with man's deepest aspirations in all time. It was a thorough and profound protest against the philosophy judging according to sense, with which England, and, pace Reid be it said, Scotland too, had so long been deluged. It opened up once more a free passage for man's thoughts to that higher world of truth which philosophy had so long barred against them; opened up to the human spirit a path which it might travel, undisturbed by technical objections of the understanding, toward that spiritual region which is its natural home. Man's deepest heart, his inmost being, from depths beyond all conscious thought, cry out for such access.

And it is the business of a true philosophy, not, as has been often done, to bar the way and to break down the bridges that span the gulfs, but cautiously, yet resolutely, to make ready a way by which the weary hearts of men may pass over in safety. Honour be to the spiritual engineers who have laboured to build up such a highway for humanity!

follow him into all the ramifications of this abstruse subject, and to show minutely the relation in which he placed Reason to understanding. We may, however, notice one scoff against the whole system. It has been represented as a device to enable a man to believe that what is false to his understanding may be true to his Reason. This, though it may be a smart sneer, is nothing more. What Coleridge did maintain was that the material of moral and spiritual truth which comes to man through his Reason, must, before it can be reduced to definite conceptions and expressed in propositions, first pass through the forms of the understanding. In so passing, the truths of Reason and the moral will suffer some loss, because the conceptions of the understanding are not adequate to give full expression to them; so that it was to him no argument against a truth whose source lies in Reason, if, in passing through the understanding, or being reduced to logical language, it issued in propositions which seem illogical, or even contradictory. And what When Coleridge had made his own the more is this than to say that man's logical distinction between reason and understandunderstanding is not the measure of all ing, he found in it not only a key to many truth? a doctrine surely which did not of the moral and religious questions which had originate with Coleridge. But whatever perplexed himself, and were working confudifficulties there may be in this philosophy sion among his contemporaries, but he seemof the reason, it is an attempt to vindicate ed to find in it a truth, which, however and sanction those truths which lie deepest, unsystematically, had been held and built and are most vital to human nature. Ques- on by all the masters of ancient wisdom, tions are continually rising within us, whether born of our own thoughts or imported from intellectual systems, asking anxiously whether any thought of man can reach to spiritual realities. The mind is continually getting entangled in a self-woven mesh of A good example of the way in which Colesophistry. It is the highest end of all philos- ridge applied his metaphysical principles ophy to clear away these diffculties which to philosophic questions will be found in philosophy has itself engendered, and to let the Essays on Method, in the third volthe mind look out on the truth as uncloud-ume of The Friend. He there attempts edly as it did before these sophistications to reconcile Plato's view of the Idea as arose; to give back to the race the simpli- lying at the ground of all investigation city of its childhood, with the wisdom of with Bacon's philosophy of induction, and its mature age. Of most metaphysicians, to prove that, though they worked from first and last, the main work has been to opposite ends of the problem, they are not build up between the spirit of man and the really opposed. In all inductive investigaFather of spirits solid walls and high, which tions, Coleridge contends, the mind must no human strength can pierce through, no contribute something, the mental initiative, eye can overlook. To break down and the prudens quæstio, the idea; and this, clear away these walls, which others with when tested or proved by rigorous scientific such pains had reared, this was the ultimate processes, is found to be a law of nature. aim and end towards which Coleridge What in the mind of the discoverer is a laboured. Herein lies the great service prophetic idea, is found in nature to be a which he did to his age and country. He law, and the one answers, and is akin to, was almost the first philosopher for a bun- the other. What Coleridge has there said dred and fifty years, who upheld a meta- of the mental initiative which lies at the physics which was in harmony at once with foundation of induction, Dr. Whewell has the best wisdom of the olden time, and taken up and argued out at length in his

whether in philosophy or theology. Especially he seemed to see this truth pervading the writings of the Cambridge Platonists, of Leighton, and of all the best divines of the seventeenth century.

works on Induction. Mr. Mill has as stout- substance of that essay. Hard words and ly redargued it from his own point of view, repulsive these may seem to some, who and their polemic still waits a solution. But feel it painful to analyze the faith they we must pass from these pure metaphysical live by. And no doubt the simple, childproblems to notice some of the ways in like apprehension of the things of faith which Coleridge applied his principles to moral and religious questions.

66

is better and more blessed than all philosophizing about them. They who have good health and light breathing, whose system is so sound that they know not they have a system, have little turn for disquisitions on health and respiration. But, just as sickness and disease have compelled men to study the bodily framework, so doubt and mental entanglement have forced men to go into these abstruse questions, in order to meet the philosophy of denial with a counter philosophy of faith. The philosophy is not faith, but it may help to clear away sophistications that stand in the way of it.

