The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2

This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,—all conspired to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe the opposite spirit; Shakspeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the Spanish dramatists—Calderon, in particular,—had some influence in this respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays.

THE WILD GOOSE CHASE.

Act II. sc. 1. Belleur's speech:—

Sympson reads 'affable,' which Colman rejects, and says, 'the next line seems to enforce' the reading in the text.

Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense, 'seemingly enforced by the next line,' consists. May the true word be 'a sable,' that is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or 'at-able,'—as we now say,—'she is come-at-able?'

A WIFE FOR A MONTH.

Act IV. sc. 1. Alphonso's speech:—

Seward's note and alteration to—

This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for correction, he forgot the words—'lies my safe way!' The Bear is the extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained between it and 'the raging lion.'

THE PILGRIM.

Act IV. sc. 2. Alinda's interview with her father is lively, and happily hit off; but this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent. Altogether, indeed, this play holds the first place in B. and F.'s romantic entertainments, 'Lustspiele', which collectively are their happiest performances, and are only inferior to the romance of Shakspeare in the As you Like It, Twelfth Night, &c.

Ib.

Read 'Penitence,' or else—

THE QUEEN OF CORINTH.

Act II. sc. 1. Merione's speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy been laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been the Veeshnoo and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not have been much amiss.

In respect of style and versification, this play and the following of Bonduca may be taken as the best, and yet as characteristic, specimens of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas. I particularly instance the first scene of the Bonduca. Take Shakspeare's Richard II., and having selected some one scene of about the same number of lines, and consisting mostly of long speeches, compare it with the first scene in Bonduca,—not for the idle purpose of finding out which is the better, but in order to see and understand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you will find a Avell arranged bed of flowers, each having its separate root, and its position determined aforehand by the will of the gardener,—each fresh plant a fresh volition. In the former you see an Indian fig-tree, as described by Milton;—all is growth, evolution, {Greek (transliterated): genesis};—each line, each word almost, begets the following, and the will of the writer is an interfusion, a continuous agency, and not a series of separate acts. Shakspeare is the height, breadth, and depth of genius: Beaumont and Fletcher the excellent mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of talent.

THE NOBLE GENTLEMAN.

Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I. and the first Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakspeare? Why do they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And why is Shakspeare an exception?—One thing, among fifty, necessary to the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction on unpoetic subjects, both characters and situations, especially in their comedy. Now Shakspeare is all, all ideal,—of no time, and therefore for all times. Read, for instance, Marine's panegyric in the first scene of this play:—

What can be more unnatural and inappropriate—(not only is, but must be felt as such)—than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, the scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet solus plays the ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transprosing of the old plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it came that no one ever attempted to transprose a comedy of Shakspeare's.

THE CORONATION.

Act I. Speech of Seleucus:—

Pshaw! 'Sit' is either a misprint for 'set,' or the old and still provincial word for 'set,' as the participle passive of 'seat' or 'set.' I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:—"Look, Sir! I set these plants here; those yonder I 'sit' yesterday."

Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:—

Read thus:—

'/They would HAzard/' {1}—furnishes an anapæst for an 'iambus'. 'And yet,' which must be read, /'ANyet'/, is an instance of the enclitic force in an accented monosyllable. /'And YET'/ is a complete 'iambus'; but 'anyet' is, like 'spirit', a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by the 'arsis' or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the second.

{Footnote 1: As noted earlier in this text, the words between / marks are pronounced with stress on the upper-case syllables, and none on the lower-case syllables. In the original text, stress is indicated by a horizontal line over the syllable, and lack of stress by a u-shape, as the u u later in this paragraph. text Ed.}

WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS.

Act I. Oldcraft's speech:

It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying a sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by correcting the grammar. Read thus:—

Ib. Oldcraft's speech:—

Read

Ib. Sir Gregory's speech:—

Read it thus:—

and afterwards—

The superfluous 'to' gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek character.

THE FAIR MAID OF THE INN.

