxy, but even for common sense. To controvert, for example, the prevailing doc- trines with regard to the freedom of the will, the sources of our knowledge, the nature of the understanding as containing the con ti ailing principles of our whole being, and the universality of the law of cause and effect, even in connection with the arguments and the authority of the most powerful intellect of the age, may even now be worse than in vain. Yet I have reasons for believ- ing there are some among us, and that their number is fast increasing, who are willing to revise their opinions on these sub- jects, and who will contemplate the views presented in this Work with a liberal, and something of a prepared feeling of curi-
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 87
osity. The difficulties in which men find themselves involved by the received doctrines on these subjects, in their most anxious efforts to explain and defend the peculiar doctrines of spiritual religion, have led many to suspect that there must be some lurk- ing error in the premises. It is not that these principles lead us to mysteries which we can not comprehend ; they are found, or believed at least by many, to involve us in absurdities which we can comprehend. It is necessary indeed only to form some no- tion of the distinctive and appropriate import of the term spirit- ual, as opposed to natural in the New Testament, and then to look at the writings, or hear the discussions, in which the doc- trines of the Spirit and of spiritual influences are taught and de- fended, to see the insurmountable nature of the obstacles, which these metaphysical dogmas throw in the way of the most power- ful minds. To those who shall read this "Work with any degree of reflection, it must, I think, be obvious, that something more is implied in the continual opposition of these terms in the New Testament, than can be explained consistently with the prevail- ing opinions on the subjects above enumerated ; and that through their influence our highest notions of that distinction have been rendered confused, contradictory, and inadequate. I have al- ready directed the attention of the reader to those parts of the Work, where this distinction is unfolded ; and had 1 no other grounds than the arguments and views there exhibited, I should be convinced that so long as we hold the doctrines of Locke and the Scotch metaphysicians respecting power, cause and effect, mo- tives, and the freedom of the will, we not only can make and de- fend no essential distinction between that which is 'natural, and that which is spiritual, but we can not even find rational grounds for the feeling of moral obligation, and the distinction between regret and remorse.
According to the system of these authors, as nearly and dis- tinctly as my limits will permit me to state it, the same law of cause and effect is the law of the universe. It extends to the moral and spiritual — if in courtesy these terms may still be used — no less than to the properly natural powers and agencies of our being. The acts of the free-will are pre-determined by a cause out of the will, according to the same law of cause and effect which controls the changes in the physical world. "We have no notion of power but uniformity of antecedent and conse-
88 PKELIMINARY ESSAX .
quent. The notion of a power in the will to act freely is there- fore nothing more than an inherent capacity of being acted upon, agreeably to its nature, and according to a fixed law, by the motives which are present in the understanding. I feel author- ized to take this statement partly from Brown's Philosophy, be- cause that work has been decidedly approved by our highest theological authorities ; and indeed it would not be essentially varied, if expressed in the precise terms used by any of the wri- ters most usually quoted in reference to these subjects.
I am aware that variations may be found in the mode of stat- ing these doctrines ; but I think every candid reader, who is acquainted with the metaphysics and theology of this country, will admit the above to be a fair representation of the form in which they are generally received. I am aware, too, that much has been said and written to make out, consistently with these general principles, a distinction between natural and moral causes, natural and moral ability, and inability, and the like. But I beg all lovers of sound and rational philosophy to look carefully at the general principles, and see whether there be, in fact, ground left for any such distinctions of this kind as are worth contending for. My first step in arguing with a defender of these principles, and of the distinctions in question, as con- nected with them, would be to ask for his definition of nature and natural. And when he had arrived at a distinctive general notion of the import of these, it would appear, if I mistake not, that he had first subjected our whole being to the law of nature, and then contended for the existence of something which is no1 nature. For in their relation to the law of moral rectitude, and to the feeling of moral responsibility, what difference is there, and what difference can there be, between what are called nat- ural and those which are called moral powers and affections, if they are all under the control of the same universal law of cause and effect ? If it still be a mere nature, and the determinations of our will be controlled by causes out of the will, according to our nature, then I maintain that a moral nature has no more to do with the feeling of responsibility than any other nature.