In the Literary Remains there is a remarkable essay on Faith, which contains a suggestive application of these principles. Faith he defines to be fealty or fidelity to that part of our being which cannot become an object of the senses; to that in us which is highest, and is alone unconditionally imperative. What is this? Every man is conscious of something within him which tells him he ought, which commands him, to do to others as he would they should do to him. Of this he is as assured as he is that he sees and hears; only with this difference, For entering into speculations of this kind that the senses act independently of the Coleridge had been branded as a transcenwill. The conscience is essentially connect- dentalist, a word with many of hideous imed with the will. We can, if we will, refuse port. But abstruse and wide of practice as to listen to it. The listening or the not these speculations may seem, it was for listening to conscience is the first moral act practical behoof mainly that Coleridge unby which a man takes upon him or refuses al- dertook them. "What are my metaphylegiance to a power higher than himself, yet sics?" he exclaims; "merely the referring speaking within himself. Now, what is this of the mind to its own consciousness for in each man, higher than himself, yet speak- truths which are indispensable to its own ing withiu him? It is Reason, super-sensuous, happiness." Of this any one may be conimpersonal, the representative in man of vinced who shall read with care his Friend the will of God, and demanding the allegi- or his Lay Sermons. One great source of ance of the individual will. Faith, then, is feality to this rightful superior; ance of the moral nature to Universal Reason, or will of God; in opposition to all usurpation of appetite, of sensible objects, of the finite understanding." of affection to others, or even the purest love of the creature. And conscience is the inward witness to the presence in us of the divine ray of reason, the irradiative power, the representative of the Infinite." An approving conscience is the sense of harmony of the personal will of man with that impersonal light which is in him, representative of the will of God. A condemning conscience is the sense of discord or contrariety between these two. Faith, then, consists in the union and interpenetration of the Reason and the individual will. Since our will and moral nature enter into it, faith must be a continuous and total energy of the whole man. Since reason enters into it, faith must be a lightseeing, a beholding of truth. Hence faith is a spiritual act of the whole being; it is "the source and germ of the fidelity of man to God, by the entire subjugation of the human will to Reason, as the representative in him of the divine will." Such is a condensation, nearly in Coleridge's own words, of the

the difficulty, or, as some might call it, the allegi- confusedness of these works, is the rush and throng of human interests with which they are filled. If he discusses the ideas of the Reason, or any other like abstract subject, it is because he feels its vital bearing on some truth of politics, morality, or religion, the clear understanding of which concerns the common weal. And here is one of his strongest mental peculiarities, which has made many censure him as unintelligible. His eye flashed with a lightning glance from the most abstract truth to the minutest practical detail, and back again from this to the abstract principle. This makes that, when once his mental powers begin to work, their movements are on a vastness of scale, and with a many-sidedness of view, which, if they render him hard to follow, make him also stimulative and suggestive of thought beyond all other modern writers. a When Coleridge first began to speculate, the sovereignty of Locke and his followers in English Metaphysics was not more supreme than that of Paley in Moral Philosophy. Both were Englishmen of the round, robust English stamp, haters of subtilties, abhorrent of idealism, resolute to warn off any ghost of scholasticism from