Act II. Speech of Albertus:—

In this (as, indeed, in all other respects; but most in this) it is that Shakspeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher and his friend,—in judgment! What can be conceived more unnatural and motiveless than this brutal resolve? How is it possible to feel the least interest in Albertus afterwards? or in Cesario after his conduct?

THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN.

On comparing the prison scene of Palamon and Arcite, Act ii. sc. 2, with the dialogue between the same speakers, Act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely retain a doubt as to the first act's having been written by Shakspeare. Assuredly it was not written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable than either of these two.

The main presumption, however, for Shakspeare's share in this play rests on a point, to which the sturdy critics of this edition (and indeed all before them) were blind,—that is, the construction of the blank verse, which proves beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the proper hand, of Shakspeare. Now, whatever improbability there is in the former, (which supposes Fletcher conscious of the inferiority, the too poematic minus-dramatic nature, of his versification, and of which there is neither proof, nor likelihood,) adds so much to the probability of the latter. On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very passages, a harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-breathings, and still more the want of profundity in the thoughts, keep me from an absolute decision.

Act i. sc. 3. Emilia's speech:—

I conjecture 'imports,' that is, duties or offices of importance. The flow of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic ending—/u/; while the text blends jingle and hisses to the annoyance of less sensitive ears than Fletcher's—not to say, Shakspeare's.

THE WOMAN HATER.

Act. I. sc. 2. This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank verse, down to the line—

where the verse recommences. This transition from the prose to the verse enhances, and indeed forms, the comic effect. Lazarillo concludes his soliloquy with a hymn to the goddess of plenty.

ON THE PROMETHEUS OF ÆSCHYLUS:

An Essay, preparatory to a series of disquisitions respecting the Egyptian, in connection with the sacerdotal, theology, and in contrast with the mysteries of ancient Greece. Read at the Royal Society of Literature, May 18, 1825.

The French 'savans' who went to Egypt in the train of Buonaparte, Denon, Fourrier, and Dupuis, (it has been asserted), triumphantly vindicated the chronology of Herodotus, on the authority of documents that cannot lie;—namely, the inscriptions and sculptures on those enormous masses of architecture, that might seem to have been built in the wish of rivalling the mountains, and at some unknown future to answer the same purpose, that is, to stand the gigantic tombstones of an elder world. It is decided, say the critics, whose words I have before cited, that the present division of the zodiac had been already arranged by the Egyptians fifteen thousand years before the Christian era, and according to an inscription 'which cannot lie' the temple of Esne is of eight thousand years standing.

Now, in the first place, among a people who had placed their national pride in their antiquity, I do not see the impossibility of an inscription lying; and, secondly, as little can I see the improbability of a modern interpreter misunderstanding it; and lastly, the incredibility of a French infidel's partaking of both defects, is still less evident to my understanding. The inscriptions may be, and in some instances, very probably are, of later date than the temples themselves,—the offspring of vanity or priestly rivalry, or of certain astrological theories; or the temples themselves may have been built in the place of former and ruder structures, of an earlier and ruder period, and not impossibly under a different scheme of hieroglyphic or significant characters; and these may have been intentionally, or ignorantly, miscopied or mistranslated.

But more than all the preceding,—I cannot but persuade myself, that for a man of sound judgment and enlightened common sense—a man with whom the demonstrable laws of the human mind, and the rules generalized from the great mass of facts respecting human nature, weigh more than any two or three detached documents or narrations, of whatever authority the narrator may be, and however difficult it may be to bring positive proofs against the antiquity of the documents—I cannot but persuade myself, I say, that for such a man, the relation preserved in the first book of the Pentateuch,—and which, in perfect accordance with all analogous experience, with all the facts of history, and all that the principles of political economy would lead us to anticipate, conveys to us the rapid progress in civilization and splendour from Abraham and Abimelech to Joseph and Pharaoh,—will be worth a whole library of such inferences.

