30 his books, viz. the 1st volume of his collected Tracts," and his System of Transcendental Idealism; to which, however, I must add a small pamphlet against Fichte, the spirit of which was to my feelings painfully incongruous with the principles, and which (with the usual allowance afforded to an antithesis) displayed the love of wisdom rather than the wisdom of love. I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the words are audible and intelligible. "Albeit, I must confess to be half in doubt, whether I should bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to the eye of the world, and the world so potent in most men's hearts, that I shall endanger either not to be regarded or not to be understood."al And to conclude the subject of citation, with a cluster of citations, which as taken from books not in common use, may contribute to the reader's amusement, as a voluntary before a sermon :-" Dolet mihi quidem deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam homines adeo esse, præsertim qui Christianos se profitentur, et legere nisi quod ad delectationem facit, sustineant nihil: unde et disciplinæ severiores et philosophia ipsa jam fere prorsus etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem propositum studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam magnum rebus incommodum dabit, quam dedit barbaries olim. Pertinax res barbaries est, fateor sed minus potest tamen, quam illa mollities et persuasa prudentia literarum, si ratione caret, sapientiæ virtutisque specie 29 [F. W. J. Schelling's Philosophische Schriften, Erster Band. (First volume.) Landshut, 1809. S. C.] 30 [This is the Darlegung referred to in a previous note. The mutual censures of Fichte and Schelling, and their quarrels about Nature and the nature of Nature, are harsh breaks in the bright current of their writings. There is to my mind a great metaphysical sublimity in the first part of Fichte's Bestimmung des Menschen, especially the passage beginning In jedem Momente ihrer Dauer ist Natur ein zusammenhängendes Gauze, and the preceding paragraphs, from the words Das Princip der Thatigheit, p. 11 Very imaginative is the grand glimpse these passages give of the interconnected movements of the universe, presenting to the mind universality in unity, and a seeming infinitude of the finite. S. C.] 31 [Milton's Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty. Book ii., chao i. S. C.] mortales misere circumducens. Succedet igitur, ut arbitror, haud ita multo post, pro rusticana seculi nostri ruditate captatrix illa communi-loquentia robur animi virilis omne, omnem virtutem masculam, profligatura, nisi cavetur,”” A too prophetic remark, which has been in fulfilment from the year 1680, to the present 1815. By persuasa prudentia, Grynæus means self-complacent common sense as opposed to science and philosophic reason. Est medius ordo, et velut equestris, ingeniorum quidem sagacium, et commodorum rebus humanis, non tamen in primam magnitudinem patentium. Eorum hominum, ut sic dicam, major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil temere loqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentia et modestia tegere angustiores partes captus, dum exercitationem ac usum, quo isti in civilibus rebus pollent, pro natura et magnitudine ingenii plerique accipiunt." 7933 "As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of curing as themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by the patient's impatiency, are fain to try the best they can in like sort, considering how the case doth stand with this present age, full of tongue and weak of brain, behold we would (if our subject permitted it) yield to the stream thereof. That way we would be contented to prove our thesis, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked." 9734 If this fear could be rationally entertained in the controversial age of Hooker, under the then robust discipline of the 32 [From "Symon Grynæus's premonition to the candid reader, prefixed to Ficinus's translation of Plato, published at Leyden, 1557." See The Friend, Essay iii., vol. i., pp. 23-4, where also the same passage is quoted. In the original, as I learn from the Editor's note in that place, gulam stands for delectationem. S. C.] 33 [Barclay's Argenis, lib. i., Leyden, 1630, 12mo., pp. 63-4, with some omissions. The original, after assuescere labori, runs thus: et imagini Sapientiæ parere, tegere angustiores partes ingenii. Hæc neque summum hominem desiderant, et sola interdum sunt quæ in laudatis Proceribus suspicias. Ut vel abesse vitia pro virtute sit; vel non invidiosus prudentiæ rivus in Oceani famam se diffundat, dum exercitationem, &c. S. C.] 34 [Slightly altered, with omissions, from Hooker's Eccles. Polity, b. i. c. viii., s. 2. S. C.] scholastic logic, pardonably may a writer of the present times. anticipate a scanty audience for abstrusest themes, and truths that can neither be communicated nor received without effort of thought, as well as patience of attention. "Che s'io non erro al calcolar de' punt!, NOTE TO CHAPTER IX. In the preceding chapter Mr. C. speaks of Schelling's philosophy as if it had his entire approbation, and had been adopted by him in its whole extent. Yet it is certain that, soon after the composition of the B. L., he became dissatisfied with the system, considered as a fundamental and comprehensive scheme, intended to exhibit the relations of God to the World and Man. He objected to it as essentially