Perhaps the difficulty may be r.iade more obvious in this way It will be admitted that brutes are possessed of va rious natures, some innocent or useful, otherwise noxious, but all alike irrespon- sible in a moral point of view But why ? Simply because
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 89
they act in accordance \vith their natures. They possess, each according to its proper nature, certain appetites and susceptibili- ties which are stimulated and acted upon by their, appropriate objects in the world of the senses ; and the relation — the law of action and reaction — subsisting between these specific suscepti- bilities and their corresponding outward objects, constitutes their nature. They have a power of selecting and choosing in the world of sense the objects appropriate to the wants of their na- ture ; but that nature is the sole law of their being. Their power of choice is but a part of it, instrumental in accomplishing its ends, but not capable of rising above it, of controlling its im- pulses, and of determining itself with reference to a purely ideal law, distinct from their nature. They act in accordance with the law of cause and effect, which constitutes their several na- tures, and can not do otherwise. They are, therefore, not respon- sible— not capable of guilt, or of remorse.
Now let us suppose another being, possessing, in addition to the susceptibilities of the brute, certain other specific suscepti- bilities with their correlative objects, either in the sensible world, or in a future world, but that these are subjected, like the other, to the same binding and inalienable law of cause and effect. What, I ask, is the amount of the difference thus supposed be- tween this being and the brute ? The supposed addition, it is to be understood, is merely an addition to its nature ; and the only power of will belonging to it is, as in the case of the brute, only a capacity of choosing "and acting uniformly in accordance with its nature. These additional susceptibilities still act but as they are acted upon ; and the will is determined accordingly. What advantage is gained in this case by calling these supposed additions moral affections, and their correlative stimulants moral causes ? Do we thereby find any rational ground for the feeling of moral responsibility, for conscience, for remorse ? The being acts according to its nature, and why is it blameworthy more than the brute ? If the moral law existing out of the will be a power or cause which, in its relation to the specific susceptibility of the moral being, produces under the same circumstances uni- ibrmly the same result, according to the law of cause and effect ; if the acts of the will be subject to the same law, as mere links in the chain of antecedents and consequents, and thus a part of •ur nature, what is gained, I ask again, by the distinction of a
90 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
moral and a physical nature ? It is still only a nature under the law of cause and effect, and the liberty of the moral being is under the same condition with the liberty of the brute. Both are free to follow and fulfil the law of their nature, and both are alike bound by that law, as by an adamantine chain. The very conditions of the law preclude the possibility of a power to act otherwise than according to their nature. They preclude the very idea of a free-will, and render the feeling of moral responsi bility not an enigma merely, not a mystery, but a self-contradic- tion and an absurdity.
Turn the matter as we will — call these correlatives, namely, the inherent susceptibilities and the causes acting on them from without, natural, or moral, or spiritual — so long as their action and reaction, or the law of reciprocity, which constitutes their specific natures, is considered as the controlling law of our whole being, so long as we refuse to admit the existence in the will of a power capable of rising above this law, and controlling its opera- tion by an act of absolute self determination, so long as we shall be involved in perplexities both in morals and religion. At all events, the only method of avoiding them will be to adopt the creed of the Necessitarians entire, to give man over to an irre- sponsible nature as a better sort of animal, and resolve the will of the Supreme Reason into a blind and irrational fate.
I am well aware of the objections that will be made to this statement, and especially the demonstrated incomprehensibleness of a self-determining power. To this I may be permitted to an- swer, that, although the power to originate an act or state of mind may be beyond the capacity of our understandings to com- prehend, it is still not contradictory to reason ; and that I find it more easy to believe the existence of that, which is simply in- comprehensible to my understanding, than of that which involves an absurdity for my reason. I venture to affirm, moreover, thai however we may bring our understandings into bondage to tho more comprehensible doctrine, smiply because it is comprehensi- ble under the forms of the understanding, every man docs, in fact, believe himself possessed of freedom in the higher sense of self-determination. Every man's conscience commands him to believe it, whenever for a moment he indulges the feeling of moral self-approbation, or of remorse. Nor can we on any other grounds justify the ways of God to man upon the supposition that
PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 91
he inflicts or will inflict any other punishment than that -which is simply remedial or disciplinary. But this subject will be found more fully explained in the course of the Work. My pres- ent object is merely to show the necessity of some system in rela- tion to these subjects different from the received one.