I am aware that it is almost universal to speak of the gross idolatry of Egypt; nay, that arguments have been grounded on this assumption in proof of the divine origin of the Mosaic monotheism. But first, if by this we are to understand that the great doctrine of the one Supreme Being was first revealed to the Hebrew legislator, his own inspired writings supply abundant and direct confutation of the position. Of certain astrological superstitions,—of certain talismans connected with star-magic,—plates and images constructed in supposed harmony with the movements and influences of celestial bodies,—there doubtless exist hints, if not direct proofs, both in the Mosaic writings, and those next to these in antiquity. But of plain idolatry in Egypt, or the existence of a polytheistic religion, represented by various idols, each signifying a several deity, I can find no decisive proof in the Pentateuch; and when I collate these with the books of the prophets, and the other inspired writings subsequent to the Mosaic, I cannot but regard the absence of any such proof in the latter, compared with the numerous and powerful assertions, or evident implications, of Egyptian idolatry in the former, both as an argument of incomparably greater value in support of the age and authenticity of the Pentateuch; and as a strong presumption in favour of the hypothesis on which I shall in part ground the theory which will pervade this series of disquisitions;—namely, that the sacerdotal religion of Egypt had, during the interval from Abimelech to Moses, degenerated from the patriarchal monotheism into a pantheism, cosmotheism, or worship of the world as God.

The reason, or pretext, assigned by the Hebrew legislator to Pharaoh for leading his countrymen into the wilderness to join with their brethren, the tribes who still sojourned in the nomadic state, namely, that their sacrifices would be an abomination to the Egyptians, may be urged as inconsistent with, nay, as confuting this hypothesis. But to this I reply, first, that the worship of the ox and cow was not, in and of itself, and necessarily, a contravention of the first commandment, though a very gross breach of the second;—for it is most certain that the ten tribes worshipped the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, under the same or similar symbols:—secondly, that the cow, or Isis, and the Io of the Greeks, truly represented, in the first instance, the earth or productive nature, and afterwards the mundane religion grounded on the worship of nature, or the {Greek (transliterated): to pan}, as God. In after times, the ox or bull was added, representing the sun, or generative force of nature, according to the habit of male and female deities, which spread almost over the whole world,—the positive and negative forces in the science of superstition;—for the pantheism of the sage necessarily engenders polytheism as the popular creed. But lastly, a very sufficient reason may, I think, be assigned for the choice of the ox or cow, as representing the very life of nature, by the first legislators of Egypt, and for the similar sacred character in the Brachmanic tribes of Hindostan. The progress from savagery to civilization is evidently first from the hunting to the pastoral state, a process which even now is going on, within our own times, among the South American Indians in the vast tracts between Buenos Ayres and the Andes: but the second and the most important step, is from the pastoral, or wandering, to the agricultural, or fixed, state. Now, if even for men born and reared under European civilization, the charms of a wandering life have been found so great a temptation, that few who have taken to it have been induced to return, (see the confession in the preamble to the statute respecting the gipsies); {1}—how much greater must have been the danger of relapse in the first formation of fixed states with a condensed population? And what stronger prevention could the ingenuity of the priestly kings—(for the priestly is ever the first form of government)—devise, than to have made the ox or cow the representatives of the divine principle in the world, and, as such, an object of adoration, the wilful destruction of which was sacrilege?—For this rendered a return to the pastoral state impossible; in which the flesh of these animals and the milk formed almost the exclusive food of mankind; while, in the meantime, by once compelling and habituating men to the use of a vegetable diet, it enforced the laborious cultivation of the soil, and both produced and permitted a vast and condensed population. In the process and continued subdivisions of polytheism, this great sacred Word,—for so the consecrated animals were called, {Greek (transliterated): ieroi logoi,}—became multiplied, till almost every power and supposed attribute of nature had its symbol in some consecrated animal from the beetle to the hawk. Wherever the powers of nature had found a cycle for themselves, in which the powers still produced the same phenomenon during a given period, whether in the motions of the heavenly orbs, or in the smallest living organic body, there the Egyptian sages predicated life and mind. Time, cyclical time, was their abstraction of the deity, and their holidays were their gods.