pantheistic, though the author has positively disclaimed this reproach, and made great efforts to free his system from the appearance of deserving it. To Mr. C., however, it appeared, as originally set forth, to labor under deep deficiencies to be radically inconsistent with a belief in God, as Himself Moral and Intelligent-as beyond and above the world-as the Supreme Mind, to which the human mind owns homage and fealty-inconsistent with any just view and deep sense of the moral and spiritual being of man. The imposing grandeur of this philosophy, beheld from a distance, the narrowness into which it shrinks on a nearer view, are thus set forth by Cousin, in his clear trenchant style. "La philosophie de Schelling se recommande par l'originalité de son point de vue, la profondeur du travail, la conséquence des parties, et l'immense portée des applications. Elle rallie à une seule idie tous les êtres de la nature. Par là elle carte les barrières qu'on avoit données à la connaissance humaine, soutenant la possibilité pour l'homme non plus seulement d'une représentation subjective, mais d'une connaissance objective et scientifique d'une science déterminée de Dieu et des choses divines, à ce titre que 35 Satire di Salvitor Rosa [tom. i., p. 34. La Musica, Sat. i., l. 10 S. C.]. l'esprit humain et la substance de l'être sont primitivement identiques. Cette philosophie embrasse le cercle entier des connaissances speculatives," &c. Then he states the difficulties which beset the scheme, and after suggesting several root objections, he exclaims: "Quel homme enfin peut avoir la tém raire prétention de renfermer la nature de la Divinité dans l'idée de l'identité absolute?" He had previously observed, "La forme de ce système est moins scientifique en réalité qu'en apparence. Son problème étoit de déduire, par une demonstration réelle (par construction), le fini de l'infini et de l'absolu, le particulier de l'universel. Or. ce problème n'est point résolu et ne peut l'être." And he concludes-" En un mot, le système tout entier n'est, à proprement parler, qu'une poésie de l'esprit humain, séduisante par son apparente facilité pour tout expliquer, et par sa manière de construire la nature." I think, as far as I am able to judge, that Mr. Coleridge's view of the system, after long reflection upon it, coincided, as to its general character and result, with that of Victor Cousin, deeply as he must have felt obliged to the author for much that it contains. During the latter part of his life he was ever applying his thoughts to the development of a philosophy which should more satisfactorily perform what Schelling's splendid scheme of modern Platonism had seemed to promise, a solution of the most important problems which are presented to human contemplation, or at least an answer to them sufficient to set the human mind at rest. He sought to construct a system really and rationally religious; and since, in his philosophical inquiries, he "neither could nor dared throw off a strong and awful prepossession in favor "* of that great main outline of doctrine which came to us from the first in company with the highest and purest moral teaching which the world has yet seen; which was felt after, if not found, by the best and greatest minds before the preaching of the Gospel; which has been received in substance, with whatever variations of form and language, by a large portion of the civilized world ever since, and had actually been to himself the vehicle of all the light and life of the higher and deeper kind, which had been vouchsafed to him in his earthly career; he therefore set out with the desire to construct a philosophical system in which Christianity,-based on the Tri-une being of God, and embracing a Primal Fall and Universal Redemption, Christianity ideal, spiritual, eternal, but likewise and necessarily historical,—realized and manifested in time,-should be shown forth as accordant, or rather as one, with ideas of reason, and the demands of the spiritual and of the speculative mind, of the heart, conscience, reason, should all be satisfied and reconciled in one bond of • This is said in regard to the Bible in the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, p. 8. peace. See what has been said of the labors of Mr. C.'s latter years in the Preface. I am not aware, however, that he, at any time, altered or set aside the doctrine of Schelling put forth in the present work on Nature and the Mind of Man, with their mutual relations; or, indeed, that he discovered any positive error or incompatibility with higher truth in such parts of his system as are adopted in the Biographia Literaria, and which he believed himself in the main to have anticipated. In the Table Talk he is reported to have said, "The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the Biographia Literaria is unformed and immature;-it contains the fragments of the truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to think how infinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how much clearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is coming round to, and to be, the common sense." (2d edit., p 308.) Some little insight into the progress of his reflections on philosophical subjects, and on the treatment of those subjects by Schelling, will perhaps be derived from his remarks on several tracts in that author's Philo sophische Schriften, which I have thought it best to place at the end of the first volume. S. C. |