The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2

Now, compare a plant, thus contemplated, with an animal. In the former, the productive energy exhausts itself, and as it were, sleeps in the product or 'organismus'—in its root, stem, foliage, blossoms, seed. Its balsams, gums, resins, 'aromata', and all other bases of its sensible qualities, are, it is well known, mere excretions from the vegetable, eliminated, as lifeless, from the actual plant. The qualities are not its properties, but the properties, or far rather, the dispersion and volatilization of these extruded and rejected bases. But in the animal it is otherwise. Here the antecedent unity—the productive and self-realizing idea—strives, with partial success to re-emancipate itself from its product, and seeks once again to become 'idea': vainly indeed: for in order to this, it must be retrogressive, and it hath subjected itself to the fates, the evolvers of the endless thread—to the stern necessity of progression. 'Idea' itself it cannot become, but it may in long and graduated process, become an image, an ANALOGON, an anti-type of IDEA. And this {Greek: eidolon} may approximate to a perfect likeness. 'Quod est simile, nequit esse idem'. Thus, in the lower animals, we see this process of emancipation commence with the intermediate link, or that which forms the transition from properties to faculties, namely, with sensation. Then the faculties of sense, locomotion, construction, as, for instance, webs, hives, nests, &c. Then the functions; as of instinct, memory, fancy, instinctive intelligence, or understanding, as it exists in the most intelligent animals. Thus the idea (henceforward no more idea, but irrecoverable by its own fatal act) commences the process of its own transmutation, as 'substans in substantiato', as the 'enteleche', or the 'vis formatrix', and it finishes the process as 'substans e substantiato', that is, as the understanding.

If, for the purpose of elucidating this process, I might be allowed to imitate the symbolic language of the algebraists, and thus to regard the successive steps of the process as so many powers and dignities of the 'nomos' or law, the scheme would be represented thus {N^1 represents N superscript 1, i.e. N to the power of 1. text Ed.}:—

which is, indeed, in one sense, itself a 'nomos', inasmuch as it is the index of the 'nomos', as well as its highest function; but, like the hand of a watch, it is likewise a 'nomizomenon'. It is a verb, but still a verb passive.

On the other hand, idea is so far co-essential with 'nomos', that by its co-existence—(not confluence)—with the 'nomos' {Greek: hen nomizomenois} (with the 'organismus' and its faculties and functions in the man,) it becomes itself a 'nomos'. But, observe, a 'nomos autonomos', or containing its law in itself likewise;—even as the 'nomos' produces for its highest product the understanding, so the idea, in its opposition and, of course, its correspondence to the 'nomos', begets in itself an 'analogon' to product; and this is self-consciousness. But as the product can never become idea, so neither can the idea (if it is to remain idea) become or generate a distinct product. This 'analogon' of product is to be itself; but were it indeed and substantially a product, it would cease to be self. It would be an object for a subject, not (as it is and must be) an object that is its own subject, and 'vice versa'; a conception which, if the uncombining and infusile genius of our language allowed it, might be expressed by the term subject-object. Now, idea, taken in indissoluble connection with this 'analogon' of product is mind, that which knows itself, and the existence of which may be inferred, but cannot appear or become a 'phænomenon'.

By the benignity of Providence, the truths of most importance in themselves, and which it most concerns us to know, are familiar to us, even from childhood. Well for us if we do not abuse this privilege, and mistake the familiarity of words which convey these truths for a clear understanding of the truths themselves! If the preceding disquisition, with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should answer no other purpose, it will still have been neither purposeless, nor devoid of utility, should it only lead us to sympathize with the strivings of the human intellect, awakened to the infinite importance of the inward oracle {Greek: gnothi seauton}—and almost instinctively shaping its course of search in conformity with the Platonic intimation:—{Greek: psuchaes phusin haxios logou katanoaesai oiei dunaton einai, haneu aes tou holou phuseos}; but be this as it may, the ground work of the Æschylean 'mythus' is laid in the definition of idea and law, as correlatives that mutually interpret each the other;—an idea, with the adequate power of realizing itself being a law, and a law considered abstractedly from, or in the absence of, the power of manifesting itself in its appropriate product being an idea. Whether this be true philosophy, is not the question. The school of Aristotle would, of course, deny, the Platonic affirm it; for in this consists the difference of the two schools. Both acknowledge ideas as distinct from the mere generalizations from objects of sense: both would define an idea as an 'ens rationale', to which there can be no adequate correspondent in sensible experience. But, according to Aristotle, ideas are regulative only, and exist only as functions of the mind:—according to Plato, they are constitutive likewise, and one in essence with the power and life of nature;—{Greek: hen log'o z'oae aen, kai hae z'oae haen to ph'os t'on anthr'op'on}. And this I assert, was the philosophy of the mythic poets, who, like Æschylus, adapted the secret doctrines of the mysteries as the (not always safely disguised) antidote to the debasing influences of the religion of the state.