The diversity between theism and pantheism may be most simply and generally expressed in the following 'formula', in which the material universe is expressed by W, and the deity by G.

or the World without God is an impossible conception. This position is common to theist and pantheist. But the pantheist adds the converse—

for which the theist substitutes—

or that—

'Before the mountains were, Thou art.'—I am not about to lead the society beyond the bounds of my subject into divinity or theology in the professional sense. But without a precise definition of pantheism, without a clear insight into the essential distinction between it and the theism of the Scriptures, it appears to me impossible to understand either the import or the history of the polytheism of the great historical nations. I beg leave, therefore, to repeat, and to carry on my former position, that the religion of Egypt, at the time of the Exodus of the Hebrews, was a pantheism, on the point of passing into that polytheism, of which it afterwards afforded a specimen, gross and distasteful even to polytheists themselves of other nations.

The objects which, on my appointment as Royal Associate of the Royal Society of Literature, I proposed to myself were,

1st. The elucidation of the purpose of the Greek drama, and the relations in which it stood to the mysteries on the one hand, and to the state or sacerdotal religion on the other:—

2nd. The connection of the Greek tragic poets with philosophy as the peculiar offspring of Greek genius:—

3rd. The connection of the Homeric and cyclical poets with the popular religion of the Greeks: and,

lastly from all these,—namely, the mysteries, the sacerdotal religion, their philosophy before and after Socrates, the stage, the Homeric poetry and the legendary belief of the people, and from the sources and productive causes in the derivation and confluence of the tribes that finally shaped themselves into a nation of Greeks—to give a juster and more distinct view of this singular people, and of the place which they occupied in the history of the world, and the great scheme of divine providence, than I have hitherto seen,—or rather let me say, than it appears to me possible to give by any other process.

The present Essay, however, I devote to the purpose of removing, or at least invalidating, one objection that I may reasonably anticipate, and which may be conveyed in the following question:—What proof have you of the fact of any connection between the Greek drama, and either the mysteries, or the philosophy, of Greece? What proof that it was the office of the tragic poet, under a disguise of the sacerdotal religion, mixed with the legendary or popular belief, to reveal as much of the mysteries interpreted by philosophy, as would counteract the demoralizing effects of the state religion, without compromising the tranquillity of the state itself, or weakening that paramount reverence, without which a republic, (such I mean, as the republics of ancient Greece were) could not exist?

I know no better way in which I can reply to this objection, than by giving, as my proof and instance, the Prometheus of Æschylus, accompanied with an exposition of what I believe to be the intention of the poet, and the mythic import of the work; of which it may be truly said, that it is more properly tragedy itself in the plenitude of the idea, than a particular tragic poem; and as a preface to this exposition, and for the twin purpose of rendering it intelligible, and of explaining its connexion with the whole scheme of my Essays, I entreat permission to insert a quotation from a work of my own, which has indeed been in print for many years, but which few of my auditors will probably have heard of, and still fewer, if any, have read.

The Greeks alone brought forth philosophy in the proper and contra-distinguishable sense of the term, which we may compare to the coronation medal with its symbolic characters, as contrasted with the coins, issued under the same sovereign, current in the market. In the primary sense, philosophy had for its aim and proper subject the {Greek (transliterated): ta peri archon}, 'de originibus rerum', as far as man proposes to discover the same in and by the pure reason alone. This, I say, was the offspring of Greece, and elsewhere adopted only. The predisposition appears in their earliest poetry.

The first object, (or subject matter) of Greek philosophizing was in some measure philosophy itself;—not, indeed, as the product, but as the producing power—the productivity. Great minds turned inward on the fact of the diversity between man and beast; a superiority of kind in addition to that of degree; the latter, that is, the difference in degree comprehending the more enlarged sphere and the multifold application of faculties common to man and brute animals;—even this being in great measure a transfusion from the former, namely, from the superiority in kind;—for only by its co-existence with reason, free will, self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of man, does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant, the dog, the elephant, &c. become human understanding. It is a truth with which Heraclitus, the senior, but yet contemporary, of Æschylus, appears, from the few genuine fragments of his writings that are yet extant, to have been deeply impressed,—that the mere understanding in man, considered as the power of adapting means to immediate purposes, differs, indeed, from the intelligence displayed by other animals, and not in degree only; but yet does not differ by any excellence which it derives from itself, or by any inherent diversity, but solely in consequence of a combination with far higher powers of a diverse kind in one and the same subject.