It may perhaps be thought, that the language used above is too strong and too positive. But I venture to ask every candid man, at least every one who has not committed himself by wri- ting and publishing on the subject, whether in considering thf great questions connected with moral accountability and the doc trine of rewards and punishments, he has not felt himself pressed with such difficulties as those above stated ; and whether he has ever been able fully to satisfy his reason, that there was not a lurking contradiction in the idea of a being created and placed under the law of its nature, and possessing at the same time a feeling of moral obligation to fulfil a law above its nature. That many have been in this state of mind I know. I know, too, that some whose moral and religious feelings had led them to a full belief in the doctrines of spiritual religion, but who at the same time had been taught to receive the prevailing opinions in meta- physics, have found these opinions carrying them unavoidably, if they would be consequent in their reasonings, and not do violence to their reason, to adopt a system of religion which does not pro- fess to be spiritual, and thus have been compelled to choose be- tween their philosophy and their religion. In most cases indeed, where men reflect at all, I am satisfied that it requires all the force of authority, and all the influence of education, to carry the mind over these difficulties ; and that then it is only by a vague belief that, though we can not see how, there must be some method of reconciling what seems to be so contradictory.
If examples were wanting to prove that serious and trying dif- ficulties are felt to exist here, enough may be found, as it has ap- peared to me, in the controversy respecting the nature and origin of sin, which is at this moment interesting the public rnind. Let any impartial observer trace the progress of that discussion, and after examining the distinctions which are made or attempted to be made, decide whether the subject, as there presented, bo not involved in difficulties, which can not be solved on the principles to which, hitherto, both parties have adhered ; whether, holding as they do the same premisses in regard to the freedom of the
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will, they can avoid coming to the same conclusion in regard to the nature and origin of sin; whether in fact the distinctions aimed at must not prove merely verbal distinctions, and the con- troversy a fruitless one. But in the September number of the Christian Spectator, the reader will find remarks on this subject, to which I beg leave to refer him, and which I could wish him attentively to consider in connection with the remarks which I ave made. I allude to the correspondence with the editors near the end of the number. The letter there inserted is said to be, and obviously is, from the pen of a very learned and able writer : and I confess it has been no small gratification and encouragement to me, while laboring to bring this Work and this subject be- fore the public, to find such a state of feeling expressed, concern- ing the great question at issue, by such a writer. It will be seen by reference to p. 545, of the C. S., that he places the "nu- cleus of the dispute" just where it is placed in this Work and in the above remarks. It will be seen, too, that by throwing au- thorities aside, and studying his own mind, he has " corne seri- ously to doubt," whether the received opinions with regard to motives, the law of cause and effect, and the freedom oftheivill, may not be erroneous. They appear to him " to be bordering on fatalism, if riot actually embracing it." He doubts whether the mind may not have within itself the adequate cause of its own acts ; whether indeed it have not a self-determining power, " for the power in question involves the idea of originating volition. Less than this it can not be conceived to involve, and yet be free agency." Now this is just the view offered in the present Work ; and, as it seems to me, these are just the doubts and conclusions which every one will entertain, who lays aside authority, and re- flects upon the goings on of his own mind, and the dictates of his own reason and conscience.
But let us look for a moment at the remarks of the editors in reply to the letter above quoted. They maintain, in relation to original sin and the perversion of the will, that from either the original or the acquired strength of certain natural appetites, principles of self-love, &c., " left to themselves," the corruption of the heart will certainly follow. " In every instance the will does, in fact, yield to the demands of these. But whenever it thus yielded, there was power to the contrary; otherwise thero could be no freedom of moral action." Now I beg leave to place mv
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(inger on the phrase in italics, and ask the editors what they mean by it. If they hold the common doctrines with regard to the rela- tion of cause and effect, and with regard to power as connected with that relation, and apply these to the acts of the will, I can sec no more possibility of conceiving a poiuer to the contrary in this case, than of conceiving such a power in the current of a river. But if they mean to assert the existence in the will of an actual power to rise above the demands of appetite, &c., above the law of nature and to decide arbitrarily, whether to yield or not to yield, then they admit that the will is not determined absolutely by the extraneous cause, but is in fact seZ/'-determined. They agree with the letter- writer ; and the question for them is at rest. Thus, whatever distinctions may be attempted here, there can be no real distinction but between an irresponsible nature and a will that is self-determined. The reader will find a few additional remarks on this topic in a note, and for the general views of the Work is again referred to a former note and the references there made. To the subject of that note, and to the great distinction between nature and the will, between the natural and the spir- itual, as unfolded in the Work, I must beg leave, also, again to request the special and candid attention of the reader. I must beg, too, the unprejudiced attention of every reader, friendly to the cause of practical and spiritual religion, to the tendency of this part of the Author's system, and of the remarks hazarded y ove.