But to return and conclude this preliminary explanation. We have only to substitute the term will, and the term constitutive power, for nomos or law, and the process is the same. Permit me to represent the identity or 'prothesis' by the letter Z and the 'thesis' and 'antithesis' by X and Y respectively. Then I say X by not being Y, but in consequence of being the correlative opposite of Y, is will; and Y, by not being X, but the correlative and opposite of X, is nature,—'natura naturans', {Greek: nomos physikos}. Hence we may see the necessity of contemplating the idea now as identical with the reason, and now as one with the will, and now as both in one, in which last case I shall, for convenience sake, employ the term 'Nous', the rational will, the practical reason.

We are now out of the holy jungle of transcendental mataphysics; if indeed, the reader's patience shall have had strength and persistency enough to allow me to exclaim—

Not that I regard the foregoing as articles of faith, or as all true;—I have implied the contrary by contrasting it with, at least, by shewing its disparateness from, the Mosaic, which, 'bona fide', I do regard as the truth. But I believe there is much, and profound, truth in it, 'supra captum {Greek: psilosoph'on}, qui non agnoscunt divinum, ideoque nec naturam, nisi nomine, agnoscunt; sed res cunctas ex sensuali corporeo cogitant, quibus hac ex causa interiora clausa manent, et simul cum illis exteriora quæ proxima interioribus sunt'! And with no less confidence do I believe that the positions above given, true or false, are contained in the Promethean 'mythus'.

In this 'mythus', Jove is the impersonated representation or symbol of the 'nomos'—'Jupiter est quodcunque vides'. He is the 'mens agitans molem', but at the same time, the 'molem corpoream ponens et constituens'. And so far the Greek philosopheme does not differ essentially from the cosmotheism, or identification of God with the universe, in which consisted the first apostacy of mankind after the flood, when they combined to raise a temple to the heavens, and which is still the favored religion of the Chinese. Prometheus, in like manner, is the impersonated representative of Idea, or of the same power as Jove, but contemplated as independent and not immersed in the product,—as law 'minus' the productive energy. As such it is next to be seen what the several significances of each must or may be according to the philosophic conception; and of which significances, therefore, should we find in the philosopheme a correspondent to each, we shall be entitled to assert that such are the meanings of the fable. And first of Jove:—

Jove represents

1. 'Nomos' generally, as opposed to Idea or 'Nous':

2. 'Nomos archinomos', now as the father, now as the sovereign, and now as the includer and representative of the 'nomoi ouoanioi kosmikoi', or 'dii majores', who, had joined or come over to Jove in the first schism:

3. 'Nomos damnaetaes'—the subjugator of the spirits, of the {Greek: ideai pronomoi}, who, thus subjugated, became '{Greek: nomoi huponomioi hupospondoi}, Titanes pacati, dii minores', that is, the elements considered as powers reduced to obedience under yet higher powers than themselves:

4. 'Nomos {Greek: politikos}', law in the Pauline sense, '{Greek: nomos allotrionomos}' in antithesis to '{Greek: nomos autonomos}'.