Long before the entire separation of metaphysics from poetry, that is, while yet poesy, in all its several species of verse, music, statuary, &c. continued mythic;—while yet poetry remained the union of the sensuous and the philosophic mind;—the efficient presence of the latter in the 'synthesis' of the two, had manifested itself in the sublime 'mythus peri geneseos tou nou en anthropois' concerning the 'genesis', or birth of the 'nous' or reason in man. This the most venerable, and perhaps the most ancient, of Grecian 'myth', is a philosopheme, the very same in subject matter with the earliest record of the Hebrews, but most characteristically different in tone and conception;—for the patriarchal religion, as the antithesis of pantheism, was necessarily personal; and the doctrines of a faith, the first ground of which and the primary enunciation, is the eternal I AM, must be in part historic and must assume the historic form. Hence the Hebrew record is a narrative, and the first instance of the fact is given as the origin of the fact.

That a profound truth—a truth that is, indeed, the grand and indispensable condition of all moral responsibility—is involved in this characteristic of the sacred narrative, I am not alone persuaded, but distinctly aware. This, hovever, does not preclude us from seeing, nay, as an additional mark of the wisdom that inspired the sacred historian, it rather supplies a motive to us, impels and authorizes us, to see, in the form of the vehicle of the truth, an accommodation to the then childhood of the human race. Under this impression we may, I trust, safely consider the narration,—introduced, as it is here introduced, for the purpose of explaining a mere work of the unaided mind of man by comparison,—as an {Greek (transliterated): eros hierogluphikon},—and as such (apparently, I mean, not actually) a 'synthesis' of poesy and philosophy, characteristic of the childhood of nations.

In the Greek we see already the dawn of approaching manhood. The substance, the stuff, is philosophy; the form only is poetry. The Prometheus is a philosophema {Greek (transliterated): tautaegorikon}, —the tree of knowledge of good and evil,—an allegory, a {Greek (transliterated): propaideuma}, though the noblest and the most pregnant of its kind.

The generation of the {Greek (transliterated): nous}, or pure reason in man.

1. It was superadded or infused, 'a supra' to mark that it was no mere evolution of the animal basis;—that it could not have grown out of the other faculties of man, his life, sense, understanding, as the flower grows out of the stem, having pre-existed potentially in the seed:

2. The {Greek: nous}, or fire, was 'stolen,'—to mark its 'helero'—or rather its 'allo'-geneity, that is, its diversity, its difference in kind, from the faculties which are common to man with the nobler animals:

3. And stolen 'from Heaven,'—to mark its superiority in kind, as well as its essential diversity:

4. And it was a 'spark,'—to mark that it is not subject to any modifying reaction from that on which it immediately acts; that it suffers no change, and receives no accession, from the inferior, but multiplies it-self by conversion, without being alloyed by, or amalgamated with, that which it potentiates, ennobles, and transmutes:

5. And lastly, (in order to imply the homogeneity of the donor and of the gift) it was stolen by a 'god,' and a god of the race before the dynasty of Jove,—Jove the binder of reluctant powers, the coercer arid entrancer of free spirits under the fetters of shape, and mass, and passive mobility; but likewise by a god of the same race and essence with Jove, and linked of yore in closest and friendliest intimacy with him. This, to mark the pre-existence, in order of thought, of the 'nous', as spiritual, both to the objects of sense, and to their products, formed as it were, by the precipitation, or, if I may dare adopt the bold language of Leibnitz, by a coagulation of spirit. In other words this derivation of the spark from above, and from a god anterior to the Jovial dynasty—(that is, to the submersion of spirits in material forms),—was intended to mark the transcendancy of the 'nous', the contra-distinctive faculty of man, as timeless, {Greek (transliterated): achronon ti,} and, in this negative sense, eternal. It signified, I say, its superiority to, and its diversity from, all things that subsist in space and time, nay, even those which, though spaceless, yet partake of time, namely, souls or understandings. For the soul, or understanding, if it be defined physiologically as the principle of sensibility, irritability, and growth, together with the functions of the organs, which are at once the representatives and the instruments of these, must be considered 'in genere', though not in degree or dignity, common to man and the inferior animals. It was the spirit, the 'nous', which man alone possessed. And I must be permitted to suggest that this notion deserves some respect, were it only that it can shew a semblance, at least, of sanction from a far higher authority.

