ligible in merely popular language; and if he uses only the language of the schools, nobody will understand it. Under such circumstances the temptation is scarcely to be resisted, of endeavouring to blend in one mass heterogeneous materials, and adorn the abstractions of a scholastic system by a popular rhetorick. This has been attempted in the present work. The failure was inevitable, if by success the author contemplated either the recommendation of his philosophy to the serious, by shewing the pious tendency of his metaphysics; or the enforcement of religion to the thinking, by an original and striking exhibition of its principle. At the same time it abounds in eloquent and impressive passages, which the indulgent reader will be gratified by, who is content to take what he finds excellent, and pass over what he may besides meet with that appears obscure or extravagant. The author's great mistake has been, we apprehend, the supposing that the higher classes, "men of clerkly acquirements," would be willing to acquiesce in that kind of abstraction which has been produced by a school of metaphysics, foreign equally to our language and philosophy. Which of our writers on the great question concerning the freedom of the will has yet distinguished between a mathemátical, a logical, and an absolute necessity? How many professed metaphysicians have we who retain the word idea in its primitive sense, and are, therefore, able to follow Mr. C. in what he terms the master-thought. "The first man on whom the light of an IDEA dawned, did in that same moment receive the spirit and the credentials of a law-giver"? The object of the discourse is to point out the great excellence of the Bible as a source of political instruction, and as its miraculous character is its great peculiarity, our author thus points out the effect of miracles on an earlier stage of society. : "In the infancy of the world, signs and wonders were requisite in order to startle and break down that superstition, idolatrous in itself and the source of all other idolatry, which tempts the natural man to seek the true cause and origin of public calamities in outward circumstances, persons and incidents in agents therefore that were themselves but surges of the same tide, passive conductors of the one invisible influence, under which the total host of billows, in the whole line of successive impulse, swell and roll shoreward; there finally, each in its turn, to strike, roar, and be dissipated." (p. 11-12.) And he then proceeds to shew that the rules and precepts with which the Old Testament abounds, flow from universal principles. We were in want of illustrations in order to follow Mr. C. in this part of his discourse, as in that in which he contrasts the Bible histories with those of profane writers. "The histories and political economy of the present and preceding century partake in the general contagion of its mechanic philosophy, and are the product of an unenlivened generalizing understanding. In the Scriptures they are the living educts of the imagination; of that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths, of which they are the conductors. These are the wheels which Ezekiel beheld, when the hand of the Lord was upon him, and he saw visions of God as he sate among the captives by the river of Chebar. Withersoever the spirit was to go, the wheels went, and thither was their spirit to go: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also." (p. 35.) We extract this passage as a beautiful description of the imagination, at the same time confessing that we do not comprehend its bearing on the subject. More intelligible is Mr. C.'s enforcement of the familiar argument, that morality requires a deeper source than mere expediency; and very clear are also his scornful deridings of the present generation, for its presumptuous claim to the character of an enlightened and liberal age. It is, however, a satisfaction to us to find that, with a strong bias on Mr. C.'s mind against the favourite pursuits of the day, he has yet spoken strongly in favour of the improved education of the lower classes. He eulogises Dr. Bell though he characterises the liberal system recommended under the captivating title of Schools for all, as "a plan of poisoning the children of the poor with a sort of potential infidelity, under the liberal idea of teaching those points only of religious faith in which all denominations agree." It is assuredly a triumph to the great cause of reform, and the improvement of mankind, that there is no longer a hostile conflict concerning the end, but an amicable contest concerning the means. Mr. Coleridge enters at large, though in a desultory way, into the practical questions arising out of the intellectual wants of the age; and urges, in the same breath, the devout study of the Bible as the sole source of divine truth, and the laborious study of the ancient philosophers as the records of human wisdom. These topics are, however, treated in a much more satisfactory manner in the appendix of notes. Until we can obtain a systematic view of the author's philosophy, we must be content with these fragments which are rendered very stimulant by the impassioned and florid style in which they are written. The motto in the title page sufficiently indicates the author's suspicion of the opinion which may probably be entertained of them. We can afford space only for a few extracts, and we must leave the consideration of them to our readers' taste. The literary merits of a book are a fair subject for periodical criticism, but not schemes of philosophy which characterise nations and ages. All men who have anxiously attended to the operations of their own minds, must have frequently felt a difficulty in reconciling, as it were, the incompatible demands of their several faculties. All objects, whether of sense or of moral observation, address themselves to men as what are to be coolly thought upon and, if possible, comprehended and understood. At the same time a large proportion of these same objects are to be felt, and to be loved or hated: they connect themselves with moral and laudable, or illaudable affections. Now the powers or tendencies of the mind are unequally distributed and