The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 35

CAP OF LIBERTY.

Those who hoped proudly of human nature, and admitted no distinction between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first const.i.tution as a colossal statue of Corinthian bra.s.s, formed by the fusion and commixture of all metals in the conflagration of the state. But there is a common fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic republicanism,--mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.

BULLS.

'Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum prae rei absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Nae! delirat horologium! Quater pulsavit horam unam'.

I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep, or dozing, as we say, listened to the clock as it was striking four, and as it struck, he counted the four, one, one, one, one; and then exclaimed, "Why, the clock is out of its wits; it has struck one four times over!"

This is a good exemplification of the nature of 'Bulls', which will be found always to contain in them a confusion of what the schoolmen would have called--objectivity with subjectivity;--in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an 'ens rationis' not an 'ens reale'. I have read many attempts at a definition of a 'Bull', and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her delightful essay on 'Bulls', and given the definition of the genus, 'Blunder', for that of the particular species. I will venture, therefore, to propose the following: a 'Bull' consists in a mental juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection. The psychological conditions of the possibility of a 'Bull', it would not be difficult to determine; but it would require a larger s.p.a.ce than can be afforded here, at least more attention than my readers would be likely to afford.

There is a sort of spurious 'Bull' which consists wholly in mistake of language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a language of which he is not master.

WISE IGNORANCE.

It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the commentators on the Apocalypse.

'Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanae enim sapientiae pars est, quaedam aequo animo nescire velle'.

J. C, Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.

'Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium, Quaecunque libris vis prophetarum indidit, Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo; Nec operta sacri supparo silentii Irrumpere aude; sed prudenter praeteri!

Nescire velle quae magister optimus Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est'.

Josep. Scalig.

ROUGE.

Triumphant generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the chair of triumph, and of course ent.i.tled to the same distinction. The custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors that they might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin frequently speaks of a "picturesque eye:" with something less of solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being its own portrait.

[Greek: Epea pteroenta.] HASTY WORDS.

I crave mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these Omniana should outlive the present generation, the opinion will not need it) but I could not help writing in the blank page of a very celebrated work [1]

the following pa.s.sage from Picus Mirandula:-

'Movent mihi stomachum grammatistae quidam, qui c.u.m duas tenuerint vocabulorum origines, ita se ostentant, ita venditant, ita circ.u.mferunt jactabundi, ut prae ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos arbitrentur'. Epist. ad Hermol. Barb.

[Footnote 1: Diversions of Purley. Ed.]

MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.

It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are. What does he habitually wish, habitually pursue? and thence deduce his impulses which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive. Let a haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen appet.i.te of health, and exercise the impulse: then place the same or some more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and stomach-worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is impossible to understand the character of lago, who is represented as now a.s.signing one, and then another, and again a third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his own restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting power on those especially who are his superiors in practical and moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics have attributed to the profound author this the appropriate inconsistency of the character itself.

A second ill.u.s.tration:--Did Curio, the 'quondam' patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making 5000 a year by his apostacy?--I neither know nor care. Probably not.

But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords, to live in splendour and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compa.s.s needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from twilight into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such tiny atoms of motion, that by the time he has arrived at a given point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imperceptible degrees of his conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder liar, is merely that between the hour hand, and that which tells the seconds, on a watch. Of the former you can see only the past motion; of the latter both the past motion and the present moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of the latter rogue: for he has lied to mankind only and not to himself--the former lies to his own heart, as well as to the public.

INWARD BLINDNESS.

Talk to a blind man--he knows he wants the sense of sight, and willingly makes the proper allowances. But there are certain internal senses, which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste, philosophy, or religion. Of course there is no reasoning with them: for they do not possess the facts, on which the reasoning must be grounded.

Nothing is possible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial contempt; or, what a man of kind dispositions is very likely to fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on duplicity.

THE VICES OF SLAVES NO EXCUSE FOR SLAVERY.

It often happens, that the slave himself has neither the power nor the wish to be free. He is then brutified; but this apathy is the dire effect of slavery, and so far from being a justifying cause, that it contains the grounds of its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian race bred up the Merovingi as beasts; and then a.s.signed their unworthiness as the satisfactory reason for their dethronement. Alas!

the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of commanding than from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses his master; even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked and cudgelled, and half starved to boot. As we, however, or our ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creature with this wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him; and though we cannot immediately make him free, yet we can, and ought to, put him in the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person, yet in that of his children. The French, you will say, are not capable of freedom. Grant this;--but does this fact justify the ungrateful traitor, whose every measure has been to make them still more incapable of it?

CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent and descent which really takes place in the sap of trees. Servetus discovered the minor circulation from the heart to the lungs. Do not the following pa.s.sages of Giordano Bruno (published in 1591) seem to imply more? I put the question, 'pauperis forma', with unfeigned diffidence.

'"De Immenso et Innumerabili,"' lib. vi. cap. 8.

'Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circ.u.mcursat et recursat, sic in toto mundo, astro, tellure.

Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis Hinc meat, hinc remeat, neque ad inferiora fluit vi Majore, ad supera a pedibus quam deinde recedat:--'

and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of the same book,

'Quid esset Quodam ni gyro naturae cuncta redirent Ortus ad proprios rursum; si sorbeat omnes Pontus aquas, totum non rest.i.tuatque perenni Ordine; qua possit rerum consistere vita? Tanquam si totus concurrat sanguis in unam, In qua consistat, partem, nec prima revisat Ordia, et antiquos cursus non inde resumat.'

It is affirmed in the "Supplement to the Scotch Encyclopaedia Britannica," that Des Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aristotle and the Schools, attributed infinity to the universe. The very t.i.tle of Bruno's poem proves, that this honour belongs to him.

Feyjoo lays claim to a knowledge of the circulation of the blood for Francisco de la Reyna, a farrier, who published a work upon his own art at Burgos, in 1564. The pa.s.sage which he quotes is perfectly clear.

'Por manera, que la sangre anda en torno, y en rueda por todos los miembros, excluye toda duda.'

Whether Reyna himself claimed any discovery, Feyjoo does not mention;--but, these words seem to refer to some preceding demonstration of the fact. I am inclined to think that this, like many other things, was known before it was discovered; just as the preventive powers of the vaccine disease, the existence of adipocire in graves, and certain principles in grammar and in population, upon which bulky books have been written and great reputations raised in our days.