The Greeks agreed with the cosmogonies of the East in deriving all sensible forms from the indistinguishable. The latter we find designated as the {Greek: to amorphon}, the {Greek: hudor prokosmikon}, the {Greek: chaos}, as the essentially unintelligible, yet necessarily presumed, basis or sub-position of all positions. That it is, scientifically considered, an indispensable idea for the human mind, just as the mathematical point, &c. for the geometrician;—of this the various systems of our geologists and cosmogonists, from Burnet to La Place, afford strong presumption. As an idea, it must be interpreted as a striving of the mind to distinguish being from existence,—or potential being, the ground of being containing the possibility of existence, from being actualized. In the language of the mysteries, it was the 'esurience', the {Greek: pothos} or 'desideratum', the unfuelled fire, the Ceres, the ever-seeking maternal goddess, the origin and interpretation of whose name is found in the Hebrew root signifying hunger, and thence capacity. It was, in short, an effort to represent the universal ground of all differences distinct or opposite, but in relation to which all 'antithesis' as well as all 'antitheta', existed only potentially. This was the container and withholder, (such is the primitive sense of the Hebrew word rendered darkness (Gen. 1. 2.)) out of which light, that is, the 'lux lucifica', as distinguished from 'lumen seu lux phænomenalis', was produced;—say, rather, that which, producing itself into light as the one pole or antagonist power, remained in the other pole as darkness, that is, gravity, or the principle of mass, or wholeness without distinction of parts.

And here the peculiar, the philosophic, genius of Greece began its f¦tal throb. Here it individualized itself in contra-distinction from the Hebrew archology, on the one side, and from the Ph¦nician, on the other. The Ph¦nician confounded the indistinguishable with the absolute, the 'Alpha' and 'Omega', the ineffable 'causa sui'. It confounded, I say, the multeity below intellect, that is, unintelligible from defect of the subject, with the absolute identity above all intellect, that is, transcending comprehension by the plenitude of its excellence. With the Phoenician sages the cosmogony was their theogony and 'vice versa'. Hence, too, flowed their theurgic rites, their magic, their worship ('cultus et apotheosis') of the plastic forces, chemical and vital, and these, or their notions respecting these, formed the hidden meaning, the soul, as it were, of which the popular and civil worship was the body with its drapery.

The Hebrew wisdom imperatively asserts an unbeginning creative One, who neither became the world; nor is the world eternally; nor made the world out of himself by emanation, or evolution;—but who willed it, and it was! {Greek: Ta athea egeneto, kai egeneto chaos,}—and this chaos, the eternal will, by the spirit and the word, or express 'fiat',—again acting as the impregnant, distinctive, and ordonnant power,—enabled to become a world—{Greek: kosmeisthai.} So must it be when a religion, that shall preclude superstition on the one hand, and brute indifference on the other, is to be true for the meditative sage, yet intelligible, or at least apprehensible, for all but the fools in heart.