{Footnote 1: The Act meant is probably the 5. Eliz. c. 20, enforcing the two previous Acts of Henry VIII. and Philip and Mary, and reciting that natural born Englishmen had 'become of the fellowship of the said vagabonds, by transforming or disguising themselves in their apparel,' &c.—Ed.}

{Footnote 2: Mr. Coleridge was in the constant habit of expressing himself on paper by the algebraic symbols. They have an uncouth look in the text of an ordinary essay, and I have sometimes ventured to render them by the equivalent words. But most of the readers of these volumes will know that—means 'less by', or,' without'; + 'more by', or,' in addition to'; = 'equal to', or, 'the same as'.—Ed}.

{Footnote 3: Friend, III. Essay, 9.}

{Footnote 4: Aids to Reflection. Moral and Religious Aphorisms. Aphorism VI. Ed.}

COROLLARY.

It is in this sense that Jove's jealous, ever-quarrelsome, spouse represents the political sacerdotal 'cultus', the church, in short, of republican paganism;—a church by law established for the mere purposes of the particular state, unennobled by the consciousness of instrumentality to higher purposes;—at once unenlightened and unchecked by revelation. Most gratefully ought we to acknowledge that since the completion of our constitution in 1688, we may, with unflattering truth, elucidate the spirit and character of such a church by the contrast of the institution, to which England owes the larger portion of its superiority in that, in which alone superiority is an unmixed blessing,—the diffused cultivation of its inhabitants. But previously to this period, I shall offend no enlightened man if I say without distinction of parties—'intra muros peccatur et extra';—that the history of Christendom presents us with too many illustrations of this Junonian jealousy, this factious harrassing of the sovereign power as soon as the latter betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to its true policy, namely, to privilege and perpetuate that which is best,—to tolerate the tolerable,—and to restrain none but those who would restrain all, and subjugate even the state itself. But while truth extorts this confession, it, at the same time, requires that it should be accompanied by an avowal of the fact, that the spirit is a relic of Paganism; and with a bitter smile would an Æschylus or a Plato in the shades, listen to a Gibbon or a Hume vaunting the mild and tolerant spirit of the state religions of ancient Greece or Rome. Here we have the sense of Jove's intrigues with Europa, Io, &c. whom the god, in his own nature a general lover, had successively taken under his protection. And here, too, see the full appropriateness of this part of the 'mythus', in which symbol fades away into allegory, but yet in reference to the working cause, as grounded in humanity, and always existing either actually or potentially, and thus never ceases wholly to be a symbol or tautegory.

Prometheus represents,

1. 'sensu generali', Idea {Greek: pronomos,} and in this sense he is a {Greek: 'theos homophulos'}, a fellow-tribesman both of the 'dii majores', with Jove at their head, and of the Titans or 'dii pacati':

2. He represents Idea {Greek: 'philonomos, nomodeiktaes';} and in this sense the former friend and counsellor of Jove or 'Nous uranius':

3. {Greek: 'Logos philanthr'opos',} the divine humanity, the humane God, who retained unseen, kept back, or (in the 'catachresis' characteristic of the Phoenicio-Grecian mythology) stole, a portion or 'ignicula from the living spirit of law, which remained with the celestial gods unexpended {Greek: en to nomizesthai.} He gave that which, according to the whole analogy of things, should have existed either as pure divinity, the sole property and birth-right of the 'Dii Joviales', the 'Uranions', or was conceded to inferior beings as a 'substans in substantiato'. This spark divine Prometheus gave to an elect, a favored animal, not as a 'substans' or understanding, commensurate with, and confined by, the constitution and conditions of this particular organism, but as 'aliquid superstans, liberum, non subactum, invictum, impacatum, {Greek: mae nouizomenon.} This gift, by which we are to understand reason theoretical and practical, was therefore a {Greek: 'nomos autonomus'}—unapproachable and unmodifiable by the animal basis—that is, by the pre-existing 'substans' with its products, the animal 'organismus' with its faculties and functions; but yet endowed with the power of potentiating, ennobling, and prescribing to, the substance; and hence, therefore, a {Greek: nomos nomopeithaes,} lex legisuada':

4. By a transition, ordinary even in allegory, and appropriate to mythic symbol, but especially significant in the present case—the transition, I mean, from the giver to the gift—the giver, in very truth, being the gift, 'whence the soul receives reason; and reason is her being,' says our Milton. Reason is from God, and God is reason, 'mens ipsissima'.