some men are naturally prone to feeling or religion, and others to thought which delights, in discussion and inquiry. It is well known what serious hostilities flow from these opposite tendencies of character; how the one class are apt to despise; and the others, to hate those who respectively believe too much or too little yet it is certain that wisdom and virtue lie only in that wise medium, that central combination of thought and sentiment which excludes nothing, and embraces the most essential qualities of our nature; and that great evils spring from the exclusive exercise of any one power. These truths we think require to be more generally felt and understood by all parties, and with that view we extract some parts of our author's interesting third note on this subject. : "There exists in the human being, at least in man fully developed, no mean symbol of Tri-unity, in Reason, Religion, and the Will. For each of the three, though a distinct agency, implies and demands the other two, and loses its own nature at the moment that from distinction it passes into division or separation. "The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of Rea son, (the Legislative of our nature), taken singly and exclusively, becomes mere visionariness in intellect, and indolence or hardheartedness in morals. It is the science of cosmopolitism without country, of philanthropy without neighbourliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the impostures of that philosophy of the French revolution, which would sacrifice each to the shadowy idol of ALL. "From all this it follows, that Reason as the science of All as the Whole, must be interpenetrated by a Power, that represents the concentration of All in Each-a Power that acts by a contraction of universal truths into individual duties, as the only form in which those truths can attain life and reality. Now this is Religion, which is the Executive of our nature, and on this account the name of highest dignity, and the symbol of sovereignty. "Yet this again-yet even Religion itself, if ever in its too exclusive devotion to the specific and individual it neglects to interpose the contemplation of the universal, changes its being into Superstition, and becoming more and more earthly and servile, as more and more estranged from the one in all, goes wandering at length with its pack of amulets, bead-rolls, periapts, fetisches, and the like pedlary, on pilgrimages to Loretto, Mecca, or the temple of Jaggernaut, arm in arm with sensuality on one side and self-torture on the other, followed by a motley group of friars, pardoners, faquirs, gamesters, flagellants, mountebanks, and harlots." "But neither can reason or religion exist or co-exist as reason and religion, except as far as they are actuated by the WILL (the platonic Guos,) which is the sustaining, coercive, and ministerial power, the functions of which in the individual correspond to the officers of war and police in the ideal Republic of Plato. In its state of immanence (or indwelling) in reason and religion, the WILL appears indifferently, as wisdom or as love: two names of the same power, the former more intelligential, the latter more spiritual; the former more frequent in the Old, the latter in the New Testament. But in its utmost abstraction and consequent state of reprobation, the Will becomes satanic pride and rebellious self-idolatry in the relations of the spirit to itself, and remorseless despotism relatively to others; the more hopeless as the more obdurate by its subjugation of sensual impulses, by its superiority to toil and pain and pleasure; in short, by the fearful resolve to find in itself alone the one absolute motive of action, under which all other motives from within and from without must be either subordinated or crushed. "This is the character which Milton has so philosophically as well as sublimely embodied in the Satan of his Paradise Lost. Alas! too often has it been embodied in real life. Too often has it given a dark and savage grandeur to the historic page! And wherever it has appeared, under whatever circumstances of time and country, the same ingredients have gone to its composition, and it has been identified by the same attributes. Hope in which there is no Chearfulness; Stedfastness within and immovable Resolve, with outward Restless ness and whirling Activity; Violence with Guile; Temerity with Cunning; and, as the result of all, Interminableness of Object with perfect Indifference of Means: these are the qualities that have constituted the COMMANDING GENIUS! these are the Marks that have characterized the Masters of Mischief, the Liberticides, and mighty Hunters of Mankind, from NIMROD to NAPOLEON!" (p. viii-x.) We regret that we cannot extend our extracts or observations. We regret particularly that the author should not be furnished with the means of doing justice to himself by the publication of a connected and systematic work. For our own part, we are not offended, though we do not approve of the scornful bitterness with which the latitudinarians in religion are noticed; nor are we scandalized by the imputation cast on Mr. Locke's philosophy, as tending so directly to the encouragement of infidelity. It is well known that this was the reproach of that great man's contemporaries; and that his philosophy has been most implicitly relied on by the French and Franco-English philosophers. The sincerity of his own faith, the excellence of his personal character, and the practical worth of his political writings, will be ever acknowledged, whatever be the duration of his system. That system prevails in this country almost universally: whether the schools of other nations have any thing substantially better, is at least worth inquiring into. We shall rejoice when any work of competent skill appears, which may unfold to us the vaunted mysteries of the German school. Till then we must be content with the scanty fragments which can be afforded by the few English disciples of that school; among whom Mr. C. certainly holds the first place for the splendour of his talents, however unsatisfactorily it may be thought those talents have yet been exerted in either of the walks of lyric poetry and metaphysical speculation. |