The Greek philosopheme, preserved for us in the Æschylean Prometheus, stands midway betwixt both, yet is distinct in kind from either. With the Hebrew or purer Semitic, it assumes an X Y Z,—(I take these letters in their algebraic application)—an indeterminate 'Elohim', antecedent to the matter of the world, {Greek: hulae akosmos}—no less than to the {Greek: hulae kekosmaemenae.} In this point, likewise, the Greek accorded with the Semitic, and differed from the Phoenician—that it held the antecedent X Y Z to be super-sensuous and divine. But on the other hand, it coincides with the Ph¦nician in considering this antecedent ground of corporeal matter,—{Greek: ton somaton kai tou somatikou,}—not so properly the cause of the latter, as the occasion and the still continuing substance. 'Maleria substat adliuc'. The corporeal was supposed co-essential with the antecedent of its corporeity. Matter, as distinguished from body, was a 'non ens', a simple apparition, 'id quod mere videtur'; but to body the elder physico-theology of the Greeks allowed a participation in entity. It was 'spiritus ipse, oppressus, dormiens, et diversis modis somnians'. In short, body was the productive power suspended, and as it were, quenched in the product. This may be rendered plainer by reflecting, that, in the pure Semitic scheme there are four terms introduced in the solution of the problem,

1. the beginning, self-sufficing, and immutable Creator;

2. the antecedent night as the identity, or including germ, of the light and darkness, that is, gravity;

3. the chaos; and

4. the material world resulting from the powers communicated by the divine 'fiat'. In the Phoenician scheme there are in fact but two—a self-organizing chaos, and the omniforrn nature as the result. In the Greek scheme we have three terms, 1. the 'hyle', {Greek: hulae}, which holds the place of the chaos, or the waters, in the true system; 2. {Greek: ta somata}, answering to the Mosaic heaven and earth; and 3. the Saturnian {Greek: chronoi huperchonioi},—which answer to the antecedent darkness of the Mosaic scheme, but to which the elder physico-theologists attributed a self-polarizing power—a 'natura gemina quæ fit et facit, agit et patitur'. In other words, the 'Elohim' of the Greeks were still but a 'natura deorum', {Greek: to theion}, in which a vague plurality adhered; or if any unity was imagined, it was not personal—not a unity of excellence, but simply an expression of the negative—that which was to pass, but which had not yet passed, into distinct form.

All this will seem strange and obscure at first reading,—perhaps fantastic. But it will only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key to the whole cypher of the Æschylean mythology. The sum stated in the terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to the chaos itself: what Moses made passive and a 'materia subjecta et lucis et tenebrarum', the containing {Greek: prothemenon} of the 'thesis' and 'antithesis';—this the Greek placed anterior to the chaos;—the chaos itself being the struggle between the 'hyperchronia', the {Greek: ideai pronomoi}, as the unevolved, unproduced, 'prothesis', of which {Greek: idea kai nomos}—(idea and law)—are the 'thesis' and 'antithesis'. (I use the word 'produced' in the mathematical sense, as a point elongating itself to a bipolar line.) Secondly, what Moses establishes, not merely as a transcendant 'Monas', but as an individual {Greek: Henas} likewise;—this the Greek took as a harmony, {Greek: Theoi hathanatoi, to theion}, as distinguished from {Greek: o Theos}—or, to adopt the more expressive language of the Pythagoreans and cabalists 'numen numerantis'; and these are to be contemplated as the identity.

Now according to the Greek philosopheme or 'mythus', in these, or in this identity, there arose a war, schism, or division, that is, a polarization into thesis and antithesis. In consequence of this schism in the {Greek: to theion}, the 'thesis' becomes 'nomos', or law, and the 'antithesis' becomes 'idea', but so that the 'nomos' is 'nomos', because, and only because, the 'idea' is 'idea': the 'nomos' is not idea, only because the idea has not become 'nomos'. And this 'not' must be heedfully borne in mind through the whole interpretation of this most profound and pregnant philosopheme. The 'nomos' is essentially idea, but existentially it is idea 'substans', that is, 'id quod stat subtus', understanding 'sensu generalissimo'. The 'idea', which now is no longer idea, has substantiated itself, become real as opposed to idea, and is henceforward, therefore, 'substans in substantiato'. The first product of its energy is the thing itself: 'ipsa se posuit et jam facta est ens positum'. Still, however, its productive energy is not exhausted in this product, but overflows, or is effluent, as the specific forces, properties, faculties, of the product. It reappears, in short, in the body, as the function of the body. As a sufficient illustration, though it cannot be offered as a perfect instance, take the following.