5. Prometheus represents, {Greek: nous en anthr'op'o—nous ag'onistaes}'. Thus contemplated, the 'Nous' is of necessity, powerless; for, all power, that is, productivity, or productive energy, is in Law, that is, {Greek: nomos allotrionomos}:{1} still, however, the Idea in the Law, the 'numerus numerans' become {Greek: nomos}, is the principle of the Law; and if with Law dwells power, so with the knowledge or the Idea 'scientialis' of the Law, dwells prophecy and foresight. A perfect astronomical time-piece in relation to the motions of the heavenly bodies, or the magnet in the mariner's compass in relation to the magnetism of the earth, is a sufficient illustration.

6. Both {Greek: nomos} and Idea (or 'Nous') are the 'verbum'; but, as in the former, it is 'verbum fiat' 'the Word of the Lord,'—in the latter it must be the 'verbum fiet', or, 'the Word of the Lord in the mouth of the prophet.' 'Pari argumento', as the knowledge is therefore not power, the power is not knowledge. The {Greek: nomos}, the {Greek: Zeus pantokrat'or}, seeks to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent to all antithesis; for the identity or the absolute is alone eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the 'Nous', or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment of Prometheus.

7. Introduce but the least of real as opposed to 'ideal', the least speck of positive existence, even though it were but the mote in a sun beam, into the sciential 'contemplamen' or theorem, and it ceases to be science. 'Ratio desinit esse pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et fit {Greek: hypothetikon}:—non superstat'. The 'Nous' is bound to a rock, the immovable firmness of which is indissolubly connected with its barrenness, its non-productivity. Were it productive it would be 'Nomos'; but it is 'Nous', because it is not 'Nomos'.

8. Solitary {Greek: abato en eraemia}. Now I say that the 'Nous', notwithstanding its diversity from the 'Nomizomeni', is yet, relatively to their supposed original essence, {Greek: pasi tois nomizomenois tantogenaes}, of the same race or 'radix': though in another sense, namely, in relation to the {Greek: pan theion}—the pantheistic 'Elohim', it is conceived anterior to the schism, and to the conquest and enthronization of Jove who succeeded. Hence the Prometheus of the great tragedian is {Greek: theos suggenaes}. The kindred deities come to him, some to soothe, to condole; others to give weak, yet friendly, counsels of submission; others to tempt, or insult. The most prominent of the latter, and the most odious to the imprisoned and insulated 'Nous', is Hermes, the impersonation of interest with the entrancing and serpentine 'Caduceus', and, as interest or motives intervening between the reason and its immediate self-determinations, with the antipathies to the {Greek: nomos autonomos}. The Hermes impersonates the eloquence of cupidity, the cajolement of power regnant; and in a larger sense, custom, the irrational in language, {Greek: rhaemata ta rhaetorika}, the fluent, from {Greek: rheo}—the rhetorical in opposition to {Greek: logoi, ta noaeta}. But, primarily, the Hermes is the symbol of interest. He is the messenger, the inter-nuncio, in the low but expressive phrase, the go-between, to beguile or insult. And for the other visitors of Prometheus, the elementary powers, or spirits of the elements, 'Titanes pacati', {Greek: theoi huponomioi}, vassal potentates, and their solicitations, the noblest interpretation will be given, if I repeat the lines of our great contemporary poet:—

which exquisite passage is prefigured in coarser clay, indeed, and with a less lofty spirit, but yet excellently in their kind, and even more fortunately for the illustration and ornament of the present commentary, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas of Dr. Henry More's poem on the Pre-existence of the Soul:—

To express the supersensual character of the reason, its abstraction from sensation, we find the Prometheus {Greek: aterpae}—while in the yearnings accompanied with the remorse incident to, and only possible in consequence of the Nous being, the rational, self-conscious, and therefore responsible will, he is {Greek: gupi diaknaiomenos}

If to these contemplations we add the control and despotism exercised on the free reason by Jupiter in his symbolical character, as {Greek: nomos politikos};—by custom (Hermes); by necessity, {Greek: bia kai kratos};—by the mechanic arts and powers, {Greek: suggeneis to Noo} though they are, and which are symbolized in Hephaistos,—we shall see at once the propriety of the title, Prometheus, {Greek: desmotaes}.

