Anima Poetae Part 23

[Sidenote: ARCHITECTURE AND CLIMATE]

If we take into consideration the effect of the climates of the North, _Gothic_, in contra-distinction to Greek and Graeco-Roman architecture, is rightly so named. Take, for instance, a rainy, windy day, or sleet, or a fall of snow, or an icicle-hanging frost, and then compare the total effect of the South European roundnesses and smooth perpendicular surface with the ever-varying angles and meeting-lines of the North-European or Gothic styles.

[The above is probably a dropped sentence from the report of the First or Second Lecture of the 1818 series. See _Coleridge's Works_ (Harper and Brothers, 1853), iv. 232-239.]

[Sidenote: NEITHER BOND NOR FREE]

The demagogues address the lower orders as if they were negroes--as if each individual were an inseparable part of the order, always to remain, _nolens volens_, poor and ignorant. How different from Christianity, which for ever calls on us to detach ourselves spiritually not merely from our rank, but even from our body, and from the whole world of sense!

[Sidenote: THE MAIDEN'S PRIMER]

The one mighty main defect of female education is that everything is taught but reason and the means of retaining affection. This--this--O!

it is worth all the rest told ten thousand times:--how to greet a husband, how to receive him, how never to recriminate--in short, the power of pleasurable thoughts and feelings, and the mischief of giving pain, or (as often happens when a husband comes home from a party of old friends, joyous and full of heart) the love-killing effect of cold, dry, uninterested looks and manners.

[Sidenote: THE HALFWAY HOUSE Wednesday night, May 18th, 1808]

Let me record the following important remark of Stuart, with whom I never converse but to receive some distinct and rememberable improvement (and if it be not remembered, it is the defect of my memory--which, alas! grows weaker daily--or a fault from my indolence in not noting it down, as I do this)--that there is a period in a man's life, varying in various men, from thirty-five to forty-five, and operating most strongly in bachelors, widowers, or those worst and miserablest widowers, unhappy husbands, in which a man finds himself at the _top of the hill_, and having attained, perhaps, what he wishes, begins to ask himself, What is all this for?--begins to feel the vanity of his pursuits, becomes half-melancholy, gives in to wild dissipation or self-regardless drinking; and some, not content with these (not _slow_) poisons, destroy themselves, and leave their ingenious female or female-minded friends to fish out some _motive_ for an act which proceeded from a _motive-making_ impulse, which would have acted even without a motive (even as the terror[E] in nightmare is a bodily sensation, and though it most often calls up consonant images, yet, as I know by experience, can take effect equally without any); or, if not so, yet like gunpowder in a smithy, though it will not go off without a spark, is _sure_ to receive one, if not this hour, yet the next. I had _felt_ this truth, but never saw it before clearly: it came upon me at Malta under the melancholy, dreadful feeling of finding myself to be _man_, by a distinct division from boyhood, youth, and "young man." Dreadful was the feeling--till then life had flown so that I had always been a boy, as it were; and this sensation had blended in all my conduct, my willing acknowledgment of superiority, and, in truth, my meeting every person as a superior at the first moment. Yet if men survive this period, they commonly become cheerful again. That is a comfort for mankind, _not for me_!

[Sidenote: HIS OWN GENIUS]

My inner mind does not justify the thought that I possess a genius, my _strength_ is so very small in proportion to my power. I believe that I first, from internal feeling, made or gave light and impulse to this important distinction between strength and power, the oak and the tropic annual, or biennial, which grows nearly as high and spreads as large as the oak, but in which the _wood_, the _heart_ is wanting--the vital works vehemently, but the immortal is not with it. And yet, I think, I must have some a.n.a.logue of genius; because, among other things, when I am in company with Mr. Sharp, Sir J. Mackintosh, R. and Sydney Smith, Mr. Scarlett, &c. &c., I feel like a child, nay, rather like an inhabitant of another planet. Their very faces all act upon me, sometimes, as if they were ghosts, but more often as if I were a ghost among them--at all times as if we were not consubstantial.

[Sidenote: NAME IT AND YOU BREAK IT]

"The cla.s.s that ought to be kept separate from all others"--and this said by one of themselves! O what a confession that it is no longer separated! Who would have said this even fifty years ago? It is the howling of ice during a thaw. When there is any just reason for saying this, it ought not to be said, it is already too late. And though it may receive the a.s.sent of the people of "the squares and places," yet what does that do, if it be the ridicule of all other cla.s.ses?

[Sidenote: THE DANGER OF OVER-BLAMING]

The general experience, or rather supposed experience, prevails over the particular knowledge. So many causes oppose man to man, that he _begins_ by thinking of other men worse than they deserve, and receives his punishment by at last thinking worse of himself than the truth is.

[Sidenote: EXCESS OF SELF-ESTEEM]

Expressions of honest self-esteem, in which _self_ was only a diagram of the _genus_, will excite sympathy at the minute, and yet, even among persons who love and esteem you, be remembered and quoted as ludicrous instances of strange self-involution.