the domain of common-sense philosophy. | founds morality, which looks to the inward And yet both had to lay down dogmatic motive, with law, which regards only the decisions on subjects into which, despite the outward act. Indeed, the need of a judgburliest common sense, things infinite and ment of actions according to the inward spiritual will intrude. How resolute was motive, forms one of the strongest arguColeridge's polemic against Locke and all ments for a future state. For in this world his school we have seen. Not less vigorous our outward actions, apart from their mowas his protest against Paley as a moralist, tives, must needs determine our temporal and that at a time when few voices were welfare. But the moral nature longs for, raised against the common-sense Dean. and Scripture reveals, a more perfect judgFor completely rounded moral systems ment to come, wherein not the outward act Coleridge indeed professed little respect, but the inward principle, the thoughts and ranking them for utility with systems of intents of the heart, shall be made the casuistry or auricular confession. But of ground of judgment. Again, this criterion vital principles of morality, penetrating to is illusory, because evil actions are often the quick, few men's writings are more turned to good by that Providence which fruitful. A standing butt for Coleridge's brings good out of evil. If, then, conseshafts was Paley's well-known definition of quences were the sole or chief criterion, virtue as "the doing of good to mankind, then these evil actions ought to be, because in obedience to the will of God, and for the of their results, reckoned good. Nero persake of everlasting happiness." Or, as secuted the Christians and so spread ChrisPaley has elsewhere more broadly laid tianity: is he to be credited with this good down the same principle, we are obliged result? Again, to form a notion of the to do nothing, but what we ourselves are to nature of an action multiplied indefinitely gain or lose something by, for nothing else into the future, we must first know the can be a violent motive." Against this nature of the original action itself. And if substitution, as he called it, of a scheme of we already know this, what need of testing selfish prudence for moral virtue, Coleridge it by its remote consequences? If against was never weary of raising his voice. Mo- these arguments it were urged that general rality, as he contended, arises out of the consequences are the criterion, not of the Reason and conscience of man; prudence agent but of the action, Coleridge would out of the understanding, and the natural reply, that all actions have their whole wants and desires of the individual; and worth and main value from the moral printhough prudence is the worthy servant of ciple which actuates the agent. So that, if morality, the master and the servant can- it could be shown that two men, one acting not rightly be confounded. The chapter from enlightened self-love, the other from in The Friend, in which he argues against pure Christian principle, would observe the Utilitarian system of ethics, and proves towards all their neighbours throughout life that general consequences cannot be the exactly the same course of outward concriterion of the right and wrong of particu- duct, yet these two, weighed in a true moral lar actions, is one of the best-reasoned and balance, would be wide as the poles asunder. most valuable which that work contains. By these and suchlike arguments Coleridge The following are some of the arguments opposes the Paleyan and every other form with which he contends against "the inade- of Utilitarian ethics. Instead of confoundquacy of the principle of general conse- ing morality with prudence, he everywhere quences as a criterion of right and wrong, bases morality on religion. "The widest and its utter uselessness as a moral guide." maxims of prudence," he asserts, "are arms Such a criterion is vague and illusory, for without hearts, when disjoined from those it depends on each man's notion of happi- feelings which have their fountain in a ness, and no two men have exactly the living principle." That principle lies in same notion. And even if men were agreed the common ground where morality and as to what constitutes the end, namely, religion meet, and from which neither happiness, the power of calculating conse- can be sundered without destruction to quences, and the foresight needed to secure the means to the end, are just that in which men most differ. But morality ought to be grounded on that part of their nature, namely, their moral convictions, in which men are most alike, not on the calculating understanding, in which they stand most widely apart. Again, such a criterion con

both. The moral law, every man feels, has a universality and an imperativeness far transcending the widest maxims of experience; and this because it has its origin in Reason, as described above, in that in each man which is representative of the Divine Will, and connects him therewith. Out of Reason, not from experience, all pure prin

ciples of morality spring, and in it find their sanction. This truth Coleridge reiterated in every variety of form.

must be disfranchised. It comes then to a question of degrees. And how are degrees to be determined? Not by pure reason, but by rules of expedience, founded on present observation and past experience. But the whole of Coleridge's reasoning against Rousseau and Cartwright's universal suffrage is well worth the attention of those advanced thinkers of the present day, who are beginning once again, after a lapse of half a century, to argue about political rights on grounds of abstract reason. They will there find, if they care to see it, the whole question placed not on temporary arguments, but on permanent principles.

of pure Reason, were forced to contravene them. They excluded from political power children, though reasonable beings, because But while he is thus strong in placing in them Reason is imperfect; women, bethe foundation of individual morality in cause they are dependent. But is there Reason, in his sense of that word, he repudi- not more of Reason in many women, and ates those theories which would draw from even in some children, than in men dependthe same source the first principles of politi-ent for livelihood on the will of others, the cal government. In opposition to these very poor, the infirm of mind, the ignorant, theories, he held that each form of govern- the depraved? Some reasonable beings ment is sufficiently justified, when it can be shown that it is suitable for the circumstances of the particular nation. Therefore no one form of government can lay claim to be the sole rightful one. Thus to prudence or expediency Coleridge assigns a place in political questions which he denies to it in moral ones. Full of power is his whole argument against Rousseau, Paine, and others of that day, who maintained the social contract and the rights of man, and, laying the grounds of political right exclusively in Reason, held that nothing was rightful in civil society which could not be deduced from the primary laws of reason. Who," asked Rousseau, "shall dare prescribe a law of moral action for any rational being, considered as a member of a state, which does not flow immediately from that reason which is the fountain of all morality?" Whereto Coleridge replies, Morality looks not to the outward act, but to the internal maxim of actions. But politics look solely to the outward act. The end of good government is to regulate the actions of particular bodies of men, as shall be most expedient under given circumstances. How, then, can the same principle be employed to test the expediency of political rules and the purity of inward motives? He then goes on to show that when Rousseau asserted that every human being possessed of Reason had in him an inalienable sovereignty, he applied to actual man- compassed about with passions, errors, vices, and infirmities -what is true of the abstract Reason alone; that all he asserted of "that sovereign will, to which the right of legislation belongs, applies to no human being, to no assemblage of human beings, least of all to the mixed multitude that makes up the people; but entirely and exclusively to Reason itself, which, it is true, dwells in every man potentially, but actually and in perfect purity in no man, and in no body of men." And this reasoning he clinches by an instance and an argument, often since repeated, though we know not whether Coleridge was the first to employ it. He shows that the constituent assembly of France, whenever they tried to act out these principles