9. Nature, or 'Zeus' as the {Greek: nomos en nomizomenois}, knows herself only, can only come to a knowledge of herself, in man! And even in man, only as man is supernatural, above nature, noetic. But this knowledge man refuses to communicate; that is, the human understanding alone is at once self-conscious and conscious of nature. And this high prerogative it owes exclusively to its being an assessor of the reason. Yet even the human understanding in its height of place seeks vainly to appropriate the ideas of the pure reason, which it can only represent by 'idola'. Here, then, the 'Nous' stands as Prometheus {Greek: antipalos}, 'renuens'—in hostile opposition to Jupitor 'Inquisitor'.

10. Yet finally, against the obstacles and even under the fostering influences of the 'Nomos', {Greek: tou nomimou}, a son of Jove himself, but a descendant from Io, the mundane religion, as contra-distinguished from the sacerdotal 'cultus', or religion of the state, an Alcides 'Liberator' will arise, and the 'Nous', or divine principle in man, will be Prometheus {Greek: heleutheromenos}.

Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecutions, wanderings, and migrations of the Io, the mundane religion, through the whole map marked out by the tragic poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, the unarbitrariness, of the preceding exposition as near to demonstration as can rationally be required on a question of history, that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination of scattered facts. But this part of my subject, together with a particular exemplification of the light which my theory throws both on the sense and the beauty of numerous passages of this stupendous poem, I must reserve for a future communication.

NOTES. {3}

v. 15. {Greek: pharaggi}:—'in a coomb, or combe.' v. 17. {Greek: ex'oriazein gar patros logous baru}. {Greek: euoriazein}, as the editor confesses, is a word introduced into the text against the authority of all editions and manuscripts. I should prefer {Greek: ex'oriazein}, notwithstanding its being a {Greek: hapax legomenon}. The {Greek: eu}—seems to my tact too free and easy a word;—and yet our 'to trifle with' appears the exact meaning.

{Footnote 1: I scarcely need say, that I use the word {Greek: allotrionomos} as a participle active, as exercising law on another, not as receiving law from another, though the latter is the classical force (I suppose) of the word.}

{Footnote 2: Rhea (from {Greek: rheo}, 'fluo'), that is, the earth as the transitory, the ever-flowing nature, the flux and sum of 'phenomena', or objects of the outward sense, in contradistinction from the earth as Vesta, as the firmamental law that sustains and disposes the apparent world! The Satyrs represent the sports and appetences of the sensuous nature ({Greek: phronaema sarkos})—Pan, or the total life of the earth, the presence of all in each, the universal 'organismus' of bodies and bodily energy.}

{Footnote 3: Written in Bp. Blomfield's edition, and communicated by Mr. Cary. Ed.}

NOTE ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF DANIEL.

Most genuine! A figurative remark! If this strange writer had any meaning, it must be:—Headly's criticism is just throughout, but conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own remarks are wholly mistaken;—too silly for any criticism, drunk or sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in thought, passion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be declared to be imperishable English.

1820.

BISHOP CORBET.

I almost wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with the public uncommonly well. September, 1823.

NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK. {1}

There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.

Good! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful and the agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that {Greek: plaethos atheon} have so beneficially confounded, 'meretricibus scilicet et Plutoni'.

O what an insight the whole of this article gives into a wise man's heart, who has been compelled to act with the many, as one of the many! It explains Sir Thomas More's zealous Romanism, &c.

Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom!

No one man can know all things: even Selden here talks ignorantly. Verse is in itself a music, and the natural symbol of that union of passion with thought and pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all poetry, as contradistinguished from science, and distinguished from history civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man,—in short, to whatever is mere metrical good sense and wit, the remark applies.

Ib.