[Sidenote: DEFECT OF SELF-ESTEEM. May 23, 1808]

Those who think lowliest of themselves, perhaps with a _feeling_ stronger than rational comparison would justify, are apt to feel and express undue asperity for the faults and defects of those whom they habitually have looked up to as to their superiors. For placing themselves very low, perhaps too low, wherever a series of experiences, struggled against for a while, have at length convinced the mind that in such and such a moral habit the long-idolised superior is far below even itself, the grief and anger will be in proportion. "If even _I_ could never have done this, O anguish, that _he_, so much my superior, should do it! If even _I_ with all my infirmities have not this defect, this selfishness, that _he_ should have it!" This is the course of thought.

Men are bad enough; and yet they often think themselves worse than they are, among other causes by a reaction from their own uncharitable thoughts. The poisoned chalice is brought back to our own lips.

[Sidenote: A PRACTICAL MAN]

He was grown, and solid from his infancy, like that most _useful_ of domesticated animals, that never runs but with some prudent motive to the mast or the wash-tub and, at no time a slave to the present moment, never even grunts over the acorns before him without a scheming squint and the segment, at least, of its wise little eye cast toward those on one side, which his neighbour is or may be about to enjoy.

[Sidenote: LUCUS A NON LUCENDO]

Quaere, whether the high and mighty Edinburghers, &c., have not been elevated into guardians and overseers of taste and poetry for much the same reason as St. Cecilia was chosen as the guardian G.o.ddess of music, because, forsooth, so far from being able to compose or play herself, she could never endure any other instrument than the jew's-harp or Scotch bag-pipe? No! too eager recensent! you are mistaken, there is no anachronism in this. We are informed by various antique bas-reliefs that the bag-pipe was well known to the Romans, and probably, therefore, that the Picts and Scots were even then fond of seeking their fortune in other countries.

[Sidenote: LOVE AND MUSIC]

"Love is the spirit of life and music the life of the spirit."

Q. What is music? A. Poetry in its grand sense! Pa.s.sion and order at once! Imperative power in obedience!

Q. What is the first and divinest strain of music? A.--In the intellect--"Be able to will that thy maxims (rules of individual conduct) should be the law of all intelligent being!"

In the heart, or practical reason, "Do unto others as thou wouldst be done by." This in the widest extent involves the test, "Love thy neighbour as thyself, and G.o.d above all things." For, conceive thy being to be all-including, that is, G.o.d--thou knowest that _thou_ wouldest command thyself to be beloved above all things.

[For the motto at the head of this note see the lines "Ad Vilmum Axiologum." _P. W._, 1893, p. 138.]

[Sidenote: CONSCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY]

From what reasons do I believe in _continuous_ and ever-continuable consciousness? From conscience! Not for myself, but for my conscience, that is, my affections and duties towards others, I should have no self--for self is definition, but all boundary implies neighbourhood and is knowable only by neighbourhood or relations. Does the understanding say nothing in favour of immortality? It says nothing for or against; but its silence gives consent, and is better than a thousand arguments such as mere understanding could afford. But miracles! "Do you speak of them as proofs or as natural consequences of revelation, whose presence is proof only by precluding the disproof that would arise from their absence?" "Nay, I speak of them as of positive fundamental proofs."

Then I dare answer you "Miracles in that sense are blasphemies in morality, contradictions in reason. G.o.d the Truth, the actuality of logic, the very _logos_--He deceive his creatures and demonstrate the properties of a triangle by the confusion of all properties! If a miracle merely means an event before inexperienced, it proves only itself, and the inexperience of mankind. Whatever other definition be given of it, or rather attempted (for no other not involving direct contradiction can be given), it is blasphemy. It calls darkness light, and makes Ignorance the mother of Malignity, the appointed nurse of religion--which is knowledge as opposed to mere calculating and conjectural understanding. Seven years ago, but oh! in what happier times--I wrote thus--

O ye hopes! that stir within me!

Health comes with you from above!

G.o.d is _with_ me! G.o.d is _in_ me!

I _cannot_ die: for life is love!

And now, that I am alone and utterly hopeless for myself, yet still I love--and more strongly than ever feel that conscience or the duty of love is the proof of continuing, as it is the cause and condition of existing consciousness. How beautiful the harmony! Whence could the proof come, so appropriately, so conformly with all nature, in which the cause and condition of each thing is its revealing and infallible prophecy!

And for what reason, say, rather, for what cause, do you believe immortality? Because I _ought_, therefore I _must_!

[The lines "On revisiting the sea-sh.o.r.e," of which the last stanza is quoted, were written in August, 1801. [_P.W._, 1893, p. 159.] If the note was written exactly seven years after the date of that poem, it must belong to the summer of 1808, when Coleridge was living over the _Courier_ office in the Strand.]

[Sidenote: THE CAP OF LIBERTY]

Truly, I hope not irreverently, may we apply to the French nation the Scripture text, "From him that hath nothing shall be taken that which he hath"--that is, their pretences to being free, which are the same as nothing. They, the illuminators, the discoverers and sole possessors of the true philosopher's stone! Alas! it proved both for them and Europe the _Lapis Infernalis_.

[Sidenote: VAIN GLORY]

Lord of light and fire? What is the universal of man in all, but especially in savage states? Fantastic ornament and, in general, the most frightful deformities--slits in the ears and nose, for instance.

What is the solution? Man will not be a mere thing of nature: he will be and shew himself a power of himself. Hence these violent disruptions of himself from all other creatures! What they are made, that they remain--they are Nature's, and wholly Nature's.