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Page 49
Butler's Analogy will be perhaps the very best to begin with: you must
not, however, flatter yourself that you in any degree understand this or
other books of the same nature until you penetrate into their extreme
difficulty,--until, in short, you find out that you can _not_ thoroughly
understand them _yet_. Queen Caroline, George II.'s wife, in the hope of
proving to Bishop Horsley how fully she appreciated the value of the
work I have just mentioned, told him that she had it constantly beside
her at her breakfast-table, to read a page or two in it whenever she had
an idle moment. The Bishop's reply was scarcely intended for a
compliment. He said _he_ could never open the book without a headache;
and really a headache is in general no bad test of our having thought
over a book sufficiently to enter in some degree into its real meaning:
only remember, that when the headache begins the reading or the thinking
must stop. As you value tho long and unimpaired preservation of your
powers of mind, guard carefully against any over-exertion of them.
To return to the "Analogy." It is a book of which you cannot too soon
begin the study,--providing you, as it will do, at once with materials
for the deepest thought, and laying a safe foundation for all future
ethical studies; it is at the same time so clearly expressed, that you
will have no perplexity in puzzling out the mere external form of the
idea, instead of fixing all your attention on solving the difficulties
of the thoughts and arguments themselves. Locke on the Human
Understanding is a work that has probably been often recommended to you.
Perhaps, if you keep steadily in view the danger of his materialistic,
unpoetic, and therefore untrue philosophy, the book may do you more good
than harm; it will furnish you with useful exercise for your thinking
powers; and you will see it so often quoted as authority, on one side as
truth, on the other as falsehood, that it may be as well you should form
your own judgment of it. You should previously, however, become guarded
against any dangers that might result from your study of Locke, by
acquiring a thorough-knowledge of the philosophy of Coleridge. This will
so approve itself to your conscience, your intellect, and your
imagination, that there can be no risk of its being ever supplanted in a
mind like yours by "plebeian"[79] systems of philosophy. Few have now
any difficulty in perceiving the infidel tendencies of that of Locke,
especially with the assistance of his French philosophic followers,
(with whose writings, for the charms of style and thought, you will
probably become acquainted in future years.) They have declared what the
real meaning of his system is by the developments which they have proved
to be its necessary consequences. Let Coleridge, then, be your previous
study, and the philosophic system detailed in his various writings may
serve as a nucleus, round which all other philosophy may safely enfold
itself. The writings of Coleridge form an era in the history of the
mind; and their progress in altering the whole character of thought, not
only in this but in foreign nations, if it has been slow, (which is one
of the necessary conditions of permanence,) has been already
astonishingly extensive. Even those who have never heard of the name of
Coleridge find their habits of thought moulded, and their perceptions of
truth cleared and deepened, by the powerful influence of his
master-mind,--powerful still, though it has probably only reached them
through three or four interposing mediums. The proud boast of one of
his descendants is amply verified: "He has given the power of vision:"
and in ages yet to come, many who may unfortunately be ignorant of the
very name of their benefactor will still be profiting daily, more and
more, by the mental telescopes he has provided. Thus it is that many
have rejoiced in having the distant brought near to them, and the
confused made clear, without knowing that Jansen was the name of him who
had conferred such benefits upon mankind. The immediate artist, the
latest moulder of an original design, is the one whose skill is extolled
and depended upon; and so it is even already in the case of Coleridge.
It is those only who are intimately acquainted with him who can plainly
see, that it is by the power of vision he has conferred that the really
philosophic writers of the present day are enabled to give views so
clear and deep on the many subjects that now interest the human mind.
All those among modern authors who combine deep learning with an
enlarged wisdom, a vivid and poetical imagination with an acute
perception of the practical and the true, have evidently educated
themselves in the school of Coleridge. He well deserves the name of the
Christian Plato, erecting as he does, upon the ancient and long-tried
foundation of that philosopher's beautiful system of intuitive truths,
the various details of minor but still valuable knowledge with which the
accumulated studies of four thousand intervening years have furnished
us, at the same time harmonizing the whole by the all-pervading spirit
of Christianity.
Coleridge is truly a Christian philosopher: at the same time, however,
though it may seem a paradox, I must warn you against taking him for
your guide and instructor in theology. A Socinian during all the years
in which vivid and never-to-be-obliterated impressions are received, he
could not entirely free himself from those rationalistic tendencies
which had insensibly incorporated themselves with all his religious
opinions. He afterwards became the powerful and successful defender of
the saving truths which he had long denied; but it was only in cases
where Arianism was openly displayed, and was to be directly opposed. He
seems to have been entirely unconscious that its subtle evil tendencies,
its exaltation of the understanding above the reason, its questioning,
disobedient spirit, might all in his own case have insinuated themselves
into his judgments on theological and ecclesiastical questions. The
prejudices which are in early youth wrought into the very essence of our
being are likely to be unsuspected in exact proportion to the degree of
intimacy with which they are assimilated with the forms of our mind.
However this may be, you will not fail to observe that, in all branches
of philosophy that do not directly refer to religion, Coleridge's system
of teaching is opposed to the general character of his own theological
views, and that he has himself furnished the opponents of these peculiar
views with the most powerful arms that can be wielded against them.
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