True; they, that is, verses, are not logic; but they are, or ought to be, the envoys and representatives of that vital passion, which is the practical cement of logic; and without which logic must remain inert.

{Footnote 1: These remarks on Selden, Wheeler, and Birch, were communicated by Mr. Gary. Ed.}

NOTE ON THEOLOGICAL LECTURES OF BENJAMIN WHEELER, D. D.

Where is the proof of this as drawn from Scripture, from fact recorded, or from doctrine affirmed? Where the proof of its logical possibility,—that is, that the word has any representable sense? Contrary to 2x2=4 is 2x2=5, or that the same fire acting at the same moment on the same subject should burn it and not burn it.

The course of nature is either one with, or a reverential synonyme of, the ever present divine agency; or it is a self-subsisting derivative from, and dependent on, the divine will. In either case this author's assertion would amount to a charge of self-contradiction on the Author of all things. Before the spread of Grotianism, or the Old Bailey 'nolens volens' Christianity, such language was unexampled. A miracle is either 'super naturam', or it is simply 'praeter experientiam.' If nature be a collective term for the sum total of the mechanic powers,—that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the conductor A, arriving at Z by the sensible chain of intermediate conductors, B, C, D, &c.;—then every motion of my arm is 'super naturam'. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme of experience, and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles.

As erroneous as the author's assertions are logically, so false are they historically, in the effect, which the miracles in and by themselves did produce on those, who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye-witnesses of the miracles;—and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three chapters of St. John's gospel?

There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle,—namely, an immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its essence. Add the words, 'praeter experientiam adhuc', or 'id temporis', and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term miracle. {1}

{Footnote A: See The Friend, Vol. III. Essay 2. Ed.}

NOTE ON A SERMON ON THE PREVALENCE OF INFIDELITY AND ENTHUSIASM, BY WALTER BIRCH, B. D.

In the description of enthusiasm, the author has plainly had in view individual characters, and those too in a light, in which they appeared to him; not clear and discriminate ideas. Hence a mixture of truth and error, of appropriate and inappropriate terms, which it is scarcely possible to disentangle. Part applies to fanaticism; part to enthusiasm; and no small portion of this latter to enthusiasm not pure, but as it exists in particular men, modified by their imperfections—and bad because not wholly enthusiasm. I regret this, because it is evidently the discourse of a very powerful mind;—and because I am convinced that the disease of the age is want of enthusiasm, and a tending to fanaticism. You may very naturally object that the senses, in which I use the two terms, fanaticism and enthusiasm, are private interpretations equally as, if not more than, Mr. Birch's. They are so; but the difference between us is, that without reference to either term, I have attempted to ascertain the existence and diversity of two states of moral being; and then having found in our language two words of very fluctuating and indeterminate use, indeed, but the one word more frequently bordering on the one state, the other on the other, I try to fix each to that state exclusively. And herein I follow the practice of all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning. Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason at all, if our conceptions and terms were not more single and definite than the things designated. Enthusiasm is the absorption of the individual in the object contemplated from the vividness or intensity of his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, and for that cause is disinclined to outward action. Lastly, enthusiasm is susceptible of many degrees, (according to the proportionateness of the objects contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears different only from the manners and original temperament of the individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a crackling flame; cold-blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism. Enthusiasts, {Greek: enthousiastai} from {Greek: entheos, ois ho theos enesi}, or possibly from {Greek: en thusiais}, those who, in sacrifice to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or influence mightier than their own individuality. 'Fanatici-qui circum fana favorem mutuo contrahunt el afflant'—those who in the same conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and ferment by co-acervation.

I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized. Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others.

FÉNÉLON ON CHARITY.{1}

NOTE to pages 196,197.

This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,—to myself formerly,—it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. What is the remedy? What is the antidote?—Charity?—Pshaw! Charity in the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,—faith of grace,—faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The Romish scheme is preposterous;—it puts the rill before the spring. Faith is the source,—charity, that is, the whole Christian life, is the stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however bright and strong, was imperfect without heat, or that the sun, however cloudless, was imperfect without beams. The true answer would be:—it is not faith,—but utter reprobate faithlessness, which may indeed very possibly coexist with a mere acquiescence of the understanding in certain facts recorded by the Evangelists. But did John, or Paul, or Martin Luther, ever flatter this barren belief with the name of saving faith? No. Little ones! Be not deceived. Wear at your bosoms that precious amulet against all the spells of antichrist, the 20th verse of the 2nd chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians:—'I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me'.