But keen as was Coleridge's interest in political and moral subjects, and in whatever affects the well-being of man, the full bent of his soul, and its deepest meditations, were given to the truths of the Christian revelation. From none of his works are these thoughts absent; but the fullest exposition of his religious views is to be found in the Aids to Reflection, his maturest work, and in the third and fourth volumes of the Literary Remains. Before, however, adverting to these opinions, it may be well to remember, that, much as Coleridge thought and reasoned on religion, it was his firm conviction, founded on experience, that the way to an assured faith, that faith which gives life and peace, is not to be won by dint of argument. "Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of the need of it, and you may safely trust it to its own evidence, remembering always the express declaration of Christ himself: 'No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him."" So it was with himself. Much as he philosophized, philosophy was not his soul's haven; not thence did his help come. It may have cleared away outlying hindrances, but it was not this that led him up to the stronghold of hope. Through the wounds made in his own spirit, through the brokenness of a heart humbled and made contrite by the experience of his own sin and utter helplessness, entered in the faith which gave rest, the peace which "settles

It has been said that the great object of his theological speculations was to bring into harmony religion and philosophy. This assertion would mislead, if it were meant to imply that he regarded these as two coordinate powers, which could be welded together into one reasoned system. It would, perhaps, be more true to say that his endeavour was, in his own words, to remove the doubts and difficulties that cannot but arise whenever the understanding, the mind of the flesh, is made the measure of spiritual things. He laboured to remove religion from a merely mechanical or intellectual, and to place it on a moral and spiritual foundation. His real aim was, notwithstanding that his love for scholastic distinctions might seem to imply the contrary, to simplify men's thoughts on these things, to show that spiritual truth is like the light, self-evidencing, that it is preconformed to man's higher nature, as man's nature is preconformed to it.

where the intellect is meek." Once his soul had reached the citadel, his ever-busy eye and penetrating spirit surveyed the nature of the bulwarks, and examined the foundations, as few before had done. And the world has the benefit, whatever it may be, of these surveys. But though Coleridge was a religious philosopher, let it not be supposed that he put more store by the philosophy than the religion. He knew well, and often insisted, that religion is life rather than science, and that there is a danger, peculiar to the intellectual man, of turning into speculation what was given to live by. He knew that the intellect, busy with ideas about God, may not only fail to bring a man nearer the divine life, but may actually tend to withdraw him from it. For the intellect takes in but the phantom of the truth, and leaves the total impression, the full power of it, unappropriated. And hence it comes that those truths which, if felt by the unlearned at all, go straight to the heart and are taken in by the whole As he had to contend against Lockeian man, are apt, in the case of the philosopher metaphysics and Paleyan ethics, so he had and the theologian, to stop at the outside to do strenuous battle against a theology region of the understanding, and never to mainly mechanical. He woke upon an age get further. This is a danger peculiar to when the belief in God was enforced in the learned, or to those who think them- the schools as the conclusion of a lengthselves such. The trained intellect is apt to ened argument; when revelation was .eat out the child's heart, and yet the "ex-proved exclusively by miracles, with little cept ye become as little children" stands un-regard to its intrinsic evidence; and when repealed. Coleridge knew this well. In both natural and revealed truths were his earliest interview with De Quincey, he superinduced from without, as extraneous,

said

"that prayer with the whole soul was the highest energy of which the human heart was capable, and that the great mass of worldly men, and of learned men, were absolutely incapable of prayer."

And only two years before his death, after a retrospect of his own life, to his nephew, who sat by his bedside one afternoon, he said,

"I have no difficulty in forgiveness. Neither do I find or reckon most the solemn faith in God as a real object the most arduous act of reason and will. O no! it is to pray, to pray as God would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing He pleaseth thereupon this is the last, the greatest achievement of a Christian's warfare on earth.' And then he burst into tears, and begged me to pray for

him."

extra-moral beliefs, rather than taught as living faiths evidenced from within. In opposition to this kind of teaching, which had so long reigned, Coleridge taught that the foundation truth of all religion, faith in the existence of God, was incapable of intellectual demonstration - that as all religion, so this corner-stone of religion, must have a moral origin. To him that belief was inherent in the soul, as Reason is inherent, indeed a part of Reason, in the sense he gave to that word, as moral in its nature, and the fountain of moral truth. His words are

"Because I possess Reason, or a law of right and wrong, which, uniting with the sense of moral responsibility, constitutes my conscience, hence it is my absolute duty to believe, and I do believe that there is a God, that is, a Being in whom supreme Reason and a most holy will are one with infinite power; and that all holy will is coincident with the will of God, and therefore secure in its ultimate consequences by His omnipotence. The wonderful works of God in the sensible world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me of His existence, and shadowing out to me His perfections. But as all language