I can not but be aware, that the views of the Will here ex nibited will meet with strong prejudices in a large portion, at least, of our religious community. I could wish that all such would carefully distinguish between the Author's views of the doctrines of religion and the philosophical grounds on which he supposes those doctrines are to be defended. If no one disputes, and I trust no one will dispute, the substantial orthodoxy of the Work, without first carefully examining what has been the ortho- doxy of the Church in general, and of the great body of the Re. formers, then I should hope it may be wisely considered, whether as a question of philosophy, the metaphysical principles of this Work are not in themselves more in accordance with the doc- trines of a spiritual religion, and better suited to their explanation and defence, than those above treated of. If on examination it can not Ixi disputed that they are, then, if not before, I trust the
94 PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
two systems may be compared without undue impartial! ty, and the simple question of the truth of each may be determined by that calm and persevering reflection, which alone can determine questions of this sort.
If the system here taught be true, then it will follow, not, be it observed, that our religion is necessarily wrong, or our essential faith erroneous, but that the philosophical grounds, on which we are accustomed to defend our faith, are unsafe, and that their natural tendency \$ to error. If the spirit of the Gospel still ex- ert its influence ; if a truly spiritual religion be maintained, it is in opposition to our philosophy, and not at all by its aid. 1 know it will be said, that the practical results of our peculiar forms of doctrine are at variance with these remarks. But this I am not prepared to admit. True, religion and religious insti- tutions have nourished : the Gospel, in many parts of our country, has been affectionately and faithfully preached by great and good men ; the word and the Spirit of God have been communicated to us in rich abundance ; and I rejoice with heartfelt joy and thanksgiving, in the belief, that thereby multitudes have been regenerated to a new and spiritual life. But so were equal or greater effects produced under the preaching of Baxter, and Howe, and other good and faithful men of the same age, with none of the peculiarities of our theological systems. Neither reason nor experience indeed furnish any ground for believing that the living and life-giving power of the Divine Word has ever derived any portion of its efficacy, in the conversion of the heart to God, from the forms of metaphysical theology, with which the human understanding has invested it. It requires, moreover, but little knowledge of the history of philosophy, and of the writings of the 16th and 17th centuries to know, that the opinions of the Reformers, and of all the great divines of that period, on subjects of this sort, were far different from those of Mr. Locke and his followers, and were in fact essentially the same with those taught in this Work. This last remark applies not only to the views entertained by the eminent philosophers and divines of that period on the particular subject above discussed, but to the distinctions made, and the language employed by them with reference to other points of no less importance in the consti- tution of our being.
It must have been observed by the reader of the foregoing
PKELIMINARY ESSAY. 95
pages, that I have used several words, especially understanding and reason, in a sense somewhat diverse from their present accep- tation ; and the occasion of this I suppose would be partly un- derstood from my having already directed the attention of the reader to the distinction exhibited between these words in the Work, and from the remarks made on the ambiguity of the word (< reason" in its common use. I now proceed to remark, that the ambiguity spoken of, and the consequent perplexity in regard to the use and authority of reason, have arisen from the habit of usinof, since the time of Locke, the terms understanding and reason indiscriminately, and thus confounding a distinction clearly marked in the philosophy and in the language of the older writers. Alas ! had the terms only been confounded, or had we suffered only an inconvenient ambiguity of language, there would be comparatively little cause for earnestness upon the subject ; or had our views of the things signi'fied by these terms been only partially confused, and had we still retained correct notions of our prerogative, as rational and spiritual beings, the consequences might have been less deplorable. But the misfortune is, that the powers of understanding and reason have not merely been blended and confounded in the view of our philosophy ; — the higher and far more characteristic, as an essential constituent of our proper humanity, has been as it were obscured and hidden from our ob- servation in the inferior power, which belongs to us in "common with the brutes which perish. According to the old, the more spiritual, and genuine philosophy, the distinguishing attributes of our humanity — that image of God in which man alone was cre- ated of all the dwellers upon earth, and in virtue of which he was placed at the head of this lower world, was said to be found in the reason and free-ivill. But understanding these in their strict and pr