Thus we see even our faith is not ours in its origin: but is the faith of the Son of God graciously communicated to us. Beware, therefore, that you do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain. If, therefore, we are saved by charity, we are saved by the keeping of the Law, which doctrine St. Paul declared to be an apostacy from Christ, and a bewitching of the soul from the truth. But, you will perhaps say, can a man be saved without charity?—The answer is, a man without charity cannot be saved: the faith of the Son of God is not in him.

{Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.}

CHANGE OF THE CLIMATES.

The character and circumstances of the animal and vegetable remains discovered in the northern zone, in Siberia and other parts of Russia,—all with scarcely an exception belonging to 'genera' that are now only found in, and require, a tropical climate,—are such as receive no adequate solution from the hypothesis of their having been casually floated thither, and deposited, by the waters of a deluge, still less of the Noachian deluge, as related and described by the great Hebrew historian and legislator. In order to a full solution of this problem, two 'data' are requisite:

1. A total change of climate:

2. That this change shall have been, not gradual, but sudden, instantaneous, and incompatible with the life and subsistency of the animals and vegetables in these high latitudes, at that period, and previously, existing.

Now these 'data' or conditions will be afforded, if we assume a total submersion of the surface of this planet, even of its highest mountains then and now existing, by a sudden contemporaneous mass of waters, and that the evaporation of these waters was aided by a steady wind, especially adapted to this purpose in a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and was (as it must of necessity have been) most rapid and intense at the equator and within the tropics proportionally. For—as it has been demonstrated by Dr. Wollaston's experiment, in which the evaporation, occasioned by boiling water at the mid point of a line of water, froze the fluid at the two ends, that is, at a given distance from the greatest intensity of the evaporative process,—the effect of an evaporation of the supposed power and rapidity would be to produce at certain distances from the 'maximum' point, north and south, a vast barrier of ice,—such as having once taken place, and being of such mass and magnitude as to be only in a small degree diminishable by the ensuing summer, must have become permanent, and beyond the power of all the known and ordinary dissolving agents of nature. That the situation of the magnetic poles of the earth, and the almost certain connection of magnetism with cold, no less than with metallic cohesion, co-operated in determining the distance of the barriers, or two poles, of evaporation, from its centre or the 'maximum' of its activity, is highly probable, and receives a strong confirmation from the open sea and diminished cold, both at the north and south zones, on the ulterior of the barrier, and towards the true or physical poles of the earth.

Now the action of a powerful co-agent in the evaporative process, such as is assumed in this hypothesis, is a fact of history. 'And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged'. Gen. viii. 1. I do not recollect the Hebrew word rendered 'assuaged;' but I will consult my learned friend Hyman Hurwitz on its radical, and its primary sense. At all events, the note by Pyle in Drs. Mant and D'Oyly's Bible is arbitrary, though excusable by the state of chemical science in his time.

The problem of the multitude of 'genera' of animals, and their several exclusive acclimatements at the present period may, likewise, I persuade myself, receive a probable solution by an hypothesis legitimated by known laws and fair analogies. But of this hereafter.

1823.

WONDERFULNESS OF PROSE.

It has just struck my feelings that the Pherecydean origin of prose being granted, prose must have struck men with greater admiration than poetry. In the latter, it was the language of passion and emotion: it is what they themselves spoke and heard in moments of exultation, indignation, &c. But to hear an evolving roll, or a succession of leaves, talk continually the language of deliberate reason in a form of continued preconception, of a 'Z' already possessed when 'A' was being uttered,—this must have appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same state, when in the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious, succession of sentences and periods, I abstract my mind from the particular passage, and sympathize with the wonder of the common people who say of an eloquent man:—'He talks like a book!'